Redditor Adds Streaming Music to a Vintage Radio with a Raspberry Pi

If you want a device for streaming your music, you have a couple of options. You could take the dull, well-traveled road and buy a stereo with built-in streaming functionality. You could step that up and build a streaming device that connects to a quality stereo. Or, you could do what Redditor Krabizzwainch did and convert a vintage radio into a modern music streamer.

The reason to do so is, of course, aesthetics. A vintage radio just looks a lot cooler than anything new you can buy. In this case, Krabizzwainch gutted the original electronics almost completely. A Raspberry Pi with Volumio installed provides the music stream from Spotify. That’s connected to a set of small speakers through an inexpensive 15W + 15W amplifier from Drok that’s based on the STMicroelectronics TDA7297 chip.

Krabizzwainch reports that the setup works well, though sound quality is a bit staticy. They also plan on eventually implementing the original variable capacitor tuner to control which station is playing. But, for the time being, it’s already a cool vintage radio with modern streaming functionality. The total cost to upgrade the radio was probably under $60, so this is a project that should be affordable for most people.