One of the coolest parts about internet radio is that you don’t need to limit yourself to your country’s stations. If you really want, you can go on a little world tour and listen to radio stations in different countries to check out what kind of music they enjoy.
But what if you could put this experience into an ESP32-S3 device with a touch screen? Well, that’s exactly what one specialist did with his microcontroller, and it’s an excellent way to explore the world from the comfort of your desk.
This DIY Internet Radio brings the world to your fingertips
There are plenty of stations to choose from
on ESP32 subAdrian Cubas showed off his fantastic ESP32-S3 radio built on the Freenove FNK0104. It features a touch screen with a world map on it. Tap the country, and the radio will start playing a station from it. Copas says they wanted something more accessible and nicer than just a huge list of stations, and I think they really nailed that with this design.
Here are some technical specifications for the project:
– LVGL 8 + LovyanGFX for UI, ESP32-audioI2S for MP3/AAC streams (one core for audio, one for UI)
– ~3700 stations from radio-browser.info, filtered and tested on a PC the same way the board requests them (I caught one: zeno.fm returns a 401 with no user agent, so I patch the library to send one)
– The station list is in LittleFS and is updated over Wi-Fi from GitHub pages, without reloading files
If you’d like to learn more, check out the video above to see it in action. You can also check the code at github And follow This building guide To make it yourself at home.
