Sound system with PiZeroW

Question

wondering if someone could give me a few pointers on a project I'm working out. I haven't yet bought any of the equipment, just trying the ideas first to see if it will work.

I'm planning on creating a pi stereo system that will give me portability and an ability to see what music I have available. So far my set up will be as follows: Raspberry Pi Zero W with something like Volumio or Runeaudio flashed onto. I will use the built-in wifi to connect to my computer or phone and use this as a monitor to select my music etc. I'll solder a DAC onto the pi and from there plug a speaker into the system.

I have two questions. Firstly will I be able to put music onto a usb and use that as my music library? The plan is to have music spread across a bunch of different usb sticks, maybe each would be at least 16GB. Would this be too large a quantity of music for the pi to read each time (I'm thinking of when you get itunes to recognise an external library and it takes a while for it to sit there and read it all)?

My second question is, if the usb thing is no issue, will I be able to plug the usb directly into the pi? Would this drain too much power from the pi and cause issues? Would I have to plug it into a self powered usb hub?

I know there are some other projects out there fairly similar to this but I'm pretty new to the pi scene and indeed the computer programming world. I'm mainly looking for a stereo solution that is cheap, small and portable but am interested in this extra opportunity to learn about programming.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Answer 1

Firstly will I be able to put music onto a usb and use that as my music library? [...] it takes a while for it to sit there and read it all)?

From my own experience (for both KODI and mopidy, no measurement, just a feeling) I would assume that scanning 16 GB flash drive as a media library should be well below a minute.

Edit to add: Looks like I overestimated the Pi Zero quite a bit. Mopidy building a library of local files took half an hour for 16 GB - though that was a remote nfs share on another Pi and not a local flash drive. I would expect it to be faster on the local flash drive but certainly not in the sub-minute range.

will I be able to plug the usb directly into the pi? Would this drain too much power from the pi and cause issues? Would I have to plug it into a self powered usb hub?

I do not know of any reports about a Pi's USB port failing to power an USB flash drive (not an old school hard disc drive with spinning disc and all). You should be fine with any reasonable power supply, no powered USB hub required.