Raspberry streaming audio

One of the future projects I decided to do is to retrofit an old radio with an IP radio.
Very probably I will start with Raspberry and one of the many many projects is possible to find.
To start, mostly to see what kind of quality I can expect, I decided to build the Pimoroni kit for a pirate radio.

The kit is based on a Raspberry Pi zero W (i.e. with WiFI and Bluetooth capabilities) and a Pimoroni hat with DAC, amplifier, LED VU meter and some buttons for interface and some simple 3D printed support to be put together.

As I said my first goal we to verify the quality of the audio and some capabilities to stream.

I have to say ... I'm impressed !!!!
The Pimoroni hat is well done, support stereo and mono channels and wow, quite powerful little thing !
For the final project that would be just great !
Of course the user interface is quite primitive but is not a problem since is not the final plan.

So after these first tests I would say the idea is more than feasible, the audio quality for this toy is impressive ! And is in mono mode, I can imagine what would be adding a second speaker !

Quick preparation

In order to test the toy, just follow this guideline.

• download a prepared image from Pimoroni
• unzip the file in a directory
• insert an empty micro SD card formatted FAT32
• just "copy" all the content of the extracted zip file in the sd card - no need to burn images or use dd or things like that
• edit the file wpa_supplicant.conf and add your WiFi credential

That's it !
Put the SD card in the Raspberry, turn on, wait a minute and your radio will start to play.

Is possible to access to a website to control the radio.

Find the IP assigned to the radio then access to the web port 8080, password : p1rat3

To add and remove stations is possible to edit the file playlist.m3u with an ASCII editor.

This the default :

http://relay4.slayradio.org:8200/

http://allstream.rainwave.cc:8000/all.mp3

http://tx.sharp-stream.com/icecast.php?i=planetrock.mp3

http://s1.viastreaming.net:8000

http://sc6.radiocaroline.net:8040/listen.pls

http://sc6.radiocaroline.net:10558/listen.pls

http://www.listenlive.eu/bbcradio2.m3u

http://www.listenlive.eu/bbcradio4.m3u

http://listen.181fm.com/181-uktop40_128k.mp3

http://listen.181fm.com/181-90scountry_128k.mp3

http://listen.181fm.com/181-oldschool_128k.mp3

http://listen.181fm.com/181-90sdance_128k.mp3

http://listen.181fm.com/181-chilled_128k.mp3

http://listen.181fm.com/181-classical_128k.mp3

Future

Now the idea is to add a graphic interface to this gadget, maybe switching over a normal Raspberry Pi 3.
I will need a display and some UI input interface maybe based on two encoders.

We'll see, for the moment I'll enjoy some music :)

Notes

• login to the Raspberry :
• open a terminal and use ssh on the IP assigned to the Raspberry
• user : pirate
• password : p1r4t3
• example : ssh pirate@192.168.2.111
• login to the web page to control the radio :
• open a browser and go on port 8080 on the IP assigned to the Raspberry
• user : NO USER !
• password : p1r4t3
• example : http://192.168.2.111:8080
  leave username blank - enter only password