Raspberry Pi Zero Internet Radio with Oled display

This is a simple project for the Raspberry Pi Zero with wifi, presoldiered header and the OLED display from Adafruit with buttons. Audio output i

Requirements

Raspberry Pi Zero with wifi and presoldered headers
Adafruit OLED display bonnet with buttons
MicroUSB to USB adapter
Small USB connected soundcard
Raspbian OS
NodeJS version 9.5 or later

Install mplayer to stream internet radio

$ sudo apt-get install mplayer

Now go on over to https://tunein.com find a radio station you fancy, and use the development tools in your browser to get the streaming url.

If you for instance search for "BBC World Service UK", then in the development tools in your browser you should be able to detect that the audio is streamed from http://bbcwssc.ic.llnwd.net/stream/bbcwssc_mp1_ws-eieuk_backup

From the command line you should be able to listen to the radio:

$ mplayer http://bbcwssc.ic.llnwd.net/stream/bbcwssc_mp1_ws-eieuk_backup

Install python libraries to use OLED screen

Follow the official guide for how to configure you Raspberry Pi to be able to use the OLED display

If everything is set up ok, then it should be possible to run the python script provided in this repository to display the name of the internet radio station and display info from the radio station while scrolling sideways:

$ git clone https://github.com/thomasfl/pi_oled_radio
$ cd pi_oled_radio
$ python ./animated_display.py "BBC Radio" "Latest news bla bla"

Update to latest version of node for Raspberry Pi Zero

Note that the Raspberry Pi Zero won't be able to run the same version of node as the Raspeberry Pi 3. Instead of running apt-get install we need to manually download a version of node compiled for the older ARMv6 chipset used by the Zero.

$ sudo apt-get remove --purge npm node nodejs
$ cd /tmp
$ wget http://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v9.x/node-v9.5.0-linux-armv6l.tar.gz
$ cd /usr/local
$ sudo tar xzvf /tmp/node-v9.5.0-linux-armv6l.tar.gz --strip=1
$ node -v

Running node script to read buttons, control streaming and display

The node script will start two processes in the backround; the audio streaming process and the animated scrolling display text process.

$ cd
$ mkdir scripts
$ cd scripts
$ git clone https://github.com/thomasfl/pi_oled_radio
$ cd pi_oled_radio
$ npm install
$ node index.js

Paths have been hardcoded so these scripts has to be placed in the folder /home/pi/scripts/pi_oled_radio to run.

Setting up the Raspberry to run the radio on startup

Make sure the Raspberry does not start x on boot. Then add this line to the bottom of the file ~/.bashrc:

/usr/bin/node /home/pi/scripts/pi_oled_radio/index.js

Using the Internet Radio

Use the two "A" and "B" buttons to browse through radio stations. Playing should start after a short while. Use the "Center" button inside the joystick to pause streaming and display the ip address.