Retro Pi Radio

by Tom Sparrow

Back in 2016 Medway Makers were the first place winners in our class at the Pi Wars robotic competition at Cambridge University. Part of Medway Makers prizes for winning at PiWars was a Raspberry Pi audio amplifier hat and this device was the perfect opportunity to bring an old retro ‘Hacker’ (Yes, it really is called that)  radio up to date and into the 21st century.

The radio was taken apart and I everything inside the radio that was no longer going to be used was discarded. Then, a Raspberry Pi with the amplifier hat was added inside and I soldered the output to the original radio’s speaker.

There are several software choices to use for your internet radio, and I decided to use Volume IO. This was flashed to the micro SD card of the Raspberry pi. Volume IO has a nice, easy to use web interface, the official app works well, and it’s easy to add your own music collection via a USB stick.