Thanks for this video David, you've certainly added something to the internet! I found one of these RM20's at my grandads house, who sadly passed away recently, I was struck by how nice the thing looked and I intend to turn it into an internet radio in homage to him - thank you!

That was an awesome video! My husband does some similar things with old suitcases. He generally turns them into Bluetooth or aux jacked audio boxes. They are a pretty big hit with friends and family.

Thanks David, great video. A great combination of solutions. I learned a lot. Take care.

Amazing stuff! That Capacitor-Trick made my day. Thank you. And nice to see my most loved radio station at number 1. Radio Caroline rocks!

Looks like I'm over year late in finding your presentation. Beautiful and so well thought out. I've build several ESP32 radios from one station to four. All produced less than satisfactory results. Play for a while then quit. Reboot and play for hours then quit. On the multi channel radios using push buttons to go up and down, usually quit changing in proper sequence. So, after almost a year and a half after shelving the project, you have inspired me to try again. The slider dial did it! Thank you David.

Very well done. I've never got beyond the bread board stage of any projects on Arduino, and this at least opened the door to show 'how'. Excellent presentation skills too - so refreshing not to have to endure any repetitive presenter ticks such as 'like', 'um', 'uh' etc. Thank you.

I've been waiting (patiently?!?) for a new video from you Mr Watts....looking forward to watching this...

Keep up the good work David! Well done.

Nice project! Your explanations are very clear and it's inspirational to see a nice project from start to end. Well done!

Audio quality seems good. Looks like you had a lot of fun making this. Love the capacitor reading trick.

Well done.!!! Nice details / explanation showing how to change and modify all the "Stuff". From not only the radio components, but, mostly the libraries and code.

That is a nice conversion, and I have learned a good deal from you. Thanks David. i shall be binge watching you for the next few weeks in between "playing with my batteries and stuff at my workbench" as my very tolerant wife says.

That was great David! What a fantastic result!

Thanks David, I really enjoyed that.

Nice work, good explanation. Thank you.

Well done David - quite apart from the techy side, you've made a really nice video. I really like the idea of reading the VC for tuning and the resulting 'product' is fantastic!

Great little project!

Amazing video. Great project and very inspiring! 👍😀

Perfect! Exactly what i haved planed for my old tuner :) Very cool Project!

That's what a call a useful and inspiring project! Thanks for sharing all the details, wonder how many old radios can get a "New Life" out this hack! Please keep posting your videos... Greetings from Brazil!

I actually found one of these radios outside a house in Catford today!!! This is amazing!

Great projekt! I like to tinker about with things like these but I don't have a lot of knowledge about electronics. You made this one look very accessible and doable for someone like me who takes hours to make an arduino switch one relay with one button push and another one with two pushes of the same button. Thanks for sharing!

Nice project. Well done

Wanted to make my own internet radio + mp3 player from an old radio and was ready to go raspberry pi route, but I have to tell you - your video made me change my mind and give ESP32 a go. It's one thing to see a quick tutorial video, but it's another seeing the whole process! Seeing you go through the whole process showed me that I too can work with microntrollers! So thanks David, you definitely added "a little something" to the internet and a big something to my life!

Nice project, loved it !

Great project and good tutorial. Thanks.

Nice work, David!

Awesome work!

Great video David! I actual have an RM40 around but it still works so It wouldn't feel right performing surgery.

Great work and Class look 👌

Good video. Good research. Thanks

My first time viewing one of your videos, thank you David that was really enjoyable and informative to watch, like others here I think it will encourage me to retrofit this into an old radio, I have a 1939 GEC valve radio that might be a candidate but have to test if the tuning capacitor on an old set like that can be read as in the tutorial.

wow such cool idea! I might do a similar project someday! thanks for the video!

Awesome! This gave me the strength to publish tutorials of the things I do.

The audio is good, I heard no noisy thing. It's quite nice to do transforming old stuff more equipped as a hobby project, I liked.

That is brilliant!

What a handsome radio

Very cool David. I have been planning to make a speaker from some electronics I have salvaged.

Great tutorial !! I may have to make one. I like to go to thrift stores to find old radios for projects. I passed on one that looked like this just yesterday.

Great project!

I've put in a warm white LED in an old FM radio and it looks awesome

Thank you for this video. Love the idea of modding an old radio into something more modern on the inside and yet keep the functionality of the radio. I'm just wondering if adding a small display on the front, for just displaying text the like radio station name, would be handy or if it would be too much of an aesthetic to the radio.

A few months ago I tested a lot of ways how to get an internet radio working. I was thinking of using an old tablet, old phone and such. In the end I had left 2 devices which drew the least amount of power. A mobile phone (Motorola XT 1032, unmodded) did nice (via Bluetooth or cable, but Bluetooth is a lot easier) and the other device was (is) an old iPod. Yes, that is it! An old iPod, I did have to add a small internet page which 'delivers' all radio channels because you can't really go on internet with the iPod browser (super slow and some javascript won't run on it). I have had the iPod running for a long time (days in a mont), and the average use is 0.5 Watt. And that was my aim: finding a device with a good stereo sound using not to much power. And that it runs on 5 Volt is super neat as well. it now runs on a small solar cell which tops the powerbank using some old laptop cells that i had laying around. I am way more happy than the silly DAB radio which is using way more power (about 3 Watt) and which seems to loose its signal several times a day. There are several places where to get your radio streams, I get mine from vtuner.com/setupapp/guide/asp/BrowseStations/startpage.asp and the amount is so huge ! ! ! I love to switch to new stations and explore more and more. Starting to like some chill out stations, some Celtic ones and then some more .. .. More to check: www.radio-browser.info/gui/#!/users Thanks for sharing your project. It would be not mine since I want way less power usage and only full stereo. The iPod is doing very well on its sound output! Oldies but goldies.

Success!!!!! Problem was operator error. :-( Works great. Now to code in my favorite streams and put it all in a cabinet. THANK YOU very much.

Nice. I've been looking for old radios at boot fairs for a similar project but not found one yet.

Great video. Thank you

An analog web radio...that’s the type of thinking outside the box I like!

Great video!

Thanks for the video. I have been building wifi radios for a few years now I have made them for family and friends. Sine we live in an extreme rural area where real radio is difficult to tune in, we have one FM station that is a copy of the one AM station here in town. If you have an external antenna for your radio, you can tune in some other stations within a couple hundred miles but they are weak. If you love SW then there are a few stations that you can get with a good set and an outdoor antenna. I do have one small, well medium small AM/SW set built in the old USSR that pulls stations in without the external antenna, love that little set, just had to replace on capacitor to bring her back to full life. Shipping was an issue but it got here, I picked it up as "parts" for a total of 40 bucks half for shipping half for the radio. The thing I always wanted was a unique way for tuning in the wifi without a screen. Most of mine have a screen and I tune them with a rotery encoder, this works fine if you don't mind the screen, but I wanted one where I could use the tuningcap on an old 1957 GE AM tube set that is pretty much trashed as the early board is pretty much gone, someone has gone through it and soldered old power cord wire atop the printed board but that is kind of sketchy. I have all the parts for this build in stock, in fact I was experimenting with a different V1053 board, smaller made for a different setup on a beagle bone black board which works great and is a very small footprint with an ESP32 mounted beside it and the wires jumped on the board I think it will be a simple matter to add the nano to change stations. How many stations can you put on this using the capacitor for tuning?

very nice !!!!

Well David, you did create a great looking radio after my initial doubt as to whether or not it was a good idea- but the end justifies the means. Job Done , Well Done. Barnie M7PBX. Oh listen they're playing a Jam song on the Radio- lol.

Fabulous video. Thanks David. I am also working on my own version and having a woodworking friend of mine create a reproduction of an old Phillips radio (the 1930s cathedral one) to house my internet radio+ project, also using an ESP32 and VS1053. Love the idea of also using a Nano for other functions. Would you be able to put an image of the schematic for the USB power supply you created as power consumption is what I am struggling with at the mo and it might help me. Thanks.

actually... it's based on the radio Andreas Spiess made months before educ8s has done his video ;) however, I love the design with the old radio! looks great :D

Totally forgot to comment on this video to say top job David! Really great project! I have a similar project in my never ending pipeline to make a "GTA Vice City" radio with an 80's radio, it was using the Raspberry Pi, but looks like an ESP32 may be suitable enough to manage all the audio now with a decoder board - sounds promising! When I saw is say 42 minutes... how dare you!!!! 10 minutes later watching it, I thought I best get comfy! I'd echo other people's thoughts - any way to integrate the nano's job into the ESP32?

The Pimoroni Pirate Radio Kit could probably be retrofitted into this case, and still use the varcap dial. The $50 kit includes a PiZeroW, pHAT BEAT DAC, stereo amp with VU meter and six buttons. Adafruit is a distributor, and has a nice writeup explaining the whole process.

Ingenious project. 👍 For me as an option: LAN connection would be a dream. Thanks.ツ

Nice build! I'm torn between repairing the old radio and projects like these. :P

That was a really nice conversion for that radio! If I had the knowledge to do such, I'm sure I'd do something similar. Though is there any way of finding the streams for non BBC stations? I sometimes listen to Radio 1, and that's more or less it: most of my listening is via commercial radio stations.

Great work David, love it, doing something similar myself now. Only thing I am doing differently (basically because the nanos are acting up!) is I am using the touch sensor (touchRead(T0) with the variable cap connected to pin4, and the other end of the cap connected to ground, solid results (so far, leaving it run while I keep an eye on the values) with this code from microcontrollerslab dot com slash esp32-touch-sensor-button-example: int touch_sensor_value=0; void setup() { Serial.begin(115200); Serial.println("Touch sensor tutorial ESP32"); } void loop() { touch_sensor_value = touchRead(T0); Serial.print("Touch0 value is = "); Serial.println( touch_sensor_value); delay(1000); } Anyway, thanks for helping me get started on this, great stuff!!!

I've learned to have a 4mm drill in the toolbox for cutting the tracks on veroboard :)

I wonder if you tweaked the Andreas code a bit and added ESP 32's Bluetooth feature and made it a Bluetooth speaker too and if you can add your automated radio station( or play some mp3's which you choose) it would be awesome

Your fiberglass pencil is called a burnishing tool... and yes they are fantastic

Really nice to see! Where to get the current tester?

You can get I2S amplifier boards and use ESP32 to decode MP3 internally. Also, you don't need extra Arduino to read cap, ESP32 has 2 8-bit DACs built-in. As a result, you'll get rid of 2 extra boards and make it's much simpler and compact.

It’s a lovely thing. Found myself searching eBay for an old radio whilst watching. Cheers

Cool stuff! You can skip the nano alltogether, just do the exact same thing on the ESP32, it has a ton of analog pins and I doubt it's going to interfere with the radio stuff.

The tuner with variable capacitor and Nano is genius! It put a big smile on my face when it came to life. Tuning the radio, ever so close, but no cigar for me. Do you have a forum or group through which one can communicate? Tnx.

I have two internet radios working with raspberry p 3 (with terrible rotary encoders for tuning) and I wanting to build a third one , impossible to find a RBP , now waiting for the esp32 to arrive, already built the arduino reading the capacitor and it works like a charm with your code!! Thanks!

Nice job. I've been planning to do something like this but haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm not sure why you needed the Arduino, it seems to me that you could have done it all on just the ESP32.

That was a great video David. I would like to recreate this with an old roberts rambler I have. I have no issues in the physical side of doing this but am quite new to coding. Would you consider sharing your codes for this project please?

David! Only just stumbled across your channel by chance now. Nice to see some more nerd 'mo's out there. I have an old ROSS radio that I want to turn into an internet radio with Raspberry Pi and 7" touchscreen display (already mounted), but unsure what do with the software side of things. I see you mention your RM20 was previously a RPi radio but I looked and couldn't find anything in your previous videos. Can you point me in the right direction? Thanks a bunch xoxo

A boost converter to power the old bulb at a higher voltage. But actually, a bright white LED (3 to cover the range of the scale might have been better?

How did you wire the variable capacitor? I couldn't quite make it out. Thanks! Great tutorial!

Is there a parts list? I caught some of it from the video, but didn't catch all of the names of the parts. Thanks for sharing

My mothers old DAB+ with Internet radio is having issues, piss poor reception, the wifi and dab has been terrible from day one. But recently it have been worse, and also there is a lot of noise on speaker from the internal components, have not tried with a 12v battery to exclude power supply issue. Could try and solder on an external antenna also. I even recently had to replace its power supply, it was just a regular 12v psu internally, so an external psu was easy to find. She only listen to one station. I only need the mp3 decoder (can it do other formats?), got a small amplifier laying around.

I love it, but think that if you could get the existing volume knob to work with the new circuit then it would finish it off nicely.

Just awesome! Best regards from Russia ;)

Kind of makes me dream of turning the (obsolete) AM band of one of my of my old Pioneer receivers into the online radio band, think that could be done?

Awesome video David, this has inspired me to give it a go, so thank you. I noticed that you used pins 32, 33 & 35 rather than 5, 16 & 4. Is there a reason for this?

Hello David, your video about the expansion of the Roberts RM20 is very successful. Thanks a lot for this. I would like to recreate it. Do you have a tip where I can get Radio Roberts RM20 from?

nice

Great project, why did you use a nano for the station dial instead of measuring it with the esp32? 😊

Me: "How do you keep up with your bracketing with your indentation being all random?" Later: Failed to compile due to missing bracket.

David, I have a suggestion: Is it possible to use the existing Band Selector of the radio (some old radios have at least three Bands) to change between station's libraries, for example: Rock, Blues, News, Foreign and so forth? That would add a lot of potential to this project!

Thanks David, great work on retrofitting that old radio! Did you consider using one of the unused switches on the front for a power switch? Or maybe replacing the original volume knob with the one on the amp?

brb let me get some food and a coffee in this for the long haul

Love this, I too have a very old Roberts Pi Radio project that needs updating. Could you get the esp32 to handle the dial input as well as data? I'm going to give it a whirl. Your long switch statement seems a bit redundant?? Can't it all just be replaced with: if ((incomingData>=1)&&(incomingData

I wonder if it would be possible to just leave out the nano and use the ESP32's second core to run the nano code

Just throwing this out there as I have no idea about this stuff, but could you place a backlit LCD display behind the station indicator? You could then use it to display the internet stations and still tune it as originally intended. Could also use it to show a little more info eg time, date, song playing etc

You don't even need an MP3 decoder for this. You can decode the stream and output it via I2S on the ESP32 or even use the internal DAC. There is even an Arduino library for that.

If you had a pi and a nano then you had an easy solution for the shutdown and start up time. Don't shut it down. Keep it running in a sleep mode and have a super cap or a small li battery. When you turn it off it sleeps and if you unplug it then the nano notices that the power is cut and then tells the pi to shut down while the supercar or battery runs the system. Done. Plus you could add an SDR and make it also a real radio as well as internet radio.

This video is really cool, well done mod and astonishing result. My take away is your "arduinization without destruction" philosophy, not so easy to do :-)

i'm puzzled as to why the original roberts volume variable resistor could not be used? i guess the radio one is mono, and the pam board is stereo, but as your running mono you only need to use one channel of the pam board, so three wires from the original knob to the pam channel your using and the other channels 'wiper' can be grounded to prevent it floating and oscillating. it will be a different value but unless its a really low value i cant see it bothering anything

I think the best Roberts radio was the one witht the turntable on the bottom. As a kid I used to spin my mun's radio around as fast as i could as it made the music sound like it was phasing in and out very fast. Think you should have put the volume pot on the front to keep the orignal control function.

Hi David Really excellent project. I'm a newbe to programming. I'm trying to reproduce your project but having difficulty incorporating the new BBC streams. I have working streams but I get a 'can't connect message'. Happy to send the files as I'm sure you will need to update your radio too.

I t worked fine but now I only get Cornucopia Broadcasting and Classic FM. What happened tot the BBC channels?

Interesting project. The next step would be to get rid of the Arduino and instead measure the capacitance with the ESP32.

Nothing like a boat anchor, if you can find an old reel to reel tape player, one might send a signal from the tape magneto.

Hi David. I could really do with some help. No matter if I use the original code, with all the screen and eprom stuff removed, as was in your video or if I run your esp32 code I am unable to get this project to work. The serial monitor continues to display loop (): number 0. Got to say am I a little lost. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am trying to convert my Grandfathers old Roberts R404. Thanks Nick

Theres a Roberts RM20 on eBay right now for 25GBP. Looks like the case needs a little love.