Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Weekend Project: Pirate Radio Throwie”.
Now, what better way to celebrate the launch of the new raspberry pi than to revisit one of our favorite pie projects from a few years ago? The pirate radio, only this time with the smaller form factor of the board, we’ll be able to take the portability of this broadcaster even further and make it a pirate radio throwy a word of caution before we begin the broadcast frequencies of this project can range between 1 and 250 megahertz, which may interfere with government bands limit your transmission to standard fm band of 87.5 to 108. Megahertz always choose a frequency, that’s not already in use to avoid interference with licensed broadcasters and check your local laws before transmitting to get started with the pi zero. You will need the usual usb keyboard, mouse and hdmi monitor, but you’ll also need a usb on the go cable. These aren’t typical, so a smart move is to order them right when you order your pie or try to make your own start by making the antenna cut off a four to six inch length of 18 gauge solid, core wire and strip off the end solder. It to pin four on the zero and trim off any excess. Next, we’ll need to set up our software install raspbian os on the microsd card inserted into the pi connect, a keyboard mouse and wi-fi dongle via the usb on the go, cable and boot up. The pi set up your wi-fi connection and then clone the git repo for pi fm, compile pi fm and give it a quick test with some of the supplied, sound files, making sure that your radio is tuned to the declared frequency.
Now we’ll get it ready to play our own music, install mpg123, a command-line mp3 player load, some music onto your pi, and test this out by piping the standard output from mpg123 into pi fm. Now we just need to set up the pi so that it will broadcast all your music upon boot. Once that’s done, the software setup of the device is complete. Now we just need to build the throwy trim, the belt clip of the battery pack off and sand. It flat use hot glue to attach some strong magnets to one side of the battery pack and hook and loop fasteners to attach the pie to the other side, use a short usb micro, cable to power. The pi from the battery pack and you’re all set switch.
The pi on and give it a toss towards a metal structure sure you can just broadcast your own private radio station to your own home, but with the pi zero being as cheap as it is. You can easily make quite a few of these and deploy them around your city, leave radio geocaches for friends or have an afternoon radio scavenger hunt. If you liked this video subscribe to our website or send us a comment on facebook or twitter be sure to check out our other project videos or visit us on makezine.com, you .