My 94yo father has gone virtually blind. He can no longer use his phone. Also, he has developed a stutter, which makes voice control impractical. He is, however, still mentally crisp and likes to listen to podcasts.
I want to make him a really simple audio player. I’m thinking a big Play/Pause button and maybe skip forwards, skip back. And a volume control. Does not need to be stereo. I would upload his favourite podcasts via memory stick when I visit and he can hit a big green button when he wants to listen.
I have some basic soldering skills and electronic understanding. I’m familiar enough with RPi Pico and I’ve used RPi 4B for another project, and have some Python skills - enough to get by with help from forums and ChatGPT.
Having said that, I’m also happy to use off-the-shelf stuff, but in general they have too many features that I think he will find confusing.
So I’m after some general guidance as to the best approach. ChatGPT suggests RPi zero, but I wonder if I should use a dedicated mp3 player like DFPlayer, or Adafruit I2S Audio Bonnet.
I’m currently doing some audio too so I have some recommendations.
mcu
Have a look at this MCU with HAT combo I really liked. Some simple micro python and you are on your way. Plenty of volume. I like it.
rpi zero
I really liked using raspberry pi zeros for audio.
It was really easy to set up and get working.
Thinking practically if you ever want to add more files It’s as simple as jumping online and downloading right on the pi.
I like also that you can use any programming language you are already familiar with.
If you need a recommendation
Playsound: sooo easy it’s almost too good to be true.
Rodio: powerful, more boilerplate, by far my favorite.
Processing Sound: You could have this working in 3 mins. Processing is very much the darling or the creative coding world.
My 92 yo father is losing his sight and is partially deaf. Can’t work anything that he hasn’t been operating for 30 years as he needs the “muscle memory” to operate anything. He also eschewed anything “new” since he retired in the late 80s. So any level of tech is beyond him.
Two years ago I got him an iPad Pro for eBooks so he can enlarge the text; this after a 10 year battle! The iPad is a constant drama as he can’t work it, has no clue as to what’s he’s doing, and has not got his head around touch screens and tapping; he does a more stab/slide motion which has unpredictable results. Recently I got him into audio books as his sight’s going but again, as he has no skill with the iPad so that’s hit and miss too.
My sister got him a mobile phone for the sight-impaired but as he’s never had a mobile phone, he can’t work it.
He has battery fire phobia so won’t charge anything unless he standing next to the device ready to disconnect at the first sign of smoke.
What he needs is a 3 button device that will play/pause and change volume; that has a big bright charge LEDs; a headphone socket, USB-C charge port, maybe an display for the book title, and most importantly, can be remotely access to load audio books. I live 3 hours away.
Thanks, Mark. I’ll be sure to post my prototypes and what I learn along the way. I’m leaning towards a pico to control a DFPlayer for instantaneous start up. A simple user interface isn’t always best served by simple underlying tech, but we’ll see.
I made myself a podcast player that plays for 10 minutes and turns itself off for when I sleep. I used a nano clone with a DFPlayer. Here’s a very short video of it in action.
