Stories and tunes, the open way.

Let your kids play music or audiobooks with the touch of an RFID tag. No screens. No ads.

Tunino combines a Raspberry Pi, a RFID Reader and some push buttons into a simple device:

• Scan RFID code to play associtated MP3 file on device.
• Play/pause button: If a piece is playing, press pause and scan new RFID tag to play next song/story.
• One button for volume up. One button for volume down.
• Power button to shutdown securely. (To start, just plug in the USB power cable.)
• That's it.

This is a weekend project that I created for my kids, heavily inspired by Phoniebox, which I tried to set up but could not get to run. The scope is for private use by DIY enthusiasts and RPi tinkerers. It's intentionally simple. No CI/CD build, just run from source. I'm open to accept Pull Requests for added functionality (like other RFID readers, other playback backends), but I won't be able to provide support.

What happens in the background:

• RPi device runs MPD music server.
• A Python process scans the RFID reader and push buttons, then sends commands to MPD server, acting like a "local remote control".
• The directory with music/audiobook files is published as a network share. Connect with any computer to add new files.
• The network share also has a text file that maps each RFID tag to an MP3 file. Edit this file and add the new file name(s) here.
• MPD needs to be notified of new files. Use any MPD app (for example MaximumMPD) to trigger a file scan. BTW, you can use the MPD app to control the playback as well.

The project uses a RC522 RFID reader (with SPI interface!) and arcade-style push buttons. You also need some RFID tags, which you can stick on playing cards, small figures or similar. Those items are widely available for small money. I run this on an RPi 400, but I think any Raspberry Pi model should do.

Things to note:

• The Raspberry Pi needs to have SPI interface mode enabled (using raspi-config).
• When connecting the push-buttons, note that GPIO pin number is not the same as the physical pin number. For example, physical pin 40 (the last one), is GPIO pin 21.
• I included simple scripts (test_gpio.py and test_rfid.py) that you can use to check the device connection.
• The script test_rfid.py is also handy to read out RFID tag numbers.

• Install mpd (and other stuff used later): sudo apt update; sudo apt upgrade -y; sudo apt install -y mpd python3-rpi-lgpio swig vim samba samba-common-bin
• In /etc/mpd.conf:
  • change bind_to_address from "localhost" to "any"
  • Uncomment audio_output for ALSO and add hw:CARD=Device,DEV=0 (from aplay -L | grep '^hw:CARD=')
  • Uncomment mixer_type and change to "software"
• In /var/lib/mpd/music/ add a file rfid_song_map.json like:

  {
    "1": "my_song_filename1.mp3",
    "2": "my_song_filename2.mp3",
    "3": "my_song_filename3.mp3"
  }
  

• Enable mpd at startup and start it now: sudo systemctl enable --now mpd
• In /etc/samba/smb.conf:
  • Add following block in [global]

    server string = Tunino Audio Box
    security = user
    guest account = mpd
    

  • Comment out section [homes] entirely
  • Add following block at the end:

    [Music]
      path = /var/lib/mpd/music
      browseable = yes
      read only = no
      guest ok = yes
      force user = mpd
      force group = audio
      create mask = 0777
      directory mask = 2777
      public = yes
    

• Generate SSH keys. Add pubkey to GitHub.
• Clone Tunino repo.
• Install uv: curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
• Remove system-installed lgpio: sudo apt remove python3-lgpio
• Install fresh lgpio library:

  wget http://abyz.me.uk/lg/lg.zip
  unzip lg.zip
  cd lg
  make
  sudo make install
  

• Add a file tunino/config/.secrects.json with RFID tag numbers like (you can use tunino/src/tunino/test_frid.py to read out the tag numbers):

  {
    "default": {
      "rfid_map": {
          "1": "012345678901",
          "2": "123456789012",
          "3": "234567890123"
      }
    }
  }
  

• Create a service for tunino that autostarts:
  • Edit sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/tunino.service and add:

    [Unit]
    Description=Tunino - Stories and tunes, the open way.
    After=multi-user.target
    
    [Service]
    Type=simple
    ExecStart=/home/pi/.local/bin/uv run app
    WorkingDirectory=/home/pi/tunino
    StandardOutput=journal
    StandardError=journal
    Restart=always
    RestartSec=5
    User=pi
    
    [Install]
    WantedBy=multi-user.target
    

  • Then add and start the service:

    sudo systemctl daemon-reload 
    sudo systemctl enable --now tunino.service
    

  • Optional: Check the logs with journalctl -u tunino.service -f

• Run lsusb and note the vendor and device id, e.g. 04d9:0007
• Create file sudo vim /etc/udev/rules.d/10-disable-pi400-keyboard.rules and add:

  ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="04d9", ATTR{idProduct}=="0007", RUN+="/bin/sh -c 'echo 0 > /sys$devpath/authorized'"
  

• Reload udev and trigger:

  sudo udevadm control --reload
  sudo udevadm trigger
  

• Reboot

Apache License v2