[Espisode one is here, Episode two is here, Episode three is here]

Interlude – on & off

This thing has really nothing to do with listening to the music but comes directly from the Raspberry features or, as in this case, the lack of them: an on-off button is missing, and in my project this situation is unacceptable :-).

For the sake of clarity, when I say ‘off’ i really mean to put it into a halt state, where even if the linux Kernel is off the board is still powered and capable of rebooting. To manage a complete power off I would need some additional circuitry, maybe I will add later, for now halt is enough.

Continue reading →

[Episode one is here, episode two is here]

Episode 3 – less is more!

After tinkering a while with my wannabe web radio player, I decided that the next step will include:

1. getting a better audio output: the Raspberry native audio is ‘suboptimal’ and far from what I need;
2. replacing some (or all) the buttons: they’re good for an initial Proof Of Concept, but I’d like something more ‘natural’ to use;
3. add an LCD display to visualize the radio station I’m listening to;
4. reorganizing the cables getting out of the breadboard.

Moreover, on the software side, I switched from the Mopidy based PiMusicBox to a combination of a bare MPD server managed through a command line client (mpc): I don’t need all the features offered by Mopidy and, besides that, I found MPD much more responsive while playing radio streams. I’m going to add details on the software side in the next posts….

Continue reading →