Sometimes the coolest Raspberry Pi projects are simple ideas done right and that's exactly what we've got on our hands today. Maker and developer Tonight-we-ride, as they're known as over at Reddit, has built a music player system using our favorite SBC and fixed it up with a cool case and touchscreen for input.
The system is setup as a dedicated music playing platform so there isn't a keyboard or mouse for input, just the touchscreen. The hardware is housed inside of a slick case with a white finish that's fitted with some cool decals including some Japanese text that reads "Cyberware" across the front. It doesn't have a built-in speaker but is connected to an external sound system for audio output.
According to Tonight-we-ride, the design was inspired by a cyberdeck built by another Reddit user known as Slipstreamsystem. This rig, however, isn't intended to be a cyberdeck but rather just a media platform. It uses an open source audio player called QMMP and relies on XMMS running Winamp and custom skins.
You don't need the latest Raspberry Pi 5 to recreate this project. Tonight-we-ride is using a Raspberry Pi 4 but you could easily use something smaller like a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W in its stead. The Pi is connected to the original Raspberry Pi 7-inch touchscreen (but the new Touch Display 2 would also work) and housed inside of a SmartPi brand Touch Pro Touchscreen case. The speaker used is an external soundbar that the Pi connects to using Bluetooth.
In the project thread, Tonight-we-ride shares links to all of the sources used to setup the system including Soma.fm for streaming music and a link to ylsoftware which hosts a selection of skins for the interface. According to the thread, Winamp runs just fine using Wine but QMMP also supports Winamp skins which ended up being preferable in the long run. A little more work is still needed to complete the setup including launching QMMP on startup as well as setting it up to run in full screen mode.
If you want to get a closer look at this Raspberry Pi project, check out the original thread posted to Reddit.
