It’s a right of passage for many electronics learners to build a radio. Many of us might have started with a passive crystal set or maybe a transistor based design. For most of us the joy of receiving that first signal on something you have built is an unforgettable achievement. Building on this legacy TinkeringTech presents the ScoutMakes FM Radio with Bluetooth kit.
This kit is supplied with all the smaller surface mount components pre-populated on the boards with only the larger and through-hole parts needing to be added. Whilst it’s perhaps not suitable as someone’s first ever kit, it’s not too taxing to put together for anyone who has done a little soldering before.
Once together its a very feature rich radio! Portable with a LiPo battery, Bluetooth is incorporated and you can utilise the Adafruit control app to interact with the FM radio from your mobile phone. The small OLED screen can show RDS data which is the data you may have seen on a car radio where the title and artist of the currently playing track is displayed. It’s programmed with CircuitPython and has numerous add on connectors and is compatible with the Feather and STEMMA standards. It’s all open source and there are a heap of examples and support materials for you to get started tinkering with radio waves, we’ve come a long way since those passive crystal sets!
