“Yes, it is another Raspberry Pi internet radio build and not my first one either. I am not sure why this build is still such a popular one, but I do still enjoy it and cannot say this one will be my last either. I really love the look of the Roberts radios of the early 80’s and started thinking of converting one to an internet radio.
My goal was to maintain the same look and interface of the radio but replace the insides and give it a digital display. I really loved the mechanical feel and sound of the switches and the RM33 gave me lots of extra buttons to program.
I kept the concept of the radio like the original RM33 using the 3 center selection buttons for Radio, Spotify and Soundcloud. This allowed me to use the manual and 5 memory buttons on the side to simulate the same as the original for the radio option.
I managed to source a RM33 with a near perfect wooden case and all the buttons retaining their silver caps. The front panel was however loose, scratched and bent in places which led me to do a complete redesign of the RM33 paint.
The brains behind the radio is a Raspberry Pi together with a USB Sound Card and Adafruit Stereo Amplifier for the sound. I kept the original speaker and with some other parts managed to design a compact circuit for all the required components.
Supplies:
- Roberts RM33 Radio
- Raspberry Pi 3B
- USB Wifi Adapter
- USB Audio Adapter for Raspberry Pi (Ebay)
- Serial IIC/I2C/TWI 2004 20X4 Character LCD (Ebay)
- Petrockblock “PowerBlock” – The safe power button / power switch for Raspberry Pi
- Stereo 3.7W Class D Audio Amplifier - MAX98306
- MCP3008 - 8-Channel 10-Bit ADC With SPI Interface
- Adafruit Perma-Proto HAT for Pi Mini Kit - No EEPROM [ADA2310]
- Bourns 24 Pulse Incremental Mechanical Rotary Encoder with a 6 mm Knurl Shaft, Through Hole
- Single Mono10K ohm lin Linear Log Logarithmic Switch Pot Potentiometer (Ebay)
- 1k ohm resistors x10
- 10k ohm resistors x9
- JRC-23FS 5v Relay
- 1A Diode (for Relay)
- BC337-025G NPN Bipolar Transistor (for Relay)”