Fatih Ak Turns Pimoroni's Presto Into a Slick Spotify Media Controller: the PrestoDeck

Developer Fatih Ak has turned a Pimoroni Presto into a slick desktop control system for music streaming — complete with full-color cover art and a custom user interface developed in MicroPython.

"The main component of this project is the new Pimoroni Presto," Ak explains of the device, "which has a four-inch touchscreen display with a 480×480 resolution. It's powered by the new Raspberry Pi RP2350 chip and has a sleek black aluminum stand. The Presto comes fully assembled, so there's no soldering required."

Designed with desktop human-machine interaction in mind, the Pimoroni Presto is the ideal candidate for conversion into a media control system — which is exactly what Ak has done, focusing on the popular Spotify streaming platform. A custom MicroPython firmware connects to Spotify's web application programming interface (API) and pulls in details about the currently-playing song, including album art, for real-time display on the Presto's touchscreen.

Naturally, a touchscreen lends itself to control — so the communication goes both ways, with a custom user interface provided playback controls for track skip, play and pause, shuffle, and repeat.

"There were a few small challenges I ran into during development," Ak admits. "Because the device is making frequent API calls, quick taps on the screen can sometimes be missed. Another issue is that the graphics library doesn't support non-ASCII characters and text so I'm stripping those out of the track and artist names for now — which isn't ideal, especially for international songs and artists."

The project is detailed in the video embedded above and on Ak's YouTube channel, with source code available on GitHub under an unspecified open source license.