Over the years we’ve seen a lot of Raspberry Pi boards pushed into service as media players. In fact, second to emulating old game consoles, that’s probably the Pi’s most common vocation when it comes to DIY builds. But despite the popularity of this particular use case, it seems like each one has had to reinvent the wheel.
Perhaps there’s where MuPiBox fits in. Developed by [Eric Gerhardt] and [Olaf Split] with the assistance of [Andreas Lippmann] and [Andrew Frericks], this project aims to turn everyone’s favorite Linux single-board computer into everyone’s favorite music player. MuPiBox provides not only the software to run your new high-tech boom box, but it even standardizes the hardware design and provides a 3D printable enclosure — though naturally there’s still room for interpretation if you don’t want yours to look exactly like all the others.
At the very minimum you’ll need a Raspberry Pi, a HifiBerry MiniAmp, and a speaker, though the instructions also recommend you invest in a Pimoroni OnOff SHIM (or wire up something comparable) to facilitate more graceful shutdowns. For the best experience you’ll also want a five inch Waveshare touch screen display and a USB power bank so your beats can go mobile.
The video below shows off the polished stock GUI, which is simple enough that even children should be able to navigate around and find their favorite tracks. Which is good, especially since it’s in German. The video also shows off some advanced setup features so you don’t have to pull the SD card out of the Pi just to change the WiFi network it’s attached to. There’s also a web interface that you can access from other devices on the network.
It’s a slick project, and we really like the aesthetics of the 3D printable enclosure. But even if you don’t want to replicate the project exactly, there’s certainly components here which could be utilized in your own Pi media center build.
That (blue) triangular design looks pretty neat and practical, nice!
Fun project!
Save a Pi !
Being a contrarian, I do stuff like this with windows CE handhelds (The media player on them isn’t horrible post CE5 Windows mobile, actually probably the one thing on them that holds up) by splicing them to iPod/iPhone dock speakers. Velcro patch, releasable cable ties or whatevs you like to make the beast hold onto it. I reckon the iPods and iPhones have been the #1 contributors to ewaste, not just in the devices being left out or crippled by software updates, and the inability of Apple to stick with a connector more than a handful of years, but I think the aftermarket made 3 to 5 times as many accessories as any one user could be expected to use, resulting in tonnes of orphaned product and the spamming of junk drawers and thrift shops with the used stuff. So word to the wise, apple docks make okay speakers used with aux input or digging it from the board yourself (Plus keyboards etc are mostly bluetooth and sheared of their faux leather cases etc can be repurposed for real world use rather than posing at starbucks.)
Just to provide some context here..
Apple has switched phone connectors exactly once since the debut of the iPhone in 2006. Lightning port was introduced in 2012, so a decade ago, which I would reckon is more than a handful of years. The prior 30-pin dock connector debut was 2003, so as an Apple connector it also persisted almost a decade.
iOS 15 is the current iPhone OS. The earliest phone supported by it is the iPhone 6s, which was released in September of 2015. In comparison, the oldest Google phone supported by Android 12.1 is the Pixel 3, which was released in October 2018.
Can’t buy pi’s anymore. Saving all my old pi’s to sell on the interwebs for big-bux!
Kannst du Englisch sprechen?
looks like a fun project. now where can i buy a raspberry pi for less than $100?
The real news for me here is the Pimoroni OnOff shim. I’ve been looking for simple way to make a power button for the Pi that behaves more like a user would expect from “a computer.” This Pimoroni offering looks like it will do the job more elegantly than something I would design myself :-)