Vintage Clock Radio Becomes Modern Media Player

Thrift stores, antique malls, and eBay are overflowing with old radios that are beautiful, but that have very little practical utility today. You probably don’t want turn on FM radio at home very often, much less shortwave radio. And that’s if that old radio you found at Goodwill even works. But what can we do with all of those gorgeous vintage radios? We could follow the example set by Darkfly when they converted an old clock radio into a modern Raspberry Pi media player.

Our younger readers should know that a clock radio is a radio...with a clock on it. 70 years ago, it made a lot of sense to combine those two things into a single device. But you don’t listen to the radio at home and you probably have several clocks within your field of view at any given time. So, the classic clock radio isn’t useful today, but a full-fledged media player might be. In this case, the updated device can play music or videos stored locally or streamed from online sources. Instead of listening to AM talk radio, users can listen to podcasts on Spotify. Or they can watch YouTube videos instead of watching the second hand slowly tick by.

Darkfly started by completely gutting the vintage clock radio, leaving just the shell. That was then hacked, trimmed, and cut to accommodate the new components, with some paint to make it look fresh. Darkfly used a bit of scrap wood to create a frame structure for mounting the components. This process did require permanent modification of the radio, so it isn’t for antique collectors with faint hearts.

The most important of those components is the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B single-board computer, which runs any media software the user wants. It displays the content on a 5” touchscreen LCD mounted where the clock used to be. The Raspberry Pi pumps audio out through a mini amplifier unit that feeds a pair of speaker drivers mounted on the sides of the radio. Darkfly mounted that amplifier so that its controls are accessible in the same location as the original radio controls.

Now Darkfly can revel in the beauty of the vintage design, while enjoying everything that modern media has to offer.