Playing Audio With Intel Edison

Intel Edison has onboard Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. This is one of my favorite IoT boards as it never disappoints me. Recently I wanted to play some sound with Edison in one of my projects so I thought to give its Bluetooth functionality a try and it was easier than I thought. In this project I am going to show you how we can play an audio file with Edison by connecting it to Bluetooth speakers.

Requirements

• Intel Edison with Arduino Expansion board
• Bluetooth Speakers
• USB cables

Connections

Connect your Edison to a PC and also establish a serial communication. As we are connecting through Bluetooth our Edison will work in Device Mode. If you are using a USB sound card and headsets you need to switch it to host mode, in that case this article won’t be much help to you.

Setup

• Playing Audio with Intel Edison

Connect to Edison with Putty

Enter username and Password. The default username is root with no password.


                                                            Figure 1: PuTTY Configuration

Make sure your Bluetooth speakers are turned on. Now type these commands,

root@edison:~# rfkill unblock bluetooth
root@edison:~# bluetoothctl


                                                            Figure 2: Unblock bluetooth

You will enter into Bluetooth control mode. Scan the Bluetooth devices:

[bluetooth] scan on,


                                                            Figure 3: Scan Bluetooth devices.

You will see your device listed. Find your device and Pair it.

[bluetooth] pair 30:21:85:A1:46:3D

Sometimes the device does not automatically connect so you need to run another command to connect it.

[bluetooth] connect 30:21:85:A1:46:3D


                                                            Figure 4: Command to connect

Exit the Bluetooth Manager.

[bluetooth] quit

Now let us verify that our device is recognized in pulse audio as a sink device and if everything goes fine you will see it listed as bluez_sink.

pactl list sinks

Configure the default sink to use pulse audio server with the following command, replacing with the details of your device,


                                                            Figure 5: Configure the default sink

pactl set-default-sink bluez_sink.30_21_85_A1_46_3D


                                                            Figure 6: Replacing with the details of your device

Now we are almost done. Let us run the audio file using gStreamer. I have already copied an audio file to my Edison using FileZilla.


                                                            Figure 7: Edison using FileZilla

Run this command and also replace the file name and location.

gst-launch-1.0filesrc location= /home/root/Songs/SanamRe.wav ! wavparse !pulsesink


                                                            Figure 8: Run command

If everything goes fine you will notice a song playing via your Bluetooth speakers. Enjoy your new music player!


                                                            Figure 9: Onboard Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

References

Here are few links on everything you want to know about Edison Bluetooth or Audio.

• Intel Edison Bluetooth Guide
• Intel Edison Audio Setup Guide

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