Radio Retrofit
I found a gorgeous old 1970s radio tuner secondhand that was made in Germany: the ASC AS 5000E and decided to turn it into a smart music player for use with Home Assistant and Music Assistant. I love listening to internet radio streams but missed the physical controls and retro feel, and this turned out great.
The original front panel now shows station information on the amber matrix.
An ASC AS-5000E tuner, rebuilt as an internet streamer while keeping its original front-panel feel.
The retrofit replaces the radio electronics with an ESP32 and a custom display while keeping the original buttons and knobs. Seven preset buttons recall stations or playlists; the encoder browses Music Assistant favorites, and the memory button saves a selection. It resumes the last preset when powered on.
The RetroText matrix display scrolling station information.
Three six-character RetroText modules replace the frequency display and make an 18-character scrolling message display. A custom Lights n' Buttons board reads the keypad and drives the panel LEDs. Both of these are modules I designed a while ago for just this kind of project.
The original tuner, the retrofit display, and the custom panel electronics.
It still looks super nice in the livingroom, still need to get the VU level meters working properly (now with Music Assistant and SendSpin this should be possible). The repo includes the firmware, custom ESPHome components, wiring and a user guide.