Whereas it went on to be eclipsed in significance by the iPhone, it’s truthful to say most individuals have a particular place of their hearts for the iPod. It’s in some ways the defining gadget of the mid-aughts. So what higher method to honor its legacy than by giving it a brand new lease on life and modding it to work with a music streaming service? That’s precisely what YouTuber Man Dupont (by way of Gizmodo) did when he up to date a 4th-generation iPod Traditional his mother-in-law gifted to him to make it run Spotify.
Earlier than getting too excited, know that this wasn’t a easy matter of sideloading the app. The 2004 mannequin Dupont hacked doesn’t include a manner to connect with the web over WiFi, so he needed to basically rebuild the gadget to let it entry Spotify.
The ensuing “sPot” options each WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, permitting it to connect with each wi-fi audio system and headphones, along with a coloration show and 1,000mAh battery. In the event you’re an audio purist, you’ll hate this subsequent half: the headphone jack on the high of the gadget is for present and doesn’t work. On the coronary heart of the gadget is the $10 Raspberry Pi Zero W. There’s additionally a motor that creates haptic suggestions when utilizing the clicking wheel. For charging the gadget, there’s a Micro-USB port. Whereas we’d have most popular a USB-C connection, Micro-USB is unquestionably an enchancment over Apple’s 30-pin connector (bear in mind these?).
All advised, all of the parts set him lower than $100. Coming in at $40, the most costly half was the colour display screen Dupont used to switch the iPod’s authentic show (the 4th-generation mannequin was the final one to ship with a monochromatic display screen). A part of the explanation it was so costly was that almost all producers don’t make shows that small anymore since even the smallest smartphone display screen is larger than something that got here with a click on wheel iPod. The actual fact the gadget works so properly got here all the way down to a little bit of luck. Dupont discovered a decade-old Hackaday article that particulars how one of many connectors contained in the iPod work. That allowed him to make the clicking wheel play good with all the opposite parts.
The programming powering the sPot is a mixture of software program Dupont wrote himself and an app referred to as Raspotify, which permits a Raspberry Pi pc to entry the streaming service by means of the Spotify Connect API. The front-end interface he coded even permits the sPot to seek for songs — although as you may think, with no touchscreen keyboard, it could take some time to enter even a few characters.
When you’ve got an previous iPod sitting unused in a drawer someplace and need to tackle the venture your self, Dupont has uploaded an in depth overview to Hackaday. He’s additionally within the means of importing the software program he wrote for the venture to GitHub.
