[caption id=“teakear1” align=“alignnone” width=“800”] TeakEar media player[/caption]

This is a Raspberry Pi based audiophile net player that decodes my mp3 collection and net radio to my Linn amplifier. It is called TeakEar, because it’s main corpus is made from teak wood. Obviously I do not want to waste rain forest trees just because of my funny ideas, the teak wood used here has been a table from the 1970ies, back when nobody cared about rainforests. I had the chance to safe parts of the table when it was sorted out, and now use it’s valuable wood for special things.

Upcycling is the idea here, and the central iron part has been a drawbar part from an old hay cart. The black central stone piece is schist, which I found outside in the fields, probably a roofer material.

[caption id=“attachment_902” align=“alignright” width=“220”] Backside view[/caption]

I wanted to combine these interesting and unique materials to something that stands for it’s own. And even though it covers a high tech sound device, I decided against any displays, lights or switches to not taint the warm and natural vibes of the heavy, dark and structured exotic wood, the rusty iron part, which obviously is the hand work of a blacksmith many years ago, and the black stone. Placed on my old school Linn Classic amplifier, it is an interesting object in my living room.

On it’s backside it has a steel sheet fitted into the wood body, held in place by two magnets to allow it to be quickly detached. On that, a Raspberry Pi 2 with a Hifiberry DAC is mounted. The Hifiberry DAC has a chinch output which is connected to the AUX input of the Linn Classic Amplifier. The energy supply is an ordinary external plug in power supply, something that could be improved.

On the software side, I use Volumio, the open audiophile music player. The Volumio project could not amaze me more. After a big redesign and -implementation last year, it is back with higher quality than before but still the same clear focus on music playing. It does nothing else, but with all features and extension points that are useful and needed.

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I enjoy the hours in my workshop building these kind of devices, and I am sure this wont be the last one. Maybe next time with a bit more visible tech stuff.