Pi Zero Portable Network Music Player (Part 1)

About a year ago I built a Raspberry Pi 2 HiFi player using Volumio and a HiFiBerry DAC+ Pro.  Since then, I’ve greatly enjoyed the sound quality from the sub-$150 player, but wished I could take it on the road with me.  There were two problems:

  1. The thing was just too big
  2. There was no headphone amplifier

That left me looking for different options.  My player was great for the living room attached to my stereo, but not so good for outdoor parties or easy listening when the kids wanted movies on the entertainment center.  Then the Raspberry Pi Zero caught my eye.  And at $5, how can you go wrong?

I did some surfing around and found IQAudio, another maker of I2S DAC’s for Raspberry Pi.  They had one built specifically for the Zero, and theirs had an optional headphone amplifier!  I was obviously impressed, and picked that up right away.  I had suspected, and quickly verified, that I would need to do some modifying to get this package to be as portable as I wanted:

Original Stack

My DAC came with the header attached.  It has come to my attention that is now available without.  I’d have saved a lot of desoldering grief if I’d have had that option.  Needless to say, all the headers cam off, and I “squished” everything to the smallest package possible without shorts:

Squished Pi Zero

Also note I removed the RCA jacks.  For this project I am not going to use them, so I saved the space for something else.  Also notice the Edimax Wifi adapter with the OTG widget adapter.  (I had already popped the vanity cover off the Wifi adapter, that’s why the bright blue and scifi antenna).  Volumio is controlled via a web interface, the newest releases enable a hot spot at boot for on the go control.  I have only gotten this to function with the Edimax adaptor, however even if others work, the Edimax is the correct size for what I’m working toward.

 

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