Introduction: How to Configure Moonlight for Steam Using JustBoom

By JustBoom
About: JustBoom was founded with one focus in mind… to let people truly experience music in high resolution – the way it is meant to be heard. In the past, high fidelity audio has been expensive, impractical, and out…

This guide will show you how to install Moonlight for Raspbian and configure it for your JustBoom to stream games from your PC.

This guide was originally published here.

Although the setup will work on a WiFi system it is preferable to use wired Ethernet where possible.

Before you start.

What you will need:

  • Steam account
  • Windows PC running NVIDIA Geforce Experience
  • Geforce Video Card GTX650 or higher*
  • Raspberry Pi (Preferably 3B)
  • JustBoom HAT
  • Raspbian OS
  • Moonlight packages
  • Hi-Fi system or Home Cinema

Have a look at this interesting article which we used as a base for our own. Despite being slightly outdated it still provides plentiful background information for this project.

*For a more in depth set of specs follow this link.

Step 1: Prepare Your PC

Get your software and drivers in order.

Check that you have the latest version of the NVIDIA drivers and that you have the NVIDIA GeForce Experience. Follow this link for an updated version.

Download the correct driver for your system and install by choosing the express settings. In addition to install/update the drivers for your NVIDIA card the package will also install the NVIDIA GeForce Experience.

Step 2: Getting Steam

The other software component you need is Steam. Obviously you will need to have an account on the platform and some games to stream.

Download it and follow the defaults installation steps.

Step 3: Setting Up NVIDIA

Check that everything is in order so that you can make sure the PC is ready to support streaming.

With NVIDIA Geforce Experince you need to click on the cog on the top right corner and under “General” find the “Share” drop down.

From there you should be able to verify that the software is happy and that your system’s specifications meet the streaming requirements.

Step 4: Setting Up Steam

Lastly check that Steam is also configured for streaming. On the “Steam” menu click on “Settings”. In the new window under “In-Home-Streaming” make sure that the “Enable streaming” checkbox is selected.

If you want to add more programs or games to Steam so that they are ready to be streamed down to the Raspberry Pi, you can check this excellent article which will guide you through the process.

Step 5: Get Raspbian Ready

This installation is based on Rasbpian Jessie. If you have done so you need to flash an SD card with Raspbian and configure the Raspberry Pi for your JustBoom card. Check our article in the Software Guides to help you with this process.

After booting into Raspbian with the JustBoom driver loaded, we need to install the Moonlight package. So that we can do this from the apt command we need to add their repository in Rasbpian’s sources. Run the following command to do so:

echo "deb http://archive.itimmer.nl/raspbian/moonlight jessie main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list

then we can check if the system is updated and run the installation of the Moonlight package. Run the following two commands:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install moonlight-embedded

At this point we need to pair the Moonlight with the NVIDIA GeForce Experience on our PC.From Raspbian run:

moonlight pair x.y.z.w

where x.y.z.w is the IP address of your PC. You should see small window pop up on your PC requesting a validation code. You’ll find that the code has been generated on the command line in Raspbian. Use that to connect.

Step 6: Start Streaming

With all of the above done the only thing left for you to do is to start streaming games to your new Moonlight system.

Run the following command on Raspbian

moonlight stream x.y.z.w -audio hw:0,0

This will switch your PC into Big Picture Mode and will instruct Moonlight to play the audio via your JustBoom card.

Step 7: Play Your Games

You can now select your games from the Library and start playing them via the Raspberry Pi.

You can get a lot more information from the Moonlight Wiki and from their GitHub page where you can also get usage guidelines.

Note that what you are doing is a similar thing to what happens by using VNC, the processes and the bulk of the resources are from your PC, not the Raspberry Pi. This also means that you can control your games with input devices either connected to your PC or directly to your Raspberry Pi and you might want to keep your wireless controller directly plugged in the PC if you like.