Pi Musicbox + FM Transmitter = whole home audio

Pi MusicBox
1

I’m new to the forum but have been running Pi Musicbox for a few months now and love it. If any of you are interested in a cheap and easy way to do whole home audio, I thought I would share my setup.

  1. One of these FM transmitters for $20: http://www.adafruit.com/products/1958
  2. An arduino on a breadboard for something like $10: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Standalone
  3. Program the FM transmitter with the example sketches on the adafruit website.
  4. Connect the Pi to the FM transmitter with an audio cable.
  5. Enjoy whole home audio with any FM device in your house.

There are obvious tradeoffs to this solution and it’s possible to make your own transmitter and save the $30. But for what I need and since I was already familiar with arduino, this solution worked really well for me. Just thought I’d pass it along.

2

Thats a nice solution. You could also use one of those consumer 3.5 jack to FM transmitters that are aimed for playing mp3 player/phone audio through car stereos. Might even come up cheaper!

3

That’s a great idea, but the range on those things are poor (I have one for my old car). If you could unscrew one and solder a wire to lengthen the antenna it might work nicely.

4

‘Thats a nice solution. You could also use one of those consumer 3.5 jack to FM transmitters that are aimed for playing mp3 player/phone audio through car stereos. Might even come up cheaper!’

Funnily enough I’ve just finished doing that, I’ve been running a similar thing on my pc for years, either using a usb powered FM transmitter or the type designed for a car.
I stripped the FM transmitter back to just the important bit, secured it to the Raspberry Pi case, (I had to put tin foil under the transmitter to suppress static and noises off). I split a usb cable into 2, one side powers the Raspberry Pi and the other powers the transmitter. Transmitter is picking up signal from the audio out jack.
Agree range may not be great, but using wifi I have positioned the unit in the middle of our flat and receive high quality stereo FM sound through out the flat.

BTW I tried the usb powered FM transmitter, it was recognised straight away, but the sound was poor unless it was plugged into a powered hub, then it worked very well and the range was better. It would have been ok but I prefer the single unit.