# Overview

Volumio based internet radio, controlled by NFC, built in an old speaker.

# Background

Inspired by the extreemly good looking Spotify Box and QR based systems like Audiosphere, I wanted to make something similar for my kids. I’ve earlier built a few radios based on small, cheap bluetooth speakers like music angel, but wanted something with better sound this time.

# Prototype

QR are fast and cheap, so I made a quick prototype. It turned out they are unreliable when there’s no display to give feedback on how the camera sees them. Both lighting and focus was a problem.

# Overview

See RadiOS part 1.

So I started making a prototype to figure out if I could “sense” both selections with GPIO pins, while the designer started modeling and rendering suggestions for the physical design. The solution chosen was to first set all volume control pins to high, and check which channel control points registered as on, then reverse (control points high, check volumes).

# Sound

For sound we tore down a Music Angel portable speaker. It gave us two speakers, an amplifier running on 5V and a battery which we threw away. The built in soundcard gave horrible sound under certain conditions, so a cheap USB soundcard was used instead.

# Overview

In my opinion most radios, especially internet radios, have horrible interfaces. Small buttons, small displays, often touch, often several functions for each button.

So Erik and I set out to design a new, better radio for ourselves. Our main requirements were ease of use and a very physical UI. Something you’d want to touch and play with.

# Platform

The Raspberry Pi is our platform of choice at the moment, so we have some physical restrictions and long boot time.