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Raspberry Pi tinkering lesson: from cocktail robots to tube radios

25.10.2018

Translation: machine translated

Are you still looking for a Christmas present? How about a homemade Raspberry Pi project? Below you will find four creative projects.

The shelves of retailers are already filling up again with Christmas items. "Already now? It's only the end of October!" If you're thinking like that, you're like me. That may be true if you're planning a ready-made gift. But if you want to make a gift for your loved ones, you may have to start soon.

This is also the case with Raspberry Pi projects. We recently had a visit from our supplier. They had various projects in their luggage that we don't want to withhold from you.

Cocktail Bot

I want that too. With the cocktail robot, you'll never have to mix your own drinks again. In the project in the video, the Pi controls an Arduino, which in turn controls the pumps. Incidentally, the whole thing only works with a Pi or Arduino. You select your available spirits and soft drinks via a browser-based app. The app then tells you which drinks you can make. Then all you have to do is choose and the robot does the rest. If you want to recreate the Bar Mixvah - yes, that's actually its name - you can find the instructions here.

Tube radio with touchscreen

You may know them from second-hand shops or, like me, from your parents: tube radios. These are the huge wooden boxes that stood in many parlours until the 1960s and were then replaced by transistor radios.

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These things exude real retro charm and it would be great to have a functional device like this at home. With a Raspberry Pi, you can breathe new life into tube receivers. All you need is a Raspberry Pi, the touchscreen to the Pi, a connection cable and a bit of manual dexterity.

First, you flash an SD card with software to play music or radio. Volumio or LibreELEC are popular, but there is more software available. The big advantage of the Pi is that it still has an analogue audio output. This means it can be connected to all kinds of audio devices if you have the correct plug.

When connecting to a tube radio, you have to do a bit of tinkering. The plugs for connecting to tube radios are no longer available. If you can still find an old one, you can solder it to a 3.5 mm stereo plug on 2 x cinch plugs. To do this, simply cut off the two cinch plugs and solder on the old plug. Then connect the Pi to the touchscreen.

Now the old tube radio is already running and you can even adjust the volume using the control on the tube radio. At this point, you decide for yourself whether you are satisfied with the result so far or whether you want to continue tinkering. You can integrate the Pi and touchscreen into the housing. Then you lose some of the retro charm, but it looks tidier. Or you can assign new functions to the buttons on the tube radio via the Pi.

RetroPie

You've probably heard of the Retropie. But it would be a shame not to mention this classic. With the Raspberry Pi, you don't just get a retro console in your living room, but a whole host.

You don't need much more than a Raspi. In this case, flash the SD card with a current RetroPie image and you're ready to go. If you have a Bluetooth controller from your current console at home, you can connect it to the Pi and control the games. Of course, there are also stylish retro controllers.

If you want to go a little further, you can print your own case on a 3D printer. It can even be a little nicer than the one in the video. Or you could just buy one.

Radio the second

So much retro can really get on your nerves. But you can also use the Pi for more modern-looking projects. For example, for a stylish kitchen or hobby room radio. Another radio? Yes, because who doesn't like listening to the radio? And if you don't listen to the radio, you can also play Spotify.

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In the example in the video, the Raspberry Pi touchscreen fitted perfectly into an old radio. The dark-coloured device is still in its original state and the white one with Pi. The radio can even be operated remotely using a Bluetooth remote control. If you don't have a suitable housing, you can make one yourself or have a 3D printer do the work for you.