This Kid-Friendly Raspberry Pi Jukebox Has a Great Fabric-Covered Enclosure

Every parent reading this knows that children can become a tad attached to specific songs. You only need to spend about 5 minutes with a 4-year-old before they’ll ask you to play “Tooty Ta” or “Baby Shark.” Within a few minutes, you’ll have your ears stuffed full of cotton balls in an attempt to salvage whatever is left of your sanity. Life would be a lot easier if your kids could play their favorite songs themselves in their room while you enjoy some quiet time. That’s exactly what this kid-friendly Raspberry Pi jukebox provides, and it even has a great fabric-covered enclosure.

While your children might be able to figure out how to navigate YouTube or Spotify in order to find their favorite songs, there are a lot of reasons why you might not want them to do so unsupervised. Even if they’re only searching for kid-friendly content on YouTube, a lot of inappropriate videos can slip in — something that has caused a great deal of controversy in recent years. This custom jukebox lets them easily play the songs they want to hear, but only lets them select from a library of songs that you have already approved. It works using RFID tags that are attached to plastic toys. So, for instance, little Timmy can place the shark on the jukebox to start playing “Baby Shark.”

Benjamin Gebauer accomplished that with a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. Other components include an OnOffShim from Pimoroni for shutting down the Pi, a large 20,000mAh battery bank for power, status LEDs, arcade control buttons, a HiFiBerry MiniAmp, and an RFID reader. To make this all work, you’ll need to setup Raspbian Lite in headless mode and then ensure that the audio output is going through the MiniAmp. A Python script provided by MiczFlor watches the RFID reader. When a registered tag is detected, it will automatically start playing the corresponding song through Spotify via Mopidy. All of the components are housed within a 3D-printed enclosure that is covered in a layer of fashionable faux leather. If you’re looking for a way for your kids to listen to music on their own, this is a great project to tackle.