Simple ESP32 Internet radio on VFD Display

2024-05-03 | By Mirko Pavleski

License: General Public License ESP32

Internet radio, also known as online radio or streaming radio, refers to the broadcasting of audio content over the internet. Unlike traditional radio stations that transmit over the airwaves, internet radio stations broadcast their content exclusively through the internet. Overall, internet radio has become a popular alternative to traditional radio broadcasting due to its accessibility, diversity of content, and quality. In one of my previous videos, I presented how to make an Internet radio with a TFT display and multi-format audio codec module VS1053.

The device presented in this video represents the simplest way to make an Internet radio with a minimum number of components. The project is based on a project by Gerald Lechner, and I made a small hardware modification, so instead of an LCD display, now I use a VFD display, which gives a special retro touch to the device.

As I mentioned before, the device is very simple to make, and consists of several components:

- ESP32 Development Board

- VFM202 MDA1 type VFD display with 20x2 characters and I2C interface module

- Rotary encoder - several resistors

- and if we don't want to use only headphones, we also need a PAM 8403 amplifier board and a pair of speakers

As for the hardware, you can use a standard I2C LCD instead of the VFD without any code changes. In a previous project of mine (https://youtu.be/gotUokTuP9U) there is information on how to modify this VFD display so that you can use it in the same way as a 16x2 LCD with HD44780 chip.

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The only thing we need to pay attention to in this case is the I2C address of the display interface module, which we can determine with the "I2C Scanner" Arduino sketch. We need to put the obtained value in the code in the line: LiquidCrystal_I2C lcd ( 0x27 , 16 , 2 ) ; // set the LCD address to the specified value. This time we will not dwell on the installation of the code, on the esp32 board, because it has been previously described several times. It is only important to emphasize that you must use the libraries given below, as well as esp32 Version 1.0.6 in the Arduino IDE. At the beginning of the code we need to enter the credentials of our local network, and the desired internet radio stations are entered below in the code after the line: Station stationlist [ STATIONS ] PROGMEM = { A maximum of 100 stations can be defined.