Insomniacs Bedside Radio: signal to noise ratio

Raspberry Pi audio projects can be prone to noise issues.

I don't use our bedside radio very often, but when I do, I notice background noise.

I've finally got around to doing something about it.

Remote Control KitchenPi: playing with NodeJS

I wanted to change channels via a phone or iPad on our internet radio.

This looked like a good excuse to try out something new.

So I settled on getting my head around NodeJS, which looks ideal for headless Pi projects, including internet radios and birdbox camera systems.

Acrylic Splashbacks & KitchenPi

Earlier this year we refurbished our kitchen & utility room.

With a new layout, new floor, new sink, a mixture of new cabinet doors and a few completely new kitchen cabinets, we are happy with the end result.

However, the choice of red splashbacks meant we also needed a new enclosure for our internet radio: KitchenPi.

Bluetooth Audio Transmitter Repair

We recently had a problem with our Insomniacs Bedside Radio.

The Bluetooth pairing button seemed to have shifted position within the box, causing it to be jammed on.

So time to open it up and reposition it, or so I thought.

KitchenPi: adding a watchdog

Although KitchenPi has been running well for over two and a half years, I do get the occasional blip.

A recent issue caused the system to fall silent.

But this turned into an opportunity to do a couple of simple software modifications.

Internet Radio example using Gambas cli

Now that I'm taking Gambas command-line programming more seriously, I thought I might rewrite the software on my internet radios.

As mentioned in a recent post, Gambas can be used to write cli programs (command-line interface) as well as the more usual gui (graphical) applications.

So this post just describes the software aspects of this project, while the other design details can be found in earlier posts.

KitchenPi: an internet radio for my kitchen

We needed a radio in the kitchen to replace our Bush DAB/FM portable which has put in good service, although DAB reception in our area has never been great.

As space is at a premium, I wanted the new radio to take up as little space as possible.

So I came up with the idea of building something that would fit under the eye-level kitchen cabinets, behind the decorative molding.

The Insomniacs Bedside Radio

If you ever have difficulty getting [back] to sleep, you may find that reading a book or listening to music for a while will make you sleepy.

That's OK if you sleep alone, but turning on a light to read a book or cranking up the volume on your MP3 player at 2am may make you very unpopular if you share your bed.

But maybe you can get away with listening via a pair of headphones, if you keep the volume turned down low on your radio.