Resurrecting a Childhood Radio with a Raspberry Pi

The almost magical significance that humans put on inanimate objects is a strange thing that psychologists struggle to understand, but which is undeniable. There is a reason that a guitar played by Eric Clapton is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but an identical guitar used by a nobody might only be worth a couple thousand — as if the guitar somehow retains some of Clapton’s essence. That reason isn’t rational, because humans aren’t rational. Haluskz owns a radio from their childhood that stopped functioning, and the same power of nostalgia motivated them to resurrect it with a Raspberry Pi.

This VEF 206 radio, in its pre-restored condition, was nearly worthless to the rest of the world, but had deep significance to Haluskz as it had been in the family since their childhood. This is a Latvian radio made during the country’s forced inclusion in the USSR. It doesn’t receive many of the frequencies in use today, which relegated it to little more than decoration. Haluskz wanted a way to use it again and found inspiration from Martin Mander’s Dansette Pi internet radio project. Following Mander’s design philosophy, Haluskz rebuilt their vintage VEF 206 radio with modern components while retaining the original aesthetics.

Haluskz discarded virtually all of the radio’s original parts and kept only the case. The dials look original, but are modern parts chosen to match the look of the broken vintage knobs. Inside, everything is modern. Components include a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, a Pimoroni Pirate Audio 3W stereo amp, a rotary encoder, an RGB LED-capped potentiometer, a Wi-Fi dongle, a small speaker, and a couple of buttons.

Those components are all standard for an internet radio project like this, but Haluskz’s implementation is special. They took extreme care to integrate all of those parts while keeping the exterior as original as possible. They did need to make some cuts into the radio’s enclosure, but you wouldn’t be able to tell just by looking at the finished product. And because it contains a Raspberry Pi, it can play streaming radio from the internet via Wi-Fi. It’s a perfect way for Haluskz to keep their childhood radio in the family for decades to come.