Help choosing the right "brain" for an old time radio project.

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von_bednar
 
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Joined: Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:49 pm

Help choosing the right "brain" for an old time radio project.

Post by von_bednar »

I'm planning on building an audio media player of sorts and would love some advice of how to proceed.

TL/DR: I want to make a vintage radio inspired device to play my local mp3 library, and not sure what I should use as the "brain" of the project.

The basic idea is to grab bunch of old time radio shows, music, podcasts (and maybe some audiobooks) I have and put them in a radio like box (or maybe an actual vintage radio depending on what I can find). Then use either potentiometers and some buttons (or rotary encoders) to "tune in" into different "stations" that would play either randomly, or in order based on folder and/or metadata. Of course I would need something to drive the speaker(s), and depending on the board, something to decode mp3 (I'm eyeing the music maker featherwing for that).

Right now I'm not sure if I want to include a screen.

The way I imagine it is having a large sd card, with files organized into folders and possibly each folder holding a .json or similar file for holding some variables/metadata how to handle the files inside. We are talking about few thousand files (two of the podcasts I plan on storing are over 1k files already), stored locally, organized in folders.

The big appeal of this project is to have a bit of that radio experience where I can just "stumble upon" some music or show without actively choosing it. Also, I like that it can work completely offline, and run for at least a handful of hours on battery power.

Originally I was planning on using a raspberry pi to power it all, but I would really prefer a lower power consumption (would like it to last good while on battery) and, that's a big one for me, be able to boot quickly. So, I would like to go with a microcontroller... but now sure which?

Now, to be honest, I'm new to microcontrollers, and only really made stuff with raspi in the past. So some of my assumptions might be wrong. I got myself an ESP32 with some parts to start learning more about them, but I'm still in pretty early stages.

From reading around it seems I might have an issue with storing everything locally on the SD card, at least with ESP32. I keep seeing 4GB limit, but some posts say this is a file limit, others that it's the partition limit. 4GB would not be enough for all my files. Seems another ESP32 limit is that I could only use 8.3 filenames, which is far from perfect.

Before today I wasn't considering anything outside of the pi0 and ESP32 (stuck with those because I wouldn't also mind adding some "internet radio" but this is more a *like* than a *need*, and also both have large communities I could reach out for help, and bunch of ready made libraries and/or examples I could use), then I seen the WalkP3rson using RP2040 powered board, and it seems that the SD can at least use long filenames, so maybe it can handle a bigger SD and handle large SD cards too? Maybe I should try this board?

So now I reach out to you makers for advice. What would be the best board to power this silly idea of mine?

Thanks in advance :)

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johnpark
 
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Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 2:15 pm

Re: Help choosing the right "brain" for an old time radio project.

Post by johnpark »

Here's something similar from a few years ago https://learn.adafruit.com/mystery-box- ... o/overview

More modern projects like this can be done with CircuitPython based boards, such as
https://learn.adafruit.com/walkmp3rson- ... ape-player
and
https://learn.adafruit.com/touch-tone-phone-dial-a-song

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von_bednar
 
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Joined: Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:49 pm

Re: Help choosing the right "brain" for an old time radio project.

Post by von_bednar »

Thanks John,

I've combed over your projects already. In fact, your hunted radio and walkp3rson projects were what made me join the forums here. The walkp3rson especially made me consider RP2040 :)

It seems that the sd library for RP2040 is fine with long filenames (as I see some long filenames for the mp3s in your projects). Do you know what is the max size of the SD card it supports? Would it depend on the module you use to host your SD or just the library (sorry if this is obvious question, just new to microcontrollers)?

Also it seems you have moved from ESP to RP over time - how do you like the RP2040 compared to what ESP offers? Which one would you recommend someone new to MCUs? Would you recommend one over the other for the above project?

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