I mentioned in a post yesterday about my kitchen radio setup. Many years ago, before DAB was ever really a “thing”, I got an internet radio because the choice of FM stations was a bit bland.
Now, we’ve got smartphones that can get on-demand content, live radio and – with apps like Spotify – every music you could ever wish to hear. All it takes is a smartphone.
Sure, you can use your current smartphone. You can fire tunes via Bluetooth to your kitchen speaker, but I wanted to have a static solution which was ready and waiting.
So here’s my setup. It’s a stonking great Doogee Y6 Max 3D. It’s got a 6.5″ screen with an octa-core 1.5GHz CPU and 3GB RAM. Most of that isn’t important though. All I wanted was a big screen and fairly speedy CPU. An old 7″ tablet would do the job, but you can pick up a Doogee phones for less than £60 on eBay. That or grab an old Android / iPhone out of a cupboard drawer. It’s up to you.
Next step, for me, was to get a Bluetooth speaker. Some newer Bluetooth speakers are quite clever now. They’ll detect when no music is being played and they’ll shut down for power saving. To mitigate against this, I ensured that my Bluetooth speaker was always on charge and ensured that I got one without power saving.
After installing TuneIn, BBC iPlayer, Spotify, YouTube and a few other bits, I had everything I needed to listen to whatever tune or music station I needed. Plus, with Spotify, you can use your normal smartphone to send audio out through this system too. Here’s the video showing it in action….