I’ve been looking at building an outdoor music player for a couple of weeks now. I am looking for something ‘rugged’ that I can take outside and dump on the grass at a picnic or BBQ, Battery operated (about 4-6 hours life), small display to show what is playing, couple of buttons to RW/FF and volume control.
I’m still trying fathom out whether to make it a Wi-Fi access point and allow control by connecting to it (web or mobile app), or to have it connect to the home Wi-Fi so that it can also stream internet radio / Google Play music. Maybe a switchable option is in order.
I had thought about housing the whole thing in an ammo box, but in the end I decided to reuse an old power tool plastic box (at least for the first version).
I already had most of the components – LiPo batteries, DC-DC ‘Buck’ Convertors, Power Tool Box, Pi, and associated cables, connectors. The only bit’s I was missing were an audio amp and some speakers. I bought the speakers from Maplin (£2.99 each) and a 15Watt per channel, stereo audio amp from eBay. Those have all arrived now, so it’s time to get the Dermel and the soldering iron out.
I’ll be writing this up as a full project, with instructions etc, so watch this space
Update (Sept 2016): The full project write up can be found here.
