Inor
03-01-2021, 11:47 PM
As most of you know, I am a radio junkie. But I cannot get many terrestrial radio stations at M.T. Acres, so I have been using a Bose bluetooth speaker and my cell phone for a radio in my workshop. It works fine, but it is a pain in the ass to remember to bring the speaker and my phone out to the shop every time I want to use it. Plus, I inevitably forget to charge one or both devices.
So I was sitting around not doing anything in particular one evening around Christmas and decided that I could make a cheap web radio for my shop with a Raspberry Pi computer. Since I mostly listen to talk radio, I figured I could just use a 2 inch PC speaker plugged into the headphone jack on the Pi. It was quick and easy to put together and mostly worked fine but then I realized I had a 500GB SSD stick left over from a machine learning computer I built last summer. I thought, "Hmmm, I could plug the SSD into the Pi, then transfer our CDs to it and actually be able to listen to CDs in the shop too".
After farting around with software a bit, I got that working but it sounded like shit coming out in mono through a 2" speaker. But I did have 2 old 4 inch Pioneer car speakers that sounded pretty good back in 1982. (Those were the ones with the magnets that weighed about 3 pounds a piece.)
Since the headphone jack on a Raspberry Pi could not drive 2, 4 inch speakers, I spent about $15 on electrical parts and another $10 on shipping and got the components I needed to build a proper amplifier. I wired the amplifier up on a breadboard and after more farting around with software and firmware, I got it working and it sounded pretty damn good. But since I did not just want a big birds nest of wires, chips and capacitors soldered together inside the radio, I decided I should get a printed circuit board made to hold the components.
So I sat down and drew up a PCB plan for my amplifier. I found a place online that would make the board for me for about $3 per board. The problem is, they had a minimum order quantity of 5 plus another $15 for shipping. At that point I got smart and realized for an extra $10 I could just order a prebuilt amplifier with a warranty. So I did that.
By this time, I decided that my home baked software for running the radio probably was not the best idea anymore. So I went out and found a free, open-source software package that served most of my needs. But... I always feel guilty using "free" open-source software for something that I am going to use all the time. So I sent the open-source company $20.
It was only then that I realized I had no real way of controlling the radio (changing the station, changing the volume, etc.) without either wiring in a bunch of function buttons (and modifying the associated function on the open-source software) or using my cell phone or computer. Since that kind of defeated the whole purpose of the project in the first place, I decided what the hell and spent another $50 and bought a touchscreen for it.
After a few minor modifications to the open-source software, because the touchscreen I bought was about the only brand that was not supported by the software, I finally got it working.
13247
13248
I tested it out and everything was working perfectly. So now it was on to making some kind of enclosure to put the whole thing in, but that will be Part 2 of this post since I can only have 2 photos per post...
So I was sitting around not doing anything in particular one evening around Christmas and decided that I could make a cheap web radio for my shop with a Raspberry Pi computer. Since I mostly listen to talk radio, I figured I could just use a 2 inch PC speaker plugged into the headphone jack on the Pi. It was quick and easy to put together and mostly worked fine but then I realized I had a 500GB SSD stick left over from a machine learning computer I built last summer. I thought, "Hmmm, I could plug the SSD into the Pi, then transfer our CDs to it and actually be able to listen to CDs in the shop too".
After farting around with software a bit, I got that working but it sounded like shit coming out in mono through a 2" speaker. But I did have 2 old 4 inch Pioneer car speakers that sounded pretty good back in 1982. (Those were the ones with the magnets that weighed about 3 pounds a piece.)
Since the headphone jack on a Raspberry Pi could not drive 2, 4 inch speakers, I spent about $15 on electrical parts and another $10 on shipping and got the components I needed to build a proper amplifier. I wired the amplifier up on a breadboard and after more farting around with software and firmware, I got it working and it sounded pretty damn good. But since I did not just want a big birds nest of wires, chips and capacitors soldered together inside the radio, I decided I should get a printed circuit board made to hold the components.
So I sat down and drew up a PCB plan for my amplifier. I found a place online that would make the board for me for about $3 per board. The problem is, they had a minimum order quantity of 5 plus another $15 for shipping. At that point I got smart and realized for an extra $10 I could just order a prebuilt amplifier with a warranty. So I did that.
By this time, I decided that my home baked software for running the radio probably was not the best idea anymore. So I went out and found a free, open-source software package that served most of my needs. But... I always feel guilty using "free" open-source software for something that I am going to use all the time. So I sent the open-source company $20.
It was only then that I realized I had no real way of controlling the radio (changing the station, changing the volume, etc.) without either wiring in a bunch of function buttons (and modifying the associated function on the open-source software) or using my cell phone or computer. Since that kind of defeated the whole purpose of the project in the first place, I decided what the hell and spent another $50 and bought a touchscreen for it.
After a few minor modifications to the open-source software, because the touchscreen I bought was about the only brand that was not supported by the software, I finally got it working.
13247
13248
I tested it out and everything was working perfectly. So now it was on to making some kind of enclosure to put the whole thing in, but that will be Part 2 of this post since I can only have 2 photos per post...