March 04, 2023 by Mirko Pavleski
This time I will show you how to make a stand-alone Internet Radio, which in terms of characteristics, stability, and functions is comparable and even better than commercial devices of this type, and yet the price for making it is many times lower.
Internet radio (also web radio, net radio, streaming radio, e-radio, IP radio, online radio) is a digital audio service transmitted via the Internet. It can either be used as a stand-alone device running through the Internet, or as a software running through a PC.
If you want to make a PCB for this project, or for any other electronic project, PCBway is a great choice for you. PCBway is one of the most experienced PCB manufacturing company in China in field of PCB prototype and fabrication. They have a large online community where you can find a Open Source projects, and you can also share your project there. From my personal experience I can tell you that on this community you can find many useful projects.
We can connect headphones directly to the VS1053 module output. The ground terminal of VS1053 is not connected to the negative pole of the circuit, so if you want to connect an PAM8403 D-class amplifier, as in this particular case, you should use the different Power supply for Amplifier, or make small modification on amplifierd Board presented in the schematic diagram below.
Immediately after switching on, the big logo appears on the screen, and in the background the device connects to the WiFi network. After a few seconds, the first Internet radio station is activated.
We can read many informations on the display:
- Name and logo of the station
- The currently playing song
- The volume value
- Station number
- and Current IP Adress
If you touch the top half of the daisplay:
- mute
- volume +
- volume -
- volume bar
- station + and
- station -
If you touch the top half of the display again:
- Audio player (mp3)
- Clock
- Radio
- and Sleep timer
Audio MP3 player
It can play individual songs or playlists
- We have audio file name
- first audio file
- next audio file
- Play selected file
Clock
- here we have big digit clock In which the exact time is set automatically via the Internet
- when we touch the top half of the clock with this button we can set alarm for every day of the week
- also it have a sleep timer
The device in general works surprisingly fast because the images are downloaded directly from the SD card, instead of being drawn using the microcontroller, which is another genius idea of the author. So we can very quickly and easily change the backgrounds, the style of the numbers, insert logos and other characters without changing a single line of code. Also very simple is the method of entering new Internet stations in the "Stations.csv" file, as well as the method of backing up and restoring them. And as if this was not enough, the device can be controlled through a beautiful web interface with many more options as well as "Community Radio Browser" as a search engine. The screen shows the local IP address of the device, which we need to enter in any web browser.
And finally, the whole device is embedded in a suitable box made of PVC material with a thickness of 3mm and 5mm, and coated with colored self-adhesive wallpaper.
Arduino code at : https://github.com/schreibfaul1/ESP32-MiniWebRadio
