Raspberry Pi Radio Tunes Into Stations Around the World

Jam out with rockin’ tunes from the US to Japan and everywhere in between.

A Raspberry Pi with the right idea in mind can turn an ordinary object into something extraordinary. Such is the case today with this Raspberry Pi radio project put together by maker and developer trustMeIAmANinja over at Reddit. Unlike your average radio, this one lets you listen to stations from all over the world.

The Pi is housed inside an old radio which has been fixed up with a custom interface, a screen, and a series of knobs for seeking out stations. The screen has been mounted to the front of the radio and displays a map of the world with a crosshair overlay. The knobs are attached to rotary encoders, which enable you to tune the radio.

It’s worth noting that the radio isn’t actually receiving radio waves, but rather the Raspberry Pi is accessing stations using the internet. Some stations are broadcast online, which makes it possible to listen to many of them from anywhere in the world. As long as the Pi has an internet connection, it can stream stations internationally.

The radio is driven by a Raspberry Pi 4 which is connected to a 5-inch LCD screen. A custom bezel was 3D printed to mount the display and rotary encoder knobs to the front panel. Audio is output to a 30-watt speaker that interfaces with the Pi using an audio HAT.

As of writing, the source code has yet to be shared for the project. However, there are plans in the works to share more build details and the project code over at GitHub in the near future. Until then, trustMeIAmANinja points users to this blog for more information about how the rotary encoder knobs are set up.

If you want you want to get a closer look at this Raspberry Pi project, you can check out the thread trustMeIAmANinja shared on Reddit. Be sure to follow them for more updates and details about how this project works.

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Ash Hill is a Freelance News and Features Writer at Tom's Hardware US. She manages the Pi projects of the month and much of our daily Raspberry Pi reporting.

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