Summary
This $15 ESP32 board + 1.54″ LCD uses a Winamp-style internet radio UI to play music.
It streams internet stations via Wi‑Fi or plays music from the SD card, controlled via three top buttons.
It’s a cheap and fun weekend build, bringing 2000s desk vibes with optional battery and speakers.
If you ask anyone what software they used to listen to music in the late 90s to early 2000s, there’s a good chance you’ll hear Winamp appear a few times. It was a dependable, easy-to-use player that you could kit out with whatever skin you please, and believe me, people made plenty of themes for this media player.
Well, if you want to bring back the glory days of Winamp, make a cool internet radio, and have a fun project to make over the weekend, you can do a lot worse than build this DIY ESP32 project that brings the old vibes back once again. Best of all, it’s really cheap to make.
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This $15 ESP32 internet radio is the perfect weekend project
And it’s not just a random set piece
As spotted by Hackster.io, this cool project is the idea of Volos Projects on YouTube. They created a cute little internet radio that runs off a Waveshare ESP32-S3 1.54-inch LCD development board, which costs around $15. If you really want to, you can squeeze a 1,000mAh battery into the case for a portable radio, but you can just wire it up to a socket if you want to..
While the display looks like a classic Winamp player, it’s actually made using the LovyanGFX and Arduino GFX libraries. Which is good, because it means you get all of the appeasing and nostalgic visuals of Winamp without actually running a decades-old app on your ESP32. The Winamp buttons even correspond to the three buttons on the top of the case for easy navigation.
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The board uses Wi-Fi to grab internet stations to play, and you can use the SD card to load up music offline if you’d prefer that. You don’t need to add anything extra for the device to play music through its audio output; however, if you really want to, you can hook up some speakers to it for better sound quality. Overall, it sounds like a cool, easy, and cheap project for anyone who wants to add some 2000s flair to their desk.
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Why not play Fallout tunes on it?