This 1940s Philco 40-180 Now Hosts a Raspberry Pi and RTL-SDR as a Modern Yet Retro Radio Unit

When faced with a 1940s Philco 40-180 radio in great aesthetic shape but with destroyed internals, pseudonymous maker "spyderN8" — hereafter "Spyder" — decided to give it an upgrade courtesy of a very modern Raspberry Pi and an RTL-SDR software-defined radio receiver.

"[I] acquired a 1940s Philco 40-180 floor model radio earlier this year from a local antique store for ~$50," Spyder explains. "The outside was in pretty good shape for 80 years old, but everything else was pretty much already gutted or busted. I've been tinkering with various radio projects over the years and wanted to do something a little larger, but admittedly, I really didn't think I'd have the time nor ability to turn this into something useful."

Spyder had five key goals for the renovation project: It had to maintain the original appearance of the radio as far as possible, though the original buttons needed to be replaced with modern replacements; it had to be controllable using only physical buttons, with no need to work with a touch-screen interface; it had to work with no internet connection; and it had to be, in Spyder's own words, "wife approved."

The innards of the radio needed complete replacement, putting momentary switches behind the original button positions to restore the controls and adding stereo speakers and a chunky sub-woofer connected to a 200W amplifier with Bluetooth support. That's not the only nod to modernity, either: The system is driven through a Raspberry Pi single-board computer with an RTL-SDR receiver — meaning that it picks up actual local radio transmissions, rather than streaming over the web.

Although the device is designed to be operated entirely from the push buttons, which dial up one of eight pre-set radio stations on demand, it does include a display: a Waveshare 7.9" ultra-wide touchscreen, which runs the Console-based Audio Visualizer for ALSA (CAVA) to provide a little animated element, sits surprisingly unobtrusively at the center of the wooden radio console — while an LED behind hand-carved glass places a glow above and behind the currently-activated button to finish the aesthetic effect.

More details on the project are available on Spyder's Reddit post, including links to the parts used.