YCast

YCast is a self hosted replacement for the vTuner internet radio service which many AVRs use. It emulates a vTuner backend to provide your AVR with the necessary information to play self defined categorized internet radio stations.

YCast is for you if:

You do not want to use a proprietary streaming service
You are sick of loading delays and/or downtimes of the vTuner service
You are unsure about the continuation of the vTuner service

Supported devices

Theoretically, YCast should work for most AVRs which support vTuner.

Go ahead and test it with yours, and kindly report the result back :)

At the moment, only Yamaha AVRs are supported. Although, you can sniff the URL which your AVR requests, override its DNS entry and change the VTUNER_INITURL to possibly make your non-Yamaha AVR work with YCast.

Confirmed working

Yamaha RX-Vx73 series (RX-V373, RX-V473, RX-V573, RX-V673, RX-V773)
Yamaha R-N500

Unconfirmed/Experimental

Yamaha RX-Vx75 series (RX-V375, RX-V475, RX-V575, RX-V675, RX-V775)
Yamaha RX-Vx77 series (RX-V377, RX-V477, RX-V577, RX-V677, RX-V777)
Yamaha RX-Vx79 series (RX-V379, RX-V479, RX-V579, RX-V679, RX-V779)
Yamaha RX-Vx81 series (RX-V381, RX-V481, RX-V581, RX-V681, RX-V781)
Yamaha RX-S600D
Yamaha RX-S601D
Yamaha WX-030
Yamaha RX-A1060
Yamaha RX-V2700
Yamaha RX-V3800
Yamaha CX-A5000

Dependencies:

Python version: 3

Python packages:

PyYAML

Usage

YCast really does not need much computing power nor bandwidth. It just serves the information to the AVR. The streaming itself gets handled by the AVR directly, i.e. you can run it on a low-spec RISC machine like a Raspberry Pi.

Create your initial stations.yml and put it in the same directory as ycast.py. The config follows a basic YAML structure (see below).
Create a manual entry in your DNS server (read 'Router' for most home users) for:

radioyamaha.vtuner.com

to point to the machine running YCast.

Run ycast.py.

stations.yml

Category one name:
  First awesome station name: first.awesome/station/URL
  Second awesome station name: second.awesome/station/URL

Category two name:
  Third awesome station name: third.awesome/station/URL
  Fourth awesome station name: fourth.awesome/station/URL

You can also have a look at the provided example to better understand the configuration.

Web server configuration

While you can simply run YCast with root permissions listening on all interfaces on port 80, this may not be desired for various reasons.

You can change the listen address and port (via -l and -p respectively) if you are already running a HTTP server on the target machine and/or want to proxy or restrict YCast access.

It is advised to use a proper webserver (e.g. Nginx) in front of YCast if you can. Then, you also don't need to run YCast as root and can proxy the requests to YCast running on a higher port (>1024) listening only on localhost.

You can redirect all traffic destined for the original request URL (e.g. radioyamaha.vtuner.com) or need to redirect the following URLs from your webserver to YCast:

/setupapp
/ycast

Attention: Do not rewrite the request transparently. YCast expects the complete URL (i.e. including /ycast or /setupapp). It also need an intact Host header; so if you're proxying YCast you need to pass the original header on. For Nginx, this can be accomplished with proxy_set_header Host $host;.

In case you are using (or plan on using) Nginx to proxy requests, have a look at this example. This can be used together with this systemd service example for a fully functional deployment.

Firewall rules

The server running YCast does not need internet access.
The Yamaha AVR needs access to the internet (i.e. to the station URLs you defined).
The Yamaha AVR needs to reach port 80 of the machine running YCast.

Caveats

YCast was a quick and dirty project to lay the foundation for having a self hosted vTuner emulation.

It is a barebone service at the moment. It provides your AVR with the basic info it needs to play internet radio stations. Maybe this will change in the future, maybe not. For now just station names and URLs; no web-based management interface, no coverart, no cute kittens, no fancy stuff.

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