So, I want to build an internet radio...

[L5730]

We've an old Roberts FM/AM/MW radio that sounds a bit naff, but better than most other small radios at the time.
It's starting to fail in places and we're looking for it's replacement.

The family are thinking a DAB+ radio might be a better option this time, as there is such a poor selection on FM/AM analogue.
I am reluctant to go with DAB, I have a feeling it's much of the same old useless DJs and long ad. breaks. As Holly Johnson said on Future radio " ... too much talking, not enough music ... ".

My idea is, instead to take a Raspberry Pi Zero-W as a uPnP target as well as standalone headless internet preset player. It can then play anything from the Foobar2000 installs around the home via uPnP, or can just play any of the radio stations saved in it's internal playlist.
I'd need a little DAC, and there are USB options based on C-Media chips for a few quid on AliExpress.
An analogue volume control would be preferable, and if stereo makes it a bit more of a possible nuisance with channel imbalance. However, it's probably doubtful that it'd be all too noticeable on a little radio with speakers close together.
A low power amplifier module (or two) would be needed to go from line level to speaker power.
Obviously, pair of full-ish range speakers (or one, if mono).
Lastly, an enclosure.

I'm not looking at the highest sound quality, it'd be a silly endeavour for a humble DIY project.
However, from what I've seen on the RPi radio projects, those little 'speakers' and nasty little cases, it's going to sound like a cell phone on conference call!

I've seen some retro-fitted radio projects, where someone stuffs a RPi zero into an existing radio case, but I am not so sure about that, and finding a not so bad sounding and working radio might be a bit tough. I suppose I could always attempt it on this Roberts one...

Has anyone built something close to this, and do they have any pointers?

 

[phofman]

This is my take from several years ago, working with no problems since then.
https://github.com/pavhofman/plabs-player

https://github.com/pavhofman/plabs-player/wiki

 

[L5730]

This is my take from several years ago, working with no problems since then.
https://github.com/pavhofman/plabs-player

https://github.com/pavhofman/plabs-player/wiki

That looks awesome! Avery well thought out and highly function setup. Good job and thanks for sharing.

 

[somebodyelse]

I've got a Zero-W and HifiBerry MiniAmp that periodically gets pressed into similar duties with whatever small speakers I've been messing around with at the time, running piCorePlayer since I have LMS on the network anyway. I keep pulling the Zero-W for other purposes though, so haven't made anything permanent. The Visaton FRS8-4 is inexplicably cheap at RS and not a bad small full-ish range driver for silly diy projects. I've mentioned putting one in the lid of a 2l pickle jar before, accompanied by a bit of pillow stuffing. You'll find people trying to extend the bass a bit with transmission lines, or in the diyaudio.com threads for the cornu, karlsonator, nautiloss etc.

From a rational point of view I should just pick up a Squeezebox Boom or Radio on eBay - you can usually find a reasonable example for less than the cost of the parts. I saw a paper about the development of the acoustics and DSP on the Boom, and they put a lot more into it than I was expecting.

 

[phofman]

My problem with all these boxes is they do not play audio CDs. In fact most streamer softwares have the CD player part very cut down, if at all.

 

[somebodyelse]

The paper on the Boom I mentioned:
https://wiki.slimdevices.com/uploads/a/ad/Logitech_Squeezebox_Boom_Audio_Design.pdf

 

[b4nt]

My problem with all these boxes is they do not play audio CDs. In fact most streamer softwares have the CD player part very cut down, if at all.

Why do you want to play and maybe damage CDs when you can rip them once for all, easing next listenings? A small 120 to 250GB disk will contain a lot.

Daphile provides all what is needed to ease the tasks: https://www.daphile.com/#features

I think a FAV list including internet radios streams is also available with Daphile. Then one has everything in a box, and maybe available for players around.

I'm not using Daphile, but Squeeze, a module should allow me to play CDs, but it is based on the ripping module.

 

[phofman]

Why do you want to play and maybe damage CDs when you can rip them once for all, easing next listenings?

The answer is very simple - my long-time retired parents will not learn how to search some computer database on a touch screen when they know by heart covers of all their CDs in their large CD rack. Plus if they get a new CD they will not learn how to rip it, when all they need to do is to put it into the CD player tray. A ripped-CDs UI requires large touch LCD, which is very inconvenient if located vertically below eye line. A mobile phone remote with many features would be another insurmountable complication for the older people.

Operation of the combined CD player/internet radio is trivial with four touch buttons and a small TFT. I wanted to add a software component for playing files from a flash drive but the need never arose - my parents do not use flash drives.

As of daphile - it is a closed-source device with read-only squashfs filesystem, inaccessible to any changes apart of its author. Excellent for end users, not an option for someone who would like to modify it.

 

[b4nt]

The answer is very simple - my long-time retired parents will not learn how to search some computer database on a touch screen when they know by heart covers of all their CDs in their large CD rack.

I may be your dad. I'm mostly scrolling the CD covers, in the album list pane, and click there on play only. Much less often, I go to FAVs, and listen to a radio.

Plus if they get a new CD they will not learn how to rip it, when all they need to do is to put it into the CD player tray. A ripped-CDs UI requires large touch LCD, which is very inconvenient if located vertically below eye line. A mobile phone remote with many features would be another insurmountable complication for the older people.

I understand. It may depend of the effort they might be willing or able to do. Main ripping problem being the CD/track titles, they are not all in Internet databases, plus CD covers.

Operation of the combined CD player/internet radio is trivial with four touch buttons and a small TFT. I wanted to add a software component for playing files from a flash drive but the need never arose - my parents do not use flash drives.

As of daphile - it is a closed-source device with read-only squashfs filesystem, inaccessible to any changes apart of its author. Excellent for end users, not an option for someone who would like to modify it.

Daphile is not so closed, it is more secured, to disallow people to make changes and break things. It is a feature. But a debug release of Daphile (dev?) is available with root acccess. Sources may be unavailable...

If you are ready to make a dev (simple GUI for CD rip / CD play (rip and stream on the flow) / FLACs / radios, you may check all what is available with LMS on Ubuntu. There you shall have sources access, including for the nice "Material Skin". I beleive the core modules you need all exist, you would have to adapt/simplify the GUI for your need.

I think Daphile with all its features (plus restrictions) is a branch of LMS. My own LMS is now running since 2016, without any issue.

You may perhaps also get in touch with peoples of "Material Skin", to request an option or branch for lazy people like me or for peoples with disabilities, an alternate for a very simplified GUI (including the LMS CD player module).

 

[phofman]

I will not argue about why I needed proper CD-DA playback in my project. The key is most projects lack a lot in this area. The only project with some reasonable CD-DA playback was Mopidy with some external CD plugin which I tested and did not like. Basic things like CD drive speed control to avoid reading noise were not handled at all and adding this parameter to the mopidy gstreamer CD-playback pipeline turned out surprisingly complicated. Also Mopidy was still python 2 a few years ago when I needed the device.

As of daphile, it is the web UI configuration and simple installation which makes it attractive. The web UI is written in bash cgi scripts (lots of bash ), a language which is very error-prone and rather unfriendly when building larger systems (even simple arrays or basic text manipulations are hard to do correctly at first take). Actually I admire the developer for the courage to go this route. While the devel version has ssh access, the underlaying root filesystem is read-only and permanent changes would have to be incorporated into the squashfs image itself (the large rootfs file in the installer iso image). Again no go for adding the CD-DA playback which I needed.

 

[L5730]

I don't really see much need for a CD player in such a device, and adding physical media support just makes it bulkier and more effort to build.

I've been looking around and I think the JustBoom Amp Zero pHAT looks just thing. A tiny Class-D stereo amplifier with included DAC via TI chip. Runs at 15v and powers the RPi itself, so only one power lead and a wall wart/power brick. Should be good for small car speakers in a small kitchen shelf sized enclosure. It's pretty inexpensive too.
The trouble is, no one has them in stock!

I've seen Infineon / Merus offer something quite similar, but this runs from 5v instead, so I reckon the RPi PSU would need to be rather high current supplying, I'd think.

From some speakers I have been looking at, I can have more top end, but not better low extension. I think I need to do a lot of reading about enclosure design to get as much performance as I can from this little project. Because it'd go in the kitchen, it's best not to be open and thus caked in dust and grease within a month. That limits things, I suppose. There is always the possibility of a cloth baffle over down firing bass ports or such openings.

 

[somebodyelse]

Finding the amps in stock somewhere looks like being the key - Farnell say the JustBoom is no longer manufactured, while the Merus lead time is about a year!

A washable cloth cover seems a good move - elastic round the edge locating in a slot perhaps? Having said that a metal grille with perforations ~1mm seems to keep the mess on the outside and can be wiped down. An alternative, at least for the mid/top, would be an exciter on a panel with a wipe-clean surface, similar to the old NXT ones. I haven't seen anything on optimized exciter placement though - modeling that was NXT's 'secret sauce' and doesn't seem to have escaped into the DIY world.

 

[L5730]

Thanks for looking into availability. Well, that looks like the quick and easy, small and neat integrated option out of the window. There are plenty of dirt cheap USB C-Media DAC devices available, 16/48 is fine for a kitchen radio. Couple that into a stereo amp module and it's much the same result. The trouble then comes that I'd have to find a voltage converter to provide 5v for the RPi from the whatever-volts that feed the amp module.

A fairly fine mesh grill is probably adequate. A bit of foam would likely reduce high frequencies, which could be a good thing on such a device (knock out some tonal scratchiness and hiss noise).

Ultimately I won't know until I try. The BOM seems to keep going up and up

 

[Madeintooting]

Why not just mount the pi/dac on the back of one of those Bluetooth speakers, these come in all sizes from small brick to elaborate Marshalls outputting 100w+. most have a usb output that can power the pi

Just make sure it has aux in..

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/audio...able-bluetooth-speaker-blue-10182831-pdt.html

https://www.gear4music.com/Home-Aud...MI9qnh89-z8QIVEoFQBh2fuA3UEAQYBCABEgJhtfD_BwE

 

[antennaguru]

Check out the Brennan B2 before you invest a lot of time and effort.

It is a finished product that plays Internet Radio, YouTube Music, and is a 2TB server for your FLAC CD 16/44 files (holds several thousand) with a CD slot to rip CDs or play them if you like. Any device with a browser can use the nice built-in GUI for searching for music to play, by just typing in the IP Adress from the B2 display into the URL line in the browser of your tablet, phone, etc.