Still in progress !!

The audio hardware

I bought a simple 2x100W audio amplifier which is now placed in the toilets, fixed on the wall.

Then I have two Focal Custom IC speakers which are designed to be embedded into walls. I set one in the bathroom ceiling, just over the shower, and the other one in the living room :

And of course, they are water-proof ! The sound is very powerful, and the quality is perfect after some time of running in.

I really enjoy taking showers with music :)

The only bad point is, I have an unpleasant background noise when outputting the sound from the Raspberry PI. This is unnoticeable when the sound is loud, but very annoying when it is low, for example to make background music. I tried many solutions to get rid of it, but nothing works yet. I have asked for help on the Raspberry PI forums to finally find a fix.

Playlists

I wanted to manage playlists from the touchscreen, but editing them is not very convenient. The solution I found is using the playlists from my Synology NAS, where the musics are stored : in the Web Audio application, you can edit playlists which are then stored in an accessible file.

By the way, the songs information are also stored on the NAS, directly in a PostGreSQL database. Qt has a native driver to access it, so I can retrieve everything very easily and play the songs I want !

I also made a smart shuffle algorithm, because I really don't like to hear the same musics at short intervals.

The case

After finishing designing the case, I wanted to make a prototype to check that everything fits in. The final 3D-printed part costs about 80€ which is really expensive, so I had to be sure :) I discovered the website http://www.makexyz.com/ where you can ask people who own a 3D printer, to print parts and send them to you. The machines are not professionnal, so the cost is really lower. I could have my prototype for 12€ including shipping !

When I finally received it, the printing quality was much better than I expected, so I decided to make it my final part. I polished and painted it, so now it really looks good.
After all the wires modifications, I finally found some time to put everything together :

Everything just fits in the case ! I reduced the number of wires as much as possible, to avoid troubles. I removed the monitor board where the IR LED was solded, and directly connected it. I just need the LED, not the buttons, so I got rid of the PCB.
I thought I would stick the touch panel and the screen to the case with epoxy resin, but I didn't like the idea that I couldn't ever unmount these parts. A colleague told me I could add foam pads behind the screen, so that they would maintain it pressed on the wall once placed. It is not very elegant, but does work very well ! Here it is, once everything in place :

I'm actually very satisfied with the render ! The color is the very one of our living room theme. And with the screen turned on :

It does still work ! I was a bit scared when I placed all the wires in the wall, because there are a lot of them, but no problem.. But wait, 23.8°C ? Summer isn't already there ! It seems I have a problem of temperature : the screen, or the monitor board, is producing some heat which moves to the temperature sensor. Once stabilized, the sensor says 26°C even if it is quite cold in the house... When the monitor board's power supply is turned off, the temperature slowly lowers to a relevant temperature. That means I will have to isolate the sensor from the rest, or maybe externalize it as I first designed it.

What's next

I have worked on displaying the day's horoscope for my wife. I found an RSS channel which provides it. I couldn't find more accurate information than a simple text. I would have loved to display the day's luck rate or things like that, but couldn't find a webservice to provide it. Anyway, I don't believe any of these things myself :)

I have also bought an 8-channel relay board to turn on/off the audio amplifier and each speaker individually, but it doesn't work yet.

I should also update my big plan now everything is (nearly) definitive !