how to install Pi MusicBox on Raspberry Pi 3 (rpi3)

Pi MusicBox is a great off-the-shelf easy to use web-based music player for the Raspberry Pi. Unfortunately it’s getting a bit long in the tooth and there’s no support for the Raspberry Pi 3.

Of course there’s a work-around if you do want to install Pi MusicBox on the Rpi3, here’s what worked for me:

First download the Pi Music Box image from the Pi MusicBox website and install it on an SD card. I used SDCardFormatter and ApplePi Baker on a Mac to do this. If you’re using Windows it sounds like Win32DiskImager is the thing to use.

Now unfortunately if you put this SD card into your RPi3 all you’ll get is the rainbow boot screen. You’ll need to copy a few files from a more recent raspbian image to get it to work.

The most recent versions of Raspbian Jessie do not work with this technique, so you’ll specifically need the 2016-03-18 version available here. Unzip that file and mount it, on OS X you can use the built in DiskImageMounter.

Once you’ve mounted that image you’ll just need to copy a few files to your SD card, overwriting the files on the PiMusicBox image. Those files are:

All the .dtb, .bin, .dat and .elf files as shown below:

Overwrite those files on your Pi MusicBox SD card and you should now be able to boot up and use it on your Raspberry Pi 3!

Next challenge, how do I get an RC522 RFID Reader to work on the RPi3?  If you’ve got that to work please chime in with a comment below. Thanks!