ePiPod

The more things change, the more they stay the same, as the French say. We’ve seen the return of vinyl as an audiophile way of consuming music; now it looks like digital files are making a comeback over streaming services. At least, they are in one small corner of the internet. Inspired by maker Bram Rausch’s PiPod, the ePiPod by drhatch takes a homegrown iPod-like music player, based on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, and adds an e-paper screen, rather than the PiPod’s 2.2-inch TFT screen.

The screen drhatch chose is a $6.99 display from Waveshare; the maker had to change the power supply from the original PiPod using Waveshare’s reference design; the software also had to change, to incorporate the Waveshare driver library and the Pillow Python library. Apart from the lack of screen glare, e-paper has the advantage of lower power use than the original build.

There’s no Apple-style scroll-wheel; instead, the ePiPod features five front-panel buttons for navigation and two side buttons for volume control. There’s also an on-off switch. Unlike a streaming service, the ePiPod will work when there’s no internet connection. It won’t play ads, and it lets the user play albums from start to finish. Groundbreaking!