“This is a funny little device - unfortunately it's far from being HiFi due to the missing speaker box (the radio has no back cover at all).
I made a little 3D printable box for the speaker - its still far from HiFi but the sound quality improved at least a bit:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2484062
Picoreplayer works out of the box when selecting Hifiberry mini as DAC.
For button support you have to install the Python and RPi-GPIO extension from the web GUI. Afterwards it is quite easy to adapt the Pimoroni lib.
Unfortunately I haven't got the Pivumeter running yet as it needs to be compiled. Will try to do it on a Raspbian box and transfer the Pivumeter binary...”
“This is really an awesome kit ! Just a tiny RPi with a beautiful face, with the help of a BEAT and a speaker and you get yourself a Radio .
The assembly is really easy and the final result is as cool as a pirate with a wooden leg.
Pimoroni just got to the spot with the easy installation tutorial for the radio, although I would prefer a more manual installation method to really understand what's going on (but it's just me).
It sits perfect in my desk ! Great job guys !”
“This was really fun to put together the acrylic is really wonderful. The basic setup was a breeze just do yourself a favor and only install one software project at a time. My unit shipped with one of the nylon spacers partially filled in so I had to tinker with it a bit to make it useable, but that, fixing the wobbly legs, and replacing the speaker driver with something a bit beefier is all part of what makes a kit like this an experience worth having. Like halfway between a model airplane and a Lego set, but with a better end product that doesn't just sit there.”
“When I got my first model B raspberry pi one of the first things I tried with xbmc was internet radio streaming. It worked ok but as I was using a 42" plasma TV the power budget was off the scale! So I shelved the idea until I discovered this product, it's all I was after plus an awesome stand/holder that I have no practical means to produce myself. The build quality of the laser cut pieces makes for some slick lines and using the frosted layer diffuses the PhatBeat LED's nicely and the blue layer pretty much stops any light bleed through making the VU meter look great. The kit took me only 10 minutes to construct, but either in transit or manufacture 1 LED and 2 current limiting resistors were in the bottom of the antistatic bag the PhatBeat board came in. This was quickly rectified upon sending a picture of the damaged item an a replacement was sent out. This was great of the Pimoroni team and I offered to return the faulty one, given it can be repaired (but I don't have the proper equipment) but was advised to keep it. The three (as of writing) tutorials for the different ways to stream content work perfectly (I've settled on VLC)
So am I happy? Absolutely
Would I purchase from Pimoroni again? Already have! :wink:”
“I love this kit. It is fun looks great on my desk!
(Small problem you might check before assembly - Both connections to the speaker had a cold solder joint. When soldering the headers for the kit, you might want to touch up the connections to the speaker, if needed)
Fos”
“This is my first raspberry pi, so it's a learning experience, but I'm really enjoying it.
I built the hardware using the hammer headers (instead of soldering) as I don't have a soldering iron or the skills. Following the tutorial video gave some reassurance, although the male pins seemed to be at a bit of an angle, and I wasn't sure if I'd knocked one side too far.
I gave the pins, a couple gentle knocks wth the hammer from the side, and everything was ok!
After assembly I burned an image of Jesse Lite onto an 8GB memory card, using Mac OS Disk Utility. As I don't have a TV, or wired keyboard or mouse, I set it up to run headless (i.e. connecting it to wifi and enabling ssh) using advice on the internet.
Jesse Lite loaded a charm, and running the vlc radio project was very straightforward.
I've now customised the feeds, and am looking at what other things I can do on top of the vlc project (or what things the pi might be able to do in the background). I'm really pleased with the kit!”
“The speaker is good quality. This makes it fun to explore possibilities, e.g. adding podcasts to vlc radio playlist.
One minus, I lost the connection with the usb-port, but I can overcome it by logging in over ssh.”
