Car-Pi

Have you ever wanted a server with media on a road trip? This is a fully offline media server for your next road trip!

Quick start

1. Flash Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit, Debian 13 "Trixie") to a Raspberry Pi 4 with Raspberry Pi Imager (set hostname/user/SSH, and set the Wi-Fi country in the imager options).

2. Connect the Pi to your network with an Ethernet cable (internet is needed for the build only) and SSH in.

3. Run this one-liner to grab the repo and start the installer:

   curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nathan40/Car-Pi/main/setup.sh | sudo bash -s -- --bootstrap
   

   This clones the repo to ~/Car-Pi (skipping the clone if it's already there) and launches the real setup.sh from that copy.

   (Already have the repo cloned locally? Just run sudo ./setup.sh directly from inside it.)

4. Answer the questions (all asked up front), confirm, and walk away. It's safe to re-run — every step is idempotent.

Updating an existing install

Run the same one-liner (or sudo ./setup.sh from a freshly pulled repo) on an already-built Pi. The installer detects the existing install and offers:

• Update — refreshes OS packages, Docker images, and all app files (dashboard, games, music/shutdown services), keeping every setting exactly as it is. No questions, no reboot — services restart in place.
• Reconfigure — asks the setup questions again with your current settings pre-filled as the defaults, then applies the changes.

Your answers are saved on the Pi in /srv/setup.conf (root-only, since it includes the Wi-Fi password). If a newer setup.sh adds setup questions your saved answers don't cover, the script goes straight to Reconfigure so you're asked the new questions — everything you already answered stays pre-filled. Media on the drive and app data (Jellyfin/Audiobookshelf/Navidrome libraries, bingo game state) are untouched by an update.

What it is

Car-Pi turns a Raspberry Pi 4 into a self-contained, fully offline media server for the car (or a hotel room, cabin, or anywhere else without internet). Passengers connect to the Pi's own Wi-Fi access point — no cellular data or internet connection needed once it's built.

Once set up, it provides:

• Jellyfin (:8096) — movies and TV, streamed to phones/tablets
• Audiobookshelf (:13378) — audiobooks and podcasts
• Navidrome (:4533) — a music library/streaming server
• Dashboard + games arcade (:80) — a homepage with links to everything, plus a set of simple browser games (bingo, memory, painting, a racer, etc.) for kids
• Auto-shuffle aux music — on every boot, the Pi shuffles its whole music library and plays it out the 3.5mm aux jack, with a small web control API (:8088) for play/pause/volume
• Dashboard power-off button (:8097) — a safe shutdown button reachable from the dashboard, so you don't have to pull the power on the SD card

Everything runs in Docker (docker-compose.yml) except the Wi-Fi access point (hostapd + dnsmasq), the aux music player (MPD), and the shutdown listener, which run as native services set up by setup.sh.

See pi-media-server-master-guide.md for the full build background and rationale.