Audiobookshelf stream to whole home/smart home audio as radio station

[ddakotac]

Thought I would share this as I've seen multiple questions around it here and on other sites, and myself have sought a solution for a long time.

Use case: listen to Audiobookshelf streamed to a smart home audio system so I don't need to carry my phone around with me when I'm listening to an audiobook at home. In my case I'm using Music Assistant but I know there's a few different ones out there people use.

I'd tried using snapcast to stream it but frankly found the documentation incomprehensible (no shade just saying I couldn't figure it out)

But I found a guide on setting up an icecast2 server to stream Bluetooth or really any soundcard input. This basically creates a web radio stream, which can be input as a radio station in music assistant and most music/audio servers as far as I know.

Basically, Bluetooth connection to a box running darkice and icecast2 server (I have it running on same box as Audiobookshelf) with darkice to pick up the audio stream and forward it to icecast2.

Add it as a radio in music/audio server (music assistant in my case), connect the device you'll stream ABS from to your servers Bluetooth, start playing and voila.

Here is the tutorial. https://www.instructables.com/Stream-AUX-and-Bluetooth-Through-Raspberry-Pi-to-W/

Hope this helps I know I've been trying to find a workable solution for this for ages!

A couple notes:
I did it on Ubuntu server 24.04 and the instructions were the same.
I did need to adjust the crontab sleep time as darkice won't start until icecast2 is running.
I also am having to play around with my Bluetooth settings to get it so it will connect automatically with needing to answer prompts on the CLI. If your box already has Bluetooth it may be straightforward but I'm having to use a Bluetooth USB dongle so took some config.