Radio Raspberry

I use my Raspberry Pi as a squeezebox player, using squeezelite (see topic). I've got one Raspberry, and ordered two more. With these two I want to set up a multi room system (living room, kitchen), and the third one I want to use as a portable player.
I have it all up and running and lying on my desk like this (click on the pictures for a bigger version):

Which is a bit cluttered and not very save. So I decided to allready start on creating a casing for the portable raspberry.

I am going to use this as the casing:

I asked my mother in law to look for an old eighties radio on flee markets. It didn't have to work, but it had to look good. She did very good buying me this for 2 euros!!
I like the old cassette buttons, and it has some nice "patina" on it.

So, I opened it up and gutted the inside:


That gave me a nice space for the raspberry + peripherals.

I left part of the cassette mechanism in place so I could keep the cassette buttons. They can also be pushed, but of course, nothing will happen.
After I took the picture I also removed the backside of the battery compartment.

After test fitting the components in different places I finally decided on this setup:

I tore apart the PC speakers of my original setup and used the speakers and amplifier of it. I placed the speakers behind the original (mono) speaker grill. The amplifier is placed on the top, I drilled holes through the case for the volume button, power led and lineout.

And here it is, the Raspberry Radio:

The picture is a bit dark, but you can just see the volume button on the right of the red power led.
To the left of the red led is the lineout (headphone output).

The Raspberry Pi is still accessable through the battery door:


Until the other Pi's arrive I am using this as the living room player. I can connect it through the lineout with the Sony network speaker:

It looks like I am using a cheap old radio cassette player as sound input for my Sony network speaker.

I allready took it out into my barn to do some work while listening to internet radio. It works excellent. I am very happy with it.
Reliving the eighties with a modern twist.

What an excellent idea! Really really nice case

Thanx!

Such a good idea!! Well done!

PS: You should build lots of those and sell them

I am gonna be rich!!

I've now got a video of it in action: Youtube video

I'm in the "thinking about it" stage of doing something similar but am being put off by the miriad of problems with the hardware, so maybe someone could have a go at my questions?

1. do you really need to use a USB soundcard (if so which ones work?) is the 3.5mm output really not even good enough when driven by powered PC speakers?

2. how well does the nano wifi dongle work when plugged into a hub rather than the pi directly? i'm thinking i could use a model-a if it works ok via a hub.

3. how are you powering this - it looks like the speaker power and hub power lines are spliced? what kind of sound did you get from the usb powered speakers with the usb soundcard?

1. do you really need to use a USB soundcard (if so which ones work?) is the 3.5mm output really not even good enough when driven by powered PC speakers?

No and Yes. The onboard 3.5mm output will work, the sound quality will be a bit less, but it's acceptable for a portable radio. Especially considering the PC speakers aren't exaclty HiFi quality.
BUT, I've had problems using the 3.5 mm output. On my other (non-portable) raspberries, the sound could turn into a white noise ( buzzing) after a while without any reason. Resetting the raspberry fixed it.
Considering the price of the USB soundcard (6 euros), I would use the USB soundcard.

2. how well does the nano wifi dongle work when plugged into a hub rather than the pi directly? i'm thinking i could use a model-a if it works ok via a hub.

I've got the wifi dongle plugged into the hub. Plugging it directly into the raspberry is not advisable, according to numerous messaged in this forum.
The WiFi dongle works, but, currently I am havind intermittent problems. Sometimes it doesn't work (can't get an IP address) and wif it works it's got a lot of dropped packets.
This might be problem with my Wifi router or the wifi dongle brand/type I am using (logilink nano).

3. how are you powering this - it looks like the speaker power and hub power lines are spliced?

No. The USB powered speakers are plugged into the USB hub.
However, I did splice the powerline. I addes a wire to the raspberry, so it is directly wired from the power adapter instead of through the USB hub.

what kind of sound did you get from the usb powered speakers with the usb soundcard?

Good acceptable sound. The limitation here is the tiny PC speakers.

ah right that's interesting about the wifi dongle on the hub. i'm waiting for my wifi dongle to arrive.

i'll go for the usb soundcard - have you considered that that's causing the problems with the wifi dongle though (i.e. soundcard using the bandwidth up)? is there a list of compatible "cards"?

i'm going to have a hunt around the loft in a bit and see if i can find some pc speakers to test with and maybe see if they're 5v inside so i could splice the speaker power and hub power together, rather than going straight for usb speakers. i'd kind of like to be able to put all of the pi/hub inside the speaker case rather than take the speakers/amp apart and fit into another case of some sort (this isn't portable).

now a pair of mains powered speakers with a usb hub built-in would be ideal, but i doubt such a thing exists.