Linamp is a media player box based on Raspberry Pi 4 SBC and a touchscreen display with a GUI that replicates the popular Winamp media player’s GUI that older readers may remember from the late 90s and early 2000s when it was one of the most popular music players for Windows.
Rodmg found some renders of what a real Winamp player could look like online, and it inspired him to create his own. As its name implies Linamp runs on Linux (DietPi) instead of Windows, and the hardware is based on a Raspberry Pi 4, a 7.9-inch touchscreen display, a USB DAC, and various connectors and cables, all housed in a custom-designed metal enclosure and a 3D-printed front cover both designed with Onshape.
Here’s the complete list of off-the-shelf items used for the build:
- SBC – Raspberry Pi 4 with a 32 GB microSD card, a set of passive heat sinks, and the bottom part of a Raspberry Pi case
- Display – 7.9-inch ultrawide display connected via HDMI and USB, the latter being used for power and touch input
- Micro HDMI to mini HDMI cable
- Apple USB-C to 3.5mm DAC with a USB-C to USB-A adapter
- Extension cable for USB 2.0 + headphone jack
- Extension cable for the Ethernet jack
- Extension cable for the Raspberry Pi 4’s USB-C port
- Push button connected to the Raspberry Pi GPIO for power on/off
On the software side, the system runs Dietpi lightweight Linux distribution based on Debian 12 Bookworm. A custom Qt 6 app with Qt Widgets and Audacious code used for the spectrum analyzer was written in C++ to reproduce the look and feel of the original Winamp player. The code has not been made open-source yet, but I understand the plan is to make the project fully open-source. The first photo above already looks neat, but you may be even more impressed after watching the video.
The project’s Hackaday.io page has more details and says the following works in Linamp:
- MP3, m4a, FLAC, etc. audio playback from local file systems or SAMBA mounts.
- Playlist management for file playback
- Real-time bar spectrum analyzer
- Track information display including bitrate and sample rate
- Volume and balance control
- CD Playback (when connecting an external CD drive), including getting the track information from MusicBrainz
Bluetooth and Spotify playback are also being worked on.
I can already hear some say “Just take my money!”, but right now it’s not available. It’s not even possible to build your own as the 3D file and source code for the program are yet to be released. Once/if it is released you should be able to build one yourself. Alternatively, Rodmg has published an interest survey on Google Docs, and if enough people are interested he may start selling the Linamp system either as a kit or a fully assembled system.
Via Hackaday
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Neat !
Does it whip the llama’s ass, though?
Hahahah …good one!
You know it REALLY does.
That’s why it’s got all that cable coiled up. Just need a lama.
What a waste of space. Instead of all those cables, a decent D-class amplifier could be placed easily. Along with PSU.
This news is old as dirt. Was announced months ago
Could be a fun project although as a music player, surely a Pi 3b+ would be more than capable, or even one of the smaller boards.
Seems that options could be available such as internal speakers.
Some kind of remote control feature would be needed, either dedicated or via bluetooth.
If is could be done relatively cheap then I may potentially see myself having some practical use out of it.
Heck, I’m old enough to remember when “Linamp” was still the name for what became XMMS…
buttons should be physical, not flat 2d touch screen
Internet radio streaming and a LAN web interface, please. Thank you.
Pretty cool but would be a must have for me if it had support for milkdrop 2… I still use the original winamp specifically for that reason. Not sure how a SBC might handle the graphics. Maybe it’s just not feasible but one can dream
Milkdrop 2 is a trip.