Tonight I managed to sit down and experiment with the GPIOs of the Raspberry Pi. I think I’m getting the hang of how they work now but I gotta say, this is the first thing I’m doing with the Pi where I feel like it lacks a lot compared to the Arduino.

Anyway, I got some basic buttons working. Tomorrow, or whenever I sit down with it again, I’ll give the level potentiometer a go again.

The plan right now is to 3D print a sort of beta enclosure for the πFi Music Player. Maybe the final product will have an enclosure built out of wood and/or metal, so maybe this is just a temporary solution but it at least gives me something less brittle than a couple of Lego bricks to hold it together while I experiment with it.

We have a 3D printer at work that I can use but I’ve never 3D printed anything, nor have I 3D modelled anything so I have quite some learning to do.

A friend recommended that I’d use Fusion360 because it’s a very capable program that’s also free for academics. I downloaded and opened it, and quickly closed it again because it felt like something completely alien to me.

The same friend then recommended this tutorial on Fusion360 to get started, and while I haven’t applied what I saw in it yet at least it feels like I now know somewhat where to start.

Tonight I tried to get the volume control working for the πFi. I followed a guide on how to make it, but I failed miserably. I’m still not sure what it is that isn’t working, and that’s the problem.

I have zero prior experience with using the GPIO’s of the Raspberry Pi, and using them while using the HiFiBerry makes it even more complicated so I need to rethink this.

I’m going to place an order for a proper break-out board for the GPIO and some additional components to be able to breadboard and try things out, and I’ll need to put the physical controls part of the project on hold until that has been delivered.