At this point, there are no shortage of impressive hacks for the Raspberry Pi. [Dilshan Jayakody] recently documented his experience in designing and building an inexpensive FM Stereo Receiver for the Pi platform, and the results are impressive.

Quite a few FM receiver projects center around the RDA5807 or TEA5767 ICs, however [Dilshan] has used the QN8035 by Quintic Corporation in his build. A handful of discrete components on a pleasing single-sided PCB is all that is needed to interface the QN8035 with the Pi’s I2C bus.

After demonstrating that the FM tuner could be, well, tuned at the command line, [Dilshan] then coded a smart looking GUI application that makes tuning a breeze. The software allows the listener to manually and automatically scan through FM stations, decode program service data, control the volume, and display the RSSI and SNR readings from the tuner.

As we reported earlier, FM radio is on a slow decline into obsolescence. This latest project isn’t aiming to break new ground, however its simplicity and inexpensive components are the perfect combination for beginner hackers and radio enthusiasts alike. More details can be found over on Hackaday.io. The schematic, source code and bill of materials can be found on GitHub.

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