You can listen to plenty of broadcast radio these days. There’s a lot of choice too, with stations on AM, FM, and digital broadcasts to boot. However, if you want the broadest possible choice, you want an internet radio. If that’s your bag, why not build a fun one like [indoorgeek’s] latest design?
The build is based around a PCB and 3D-printed components that roughly ape the design of a cassette tape. It even replicates the typical center window of a cassette tape by using a transparent OLED screen, which displays the user interface. In a neat way, the graphics on the display are designed to line up with those on the PCB, which looks excellent.
An ESP32 is the heart of the operation, which is responsible for streaming audio over the Internet via its WiFi connection. It’s powered by a small lithium-polymer battery, and hooked up with a MAX98357 Class D amplifier driven via the chip’s I2S hardware. Audio is played out over a small speaker salvaged from an old smartphone.
While it’s obviously possible to play whatever you like on a smartphone these days, sometimes it’s fun to have simple devices that just do a single job. Plus, we can’t deny this project looks really neat. Video after the break.
That’s a lovely little thing.
Hands down the best use of a transparent display I’ve seen. Kudos.
I don’t have the time to re-create this but would buy one in a heartbeat if it was available. Very nice and totally retro looking. Well done.
Nice !
Only lacking the two hubs and the pencil to fix the tape mess… hum I mean : to charge the battery.
Slick!
At first I thought the lines at the bottom were traces to plug into a dock for bigger speakers/charging
If only it has the requisite holes, and a head to transmit to a conventional cassette player..
My thought exactly! It’s the next evolutionary step from the TRS converter tapes of yore.
I have a bluetooth version, even has a mic so that if you shout over the sound of the whirring of the cassette head, you can hear the person you’re calling go “eh, what?” and text you instead.
Maybe a legal short range FM transmitter could be an alternative?
I’ll probably stick with Radio Garden on my cell phone.
😞
“Dear listener,
As you may have noticed, access to international radio stations (meaning: stations outside the United Kingdom) has been restricted for users of Radio Garden in the United Kingdom.
This restriction (due to licensing reasons) was initially referred to as a temporary measure, but unfortunately the restriction must be extended for an indefinite period due to copyright and neighbouring rights related matters that require clarification.”
RIP Internet.
That sounds like an awful lot like a “Brexit Benefit”…
Sounds like something straight from the Ministry of Truth. Yeesh.
would be cool if instead of a speaker, it used a cassette adapter to play internet radio in an old cassette player
The problem I see is one click access to streams. Major public radio stations are going to a web page based access where after the page loads on your browser you then click on a little arrow-triangle to finally hear the stream. I had a dozen radio links on the toolbar 10 years ago, now half have a (w) in front of the call letters to remind me that it will open another page.
The worst of these is WXPN a major station in the public system of program providers, Fresh Air, and the World Cafe. Their best program is Stars End 5 hours of the best electronic music for the time 1AM to 6 AM Philly time. A treat to get every Saturday night. I used to get streams with VLC on a phone (no browser) now a screen open on said phone after it goes blank the sound stops. Oh, use our app to listen, no thanks. .pls. please.
Obviously this cool device is not able to access these streams, right? If there is a workaround I’d like to know.
Most streams are initiated with a playlist file, like .pls or .m3u.. all you usually need is the URL to the playlist. Even the web-based players invoke the playlists.
I am aware of that and some of the new sites give a cut and paste link even but those I mentioned don’t appear to have any legacy link. I just tried to bookmark the arrow-triangle on WXPN’s web page but it brings up the same page. There is no way to have a single click access to their stream.
Have you seen the Mixxtape music player? High res audio, headphone jack, usb-c, Bluetooth, and it plays as a legit cassette – paulthings.com
It’s upside-down 🙃 though.
If someone can figure out how to repurpose the old cassette mechanism to do something modern and useful. It will be a gold mine!