whisplay-airplay

AirPlay speaker app for Raspberry Pi + Whisplay HAT.

The app uses shairport-sync as the AirPlay receiver and renders a small 240x280 Whisplay UI through whisplay-daemon:

• Top bar: AirPlay title, Wi-Fi signal, PiSugar battery
• Center: current AirPlay connection source or waiting state
• Bottom: live volume bar when shairport-sync reports volume metadata
• Audio: defaults to the latest Whisplay unified sound card path, ALSA_OUTPUT_DEVICE=playback

Install

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y shairport-sync python3-venv python3-pip
./install.sh

shairport-sync is a system package, so installing it requires sudo access on the Pi.

If the system shairport-sync service is already enabled, stop it before launching this app so only one AirPlay receiver owns the service name:

sudo systemctl disable --now shairport-sync

Run

./run.sh

When whisplay-daemon is available at /tmp/whisplay-daemon.sock, install.sh registers the app as whisplay-airplay; running the app renders into the daemon framebuffer. Without the daemon, it still runs the AirPlay receiver but skips LCD output.

Configuration

Copy .env.example to .env and adjust as needed.

WHISPLAY_AIRPLAY_NAME=Whisplay AirPlay
ALSA_OUTPUT_DEVICE=playback
SHAIRPORT_LOG_LEVEL=0
SHAIRPORT_INTERPOLATION=basic
SHAIRPORT_OUTPUT_RATE=44100
SHAIRPORT_OUTPUT_FORMAT=S16
SHAIRPORT_IGNORE_VOLUME_CONTROL=false
SHAIRPORT_BUFFER_SECONDS=1.0

For the current Whisplay driver, playback is preferred over hw:whisplaysound,0 because it uses the shared ALSA dmix route from the driver package. Legacy cards fall back to plughw:CARD=... automatically.

By default, AirPlay volume uses shairport-sync software attenuation. The Whisplay speaker mixer is useful for system-level volume and tests, but it does not expose a dB scale and should not be bound as the shairport-sync hardware mixer.

The generated ALSA config disables precision timing for compatibility with the Whisplay playback dmix route.

Playback state on the LCD is driven by shairport-sync session hooks, so the UI and LED can update even when verbose AirPlay logs are disabled.

Notes

The connected device label comes from shairport-sync metadata or logs. Some iOS/macOS versions only expose an IP or session label, so the UI may show that source instead of the friendly device name.