---
title: "Now Playing"
section: experiments
description: "A Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W drives a 64×64 LED matrix showing the album art of whatever is playing, decoded from an AirPlay 2 stream via shairport-sync, with an ambient video loop and sun-following brightness when idle."
tags: ["raspberry-pi", "led-matrix", "airplay", "shairport-sync", "album-art"]
published: 2026-09-20T05:15:33Z
updated: 2026-09-20T05:15:33Z
cid: bafkreifwmy433yetfa53f3jjvxkkdojqbsju7sa3afyfzqszudvc2pxgya
html: https://iammatthias.com/experiments/1789660555000-now-playing
---

# Now Playing

![](https://blobs.farfield.systems/blobs/bafkreigrpqjytzr6brpthqtayhls64ex2ge4eewmjbrnjdgum6w3bpmbze)

[REPO](https://github.com/iammatthias/now-playing)

A Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W renders the currently playing album art on a 64×64 LED matrix. The Pi runs shairport-sync as a silent AirPlay 2 receiver, so I AirPlay to the speakers and the panel together and it decodes track metadata and cover art straight from the stream. When nothing is playing an ambient video loop takes over, and brightness follows the sun.

You can read more about this project [here](https://iammatthias.com/posts/1784736733544-now-playing).

---

## Related

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- [Now Playing](https://iammatthias.com/posts/1784736733544-now-playing.md): Putting my Apple Music "Now Playing" on display with a Raspberry Pi and a 64x64 LED matrix.
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