How to play my music on my RPI outside my local network

Question

I have ripped all my CDs to a hard drive. The hard drive is connected to my RPI at home, and I use it to play my music on my stereo and control it with my mobile using WIFI. Currently I'm using Raspian + MiniDLNA + GStreamer + BubbleUPNP client.

Question:
I was wondering if some software exists, that would allow me to listen to my music at work instead of at home?

I want my RPI to stay at home, but be able to listen to the music outside my local WIFI. Further more, I don't want the music to be available to anyone, just me, so it needs to be secured somehow.

Answer 1

You could setup a VPN and connect your phone to the VPN. This would basically connect your phone to your home internet network from anywhere you could get internet.

For how it works, I highly recommend this video.

As far as VPN software, I use Hamachi, a program made by LogMeIn. Hamachi, is a very simple way to set up a VPN, and the 'Trial' version doesn't expire, making it perfect for your needs.

With VPN you can set up a safe, secure and private internet connection that is safe from: Hackers, theives,and other in wanted 'bad' things.

Here is the tutorial I used when I installed it on my Raspberry Pi. Here is a link to Hamachi for Android.

Answer 2

mpd

mpd is a music player daemon that will play music on the server on which it is running. The cool thing about mpd is that you can use different outputs. For example, you can use your sound card and/or different streaming protocols. The latter is what you'd need to set up to listen to music remotely.

You will first need to setup and get mpd working. Once it is installed, you can then add shoutcast or similar streaming. You would then need to use an mpd client (ncmpcpp is a great client) to connect to the mpd server and control it (play/pause, choose songs, etc).

I personally would ssh into my pi and use the client on the machine hosting mpd itself, but mpd does allow you to connect clients remotely. Think about what you're doing and be sure to understand any technical risks you may be running into.

Answer 3

You can use DAAP protocol to listen music from your Pi while not in your local network. For Pi, you have to install "mt-daapd" daemon to your Pi distro. Then use ssh port forwarding to add security. With ssh forward your port (6689 by default daap) and use any Daap client such as iTunes, MPOD for iPhone etc.

I have wrote a blog entry realted to this issue, but sorry it's in Turkish :)

http://gurcanozturk.com/2013/05/raspberry-pi-iphone-muzik-sunucusu/