Mello

A simple, screen-based music player for kids — built on a Raspberry Pi with a touchscreen.

Kids swipe through album covers and tap to play. Parents control the music library from Spotify on their phone.

Features

• Spotify Connect — Add albums and playlists from your Spotify app, Mello plays them
• Album carousel — Large cover art with smooth swipe navigation
• Simple controls — Play, pause, skip. That's it
• Auto-sleep — Screen turns off after 2 minutes of inactivity
• Auto-pause — Music stops after 30 minutes (configurable) to prevent all-day playback
• Progress memory — Remembers where each album left off for up to 96 hours
• Bluetooth — Connect wireless headphones or speakers
• WiFi setup — Creates a hotspot for easy configuration if WiFi drops
• Auto-updates — Pulls latest changes from GitHub nightly
• No account needed on the device — Authentication happens via Spotify on your phone

Hardware

My setup:

• Raspberry Pi 3B (newer models should work too)
• Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 (5")
• WM8960 Audio HAT
• SD card (16GB+)

Quick Start

1. Flash Raspberry Pi OS

Use the Raspberry Pi Imager:

• Choose Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit)
• Choose a hostname and username (e.g. mello / mello)
• Configure WiFi and enable SSH

2. Install Mello

ssh <your-user>@<your-hostname>.local
curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/emieljanson/mello/main/install.sh | bash
sudo reboot

To install without anonymous usage analytics:

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/emieljanson/mello/main/install.sh | bash -s -- --no-analytics

3. Connect Spotify

1. Open Spotify on your phone
2. Tap the speaker icon
3. Select "Mello"
4. Start playing — it shows up on the touchscreen

How It Works

Mello is a Python app using Pygame for the UI and go-librespot as a Spotify Connect receiver. When you select Mello as a speaker in Spotify and play an album, go-librespot handles the audio stream while Mello displays the album art and provides touch controls.

Your phone (Spotify app)
    │
    ▼
go-librespot (Spotify Connect daemon)
    │
    ▼
Mello (Pygame UI + touch input)
    │
    ▼
Touchscreen + Speaker

Albums and playlists you play are automatically saved to the device. Kids can then browse and play them independently from the touchscreen.

Settings Menu

How to open: Press and hold the volume button for 3 seconds. There's no gear icon or visible button — the long-press on the volume button is the only way in.

Once open, you'll see a scrollable menu with these sections:

Connections

• WiFi — View saved networks, connect to a new one, or switch. If WiFi drops, Mello creates a "Mello-Setup" hotspot you can connect to from your phone
• Bluetooth — Pair and connect wireless headphones or speakers. Shows paired devices and nearby discoverable devices
• Volume levels — Set separate volume levels (low/mid/high) for the built-in speaker and Bluetooth output

Playback settings

• Auto-pause — How long Mello plays before automatically pausing (15, 30, 60, or 120 minutes). Tap to cycle through options. Default: 30 minutes
• Remember progress — How long Mello remembers where each album left off (12, 24, 48, or 96 hours). Tap to cycle. Default: 96 hours

System

• Check for updates — Manually check for and install updates (Mello also updates automatically each night)
• Reset — Factory reset: clears all albums, WiFi, Bluetooth, Spotify credentials, and settings. Requires a second tap to confirm

To close the menu, tap the ✕ in the top-right corner.

Usage Data

During installation, Mello asks if you'd like to share anonymous usage data. This helps improve the project. Only session-level events are collected (play/pause, sleep/wake) — no personal data or music choices. The choice is made once during setup.

Known Issues

Spotify "audio key error" — tracks skip without playing. This is an upstream issue in librespot (the library that handles Spotify Connect). It affects some Spotify accounts but not others, and there's no fix yet. Mello uses go-librespot which is affected by the same problem. Track the issue here: librespot-org/librespot#1649

Show Off Your Build

Built a Mello? I'd love to see it! Share a photo on Twitter/X and tag @emieljanson.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup and guidelines.

Security

See SECURITY.md for the security policy and responsible disclosure.

License

MIT

Acknowledgments

• go-librespot — Spotify Connect implementation
• Pygame — UI framework
• PostHog — Anonymous usage analytics