Get Your Raspberry Pi Jamming With MuPiBox

August 15, 2022 by Tom Nardi 7 Comments

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.

Your MuPiBox can look like whatever you want.

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.

Continue reading “Get Your Raspberry Pi Jamming With MuPiBox” →

Put Another Dime In The Jukebox

May 24, 2022 by Al Williams 15 Comments

We don’t always acknowledge it, but most people have an innate need for music. Think of all the technology that brings us music. For decades, most of the consumer radio spectrum carried music. We went from records, to tape in various forms, to CDs, to pure digital. There are entire satellites that carry — mostly — music. Piracy aside, people are willing to pay for music, too. While it isn’t very common to see “jukeboxes” these days, there was a time when they were staples at any bar or restaurant or even laundrymat you happened to be in. For the cost of a dime, you can hear the music and share it with everyone around you.

Even before we could record music, there was something like a jukebox. Coin-operated machines, as you’ll recall, are actually very old. Prior to the 1890s, you might find coin-op player pianos or music boxes. These machines actually played the music they were set up to play using a paper roll with holes in it or metal disks or cylinders.

Early Days

That changed in 1890 when a pair of inventors connected a coin acceptor to an Edison phonograph. Patrons of San Francisco’s Palais Royale Saloon could put a hard-earned nickel in the slot and sound came out of four different tubes. Keep in mind there were no electronic amplifiers as we know them in 1890. Reportedly, the box earned $1,000 in six months.

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Jukebox Electromechanical Automation Explained

January 27, 2022 by Chris Lott 19 Comments

If you ever been curious how old-school jukeboxes work, it’s all electromechanical and no computers. In a pair of videos, [Technology Connections] takes us through a detailed dive into the operation of a 1970 Wurlitzer Statesman model 3400 that he bought with his allowance when he was in middle school. This box can play records at either 33-1/3 or 45 RPM from a carousel of 100 discs, therefore having a selection of 200 songs. This would have been one of the later models, as Wurlitzer’s jukebox business was in decline and they sold the business in 1973.

This may be the ugliest jukebox ever produced.

This jukebox is actually what turned me into the weirdo that I am today.

External appearances aside, it’s the innards of this mechanical wonder that steal the show. The mechanism is known as the Wurlamatic, invented by Frank B. Lumney and Ronald P. Eberhardt in 1967. Check out the patent US3690680A document for some wonderful diagrams and schematics that are artwork unto themselves. Continue reading “Jukebox Electromechanical Automation Explained” →

Youngster’s ESP32 Jukebox Uses RFID To Queue Tunes

February 2, 2021 by Tom Nardi 14 Comments

Though kids today have an incredible knack for figuring out modern phones and tablets, there’s still something to be said for offering a simple physical user interface for little hands. To that end, [Martin Hierholzer] has put together a whimsical jukebox that his two year old daughter can use to listen to her favorite songs. With just a few simple buttons, no display to read, and the ability to stop and start songs using RFID tags embedded into 3D printed figures, it’s a perfect interface for tiny humans just getting the hang of interacting with technology.

While the Raspberry Pi might have been the more obvious choice to base this project around, [Martin] decided to go the ESP32 route for improved energy efficiency. The popular microcontroller is more than powerful enough to play MP3s, and its integrated WiFi connectivity allows the player to download new tracks from the network occasionally. He added a micro SD slot to provide some mass storage, a PCM5102 I2S DAC with a PAM8403 amplifier to handle the audio side of things, and a MFRC522 RFID receiver that can pick up tags placed on the top of the player. Power is provided by parts salvaged from a USB battery bank, and everything is housed on a custom PCB.

The relatively low power requirements of the ESP32 means the jukebox can keep the party going for many hours (perhaps even days) when in active use. When the RFID token is removed and there are no songs to play, some clever coding kicks the chip into low-power mode to greatly extend the player’s standby time. [Martin] says it can sleep for months without having to be recharged, and considering some of the impressive feats of battery-sipping we’ve previously seen from the ESP32, we don’t doubt it.

Even if you don’t have any young music lovers at home, the documentation [Martin] has put together for this project is absolutely worth a look. Whether its how he configures the server side to push songs and firmware updates to the player, how he wrangled the ESP32’s Ultra-Low Power coprocessor (ULP), or the woodworking tips used to produce the charming enclosure, you’re sure to pick up a trick or two.

The children of hackers and makers always seem to get the coolest stuff, and we’re looking forward to seeing what [Martin] comes up with next. After all, kids grow up fast and pretty soon his daughter is going to need something new to entertain her.

Inputs Of Interest: DecaTxt Ultra-Portable Chording Keyboard

January 5, 2021 by Kristina Panos 33 Comments

Now here’s a stocking stuffer of a keyboard. The DecaTxt is the size of a deck of cards, and at first glance it looks like some kind of pocket Keno machine or other gambling or gaming apparatus. But that’s just because it’s so colorful. When you only have ten keys emulating a full keyboard, there’s bound to be some serious labeling going on, as there should be.

The DecaTxt is a Bluetooth 4.0 chording keyboard that’s meant to be used with your phone or whatever you want to pair it with. It was originally called the In10did, which stands for Input Nomenclature Ten Digit Interface Device. Catchy, no? At some point in the last ten years, this little guy went wireless and got a cooler name — the DecaTxt. Continue reading “Inputs Of Interest: DecaTxt Ultra-Portable Chording Keyboard” →

Telephone Plays The Songs Of Its People

April 12, 2019 by Sven Gregori 4 Comments

Music, food, and coding style have one thing in common: we all have our own preferences. On the other hand, there are arguably more people on this planet than there are varieties in any one of those categories, so we rarely fail to find like-minded folks sharing at least some of our taste. Well, in case your idea of a good time is calling a service hotline for some exquisite tunes, [Fuzzy Wobble] and his hold music jukebox, appropriately built into a telephone, is just your guy.

Built around an Arduino with an Adafruit Music Maker shield, [Fuzzy Wobble] uses the telephone’s keypad as input for selecting one of the predefined songs to play, and replaced the phone’s bell with a little speaker to turn it into a jukebox. For a more genuine experience, the audio is of course also routed to the handset, although the true hold music connoisseur might feel disappointed about the wide frequency range and lack of distortion the MP3s used in his example provide. Jokes aside, projects like these are a great reminder that often times, the journey really is the reward, and the end result doesn’t necessarily have to make sense for anyone to enjoy what you’re doing.

As these old-fashioned phones gradually disappear from our lives, and even the whole concept of landline telephony is virtually extinct in some parts of the world already, we can expect to see more and more new purposes for them. Case in point, this scavenger hunt puzzle solving device, or the rotary phone turned virtual assistant.

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Raspberry Pi Jukebox Hits All The Right Notes

January 22, 2019 by Tom Nardi 2 Comments

We (and by extension, you) have seen the Raspberry Pi crammed into nearly every piece of gear imaginable. Putting one inside a game console is so popular it’s bordering on a meme, and putting them into old stereos and other pieces of consumer electronics isn’t far behind. It’s always interesting to see how hackers graft the modern Raspberry Pi into the original hardware, but we’ll admit it can get a bit repetitive. So how about somebody scratch building an enclosure for their jukebox project?

[ComfortablyNumb] took the road less traveled when he created this very nice wooden Raspberry Pi enclosure in the shape of an eighth note. Stained and varnished and with a nice big touch screen in the middle to handle the controls, it’s an attractive and functional piece of home audio gear that we imagine most people would be happy to hang on their wall.

The process starts by printing out the desired shape on a piece of paper to use as guide, and then gluing together strips of wood to create the rough outline. Then the surface was thoroughly sanded to bring all of the strips of wood to the same level, and the final design was cut out. On the back of the note, [ComfortablyNumb] boxed out an area to hold the Waveshare seven-inch touch screen panel and the Raspberry Pi itself.

Having seen so many projects where the Pi is rather unceremoniously shoehorned into another device, it’s refreshing to see the results of a purpose-built enclosure. Since [ComfortablyNumb] was able to build the electronics compartment to his exact dimensions, the final result looks exceptionally clean and professional. Not a drop of hot glue to be seen. It also helps that this build only required the Pi and the display; as the device is meant to be plugged into an existing audio setup, there’s no onboard amplifier. The audiophiles out there might recoil in horror, but adding a dedicated digital to analog converter (DAC) would be easy enough to add if the stock audio on the Pi isn’t good enough for you.

The project is finished off with stain and several coats of varnish to get that deep and rich color. We don’t often find ourselves working with dead trees around these parts, but we’ve got to admit that the final product does look quite handsome. Certainly beats the LEGO cases many of our Pi projects live in.

If you’re looking for more wooden-encased Pi jukeboxes, you might enjoy this somewhat abstract magstripe-based take on the concept. Of course, we’ve also seen our fair share of actual jukeboxes receive a Raspberry infusion over the years.

[via /r/raspberry_pi]