A DIY music Streamer – Preparing the SD card
Method one – Buy one from us here.
If you don’t have a computer and want an easy life you can buy an SD card with your proffered software directly from us.
The software is free but we add a small charge to a standard SD card price to cover the costs of loading.
Method 2 – Make your own
If you wish to download the software and create your own SD card then follow the guide below. The advantage of this method is that you can once you know how to do it you can create a new SD card whenever you need one so its worth reading about it even if you buy a card initially.
To make your own software SD card you need.
An SD card 8GBytes or greater in size.
A computer running Windows 7/8/10/11, Mac OSX or Linux with a USB or internal SD card reader.
Card writing software – We are going to use Balena Etcher as its available for windows Mac OS and Linux.
So lets get started
Step 1 – Download the media player of your choice
moOde Audio
You can download moOde here (opens in new window). See below for Kodi (LibreElec)
Make sure you get the appropriate version for your Raspberry Pi. The older models (1 and 2) use the legacy version. Save the file to a folder of your choice.
The download is compressed as a zip file so when the download is complete you need to find the file and right click on it and select the “extract here” option to decompress the file to its original .img file.
Kodi
Kodi is slightly more complicated as the downloads on the Kodi website are the application only. For the Raspberry Pi we need a version of Kodi packaged with the trimmed down Raspbian OS so we are going to use LibraElec which you can find here (opens in new tab).
Kodi is slightly more complicated as the downloads on the Kodi website are the application only. For the Raspberry Pi we need a version of Kodi packaged with the trimmed down Raspbian OS so we are going to use LibraElec which you can find here (opens in new tab).
Download the appropriate version for your model of Raspberry Pi and save it in a folder of your choice.
If you are using MAC OS-X or Linux you can uncompress the .gz file by right clicking on the file and selecting “extract here”
Windows is a little more complicated as windows file explorer cannot extract from .gz files.
There are many windows apps that can do it (such as 7zip) or you can download the libraelec tool for making the SD card which means you dont need to use Balena etcher to create the SD card below.
Step 2 – Download and install Balena etcher.
You can find the different versions of Balena Etcher on their website here (opens in new tab).
Download the appropriate portable version for your computer or the Linux Applimage if you are using Linux.
The Windows/MAC Portable file can be saved in any directory and run by double clicking on the file (dont do this just yet).
.
Linux users need an extra step.
Download the Linux Applimage to a directory of your choice.
This next bit will depend on your Linux Distro. We are using Linux Mint here as our example.
Open the directory and right click on the applimage file.
Select “properties”, select the “Permissions” tab and tick the “Allow executing file as a program” check box
Double click on the applimage to run it (dont do this just yet)
Step 3 – Load your SD card.
If you are using a separate USB SD card reader plug it in now and wait for the software to recognise it.
Insert your SD card into the reader and wait for it to appear as a drive letter (windows) or to appear as an Icon on the desktop on Mac OS-X / Linux.
Make a note of the drive letter (windows) or the card name on the Icon. This step is important to prevent a disaster later.
Now open Balina Etcher (or one of the SD creation tools for the specific player if you choose that route).
You should see a screen like this one (this is the linux version).
Select “Flash from file” which will open a file explorer window.
Navigate to the img file for your chosen media player and select it.
Now for the scary bit!
Click on the “select target” button. which will open a window listing ALL your drives on your computer including your SD card.
Find your SD card by name and card size and click the check box.
WARNING!! – Double check you have the right one as Etcher will destroy ALL the data on the selected drive and if you select anything other than the SD card you WILL trash your computer.
If you are happy that you have everything correct then click on the “select” button which will take you back to the main screen.
You should now see what file you are using to create the SD card and the SD card you are doing it to. Again do a double check and if you are happy to proceed then click the “flash” button”. (If you are not happy then play it safe and buy a prepared SD card from us 🙂
You will get a warning message about the dire consequences of getting it wrong. If you are happy to proceed then click on OK and the flashing of the SD card will start (this will take some time so be patient and wait until it finishes. When it does and tells you its successful you can close Etcher.
Now several different things might happen depending on your computer and operating system.
1 – Nothing at all in which case you can just remove the SD card without ejecting.
2 – Mac-OS / Linux may attempt to “mount” the SD card and it appears as an icon on your desktop. If this happens then right click on the icon and select “eject”. Then remove the SD card.
3 – Windows sometimes tries to open the drive and asks you to format it. DONT! and dont try to “eject” the drive. just pull out the SD card!
Hopefully you have a correctly prepared SD card and not a computer that just says “no bootable media” indicating you’ve just trashed your system drive :-(.
Now you can move on to the next step and set up the raspberry Pi.
Previous – List of stuff
Next – Set up your Pi