Bringing Back the Atomic Age with a Stereo Inspired by The Jetsons

In the early ’60s, futurism was all the rage. Everyone was pretty certain we’d have flying cars and robot maids soon, and science fiction featuring spaceships and nuclear-powered washing machines was very popular. The Atomic Age was in full swing, and “make it look futuristic” was an in-demand design aesthetic.

Fast forward to the present day, and most of us are happy with our appliances and gadgets all looking like some form of white or stainless steel cube. But, not Joe Jaworski — he wanted something with a bit more flair when it came time to build himself a stereo. Joe had always been a big fan of the Logitech Squeezebox stereos, but those were discontinued. What’s an electrical engineer with 35 years of experience to do? Build his own obviously!

Joe had a friend build him an MDF enclosure, and then got to work replicating the functionality of his beloved Squeezeboxes. He chose to utilize Max2Play, which is a Linux system designed specifically for music and video streaming. He loaded that up on a Raspberry Pi 3, which is connected to the amplifier (and speakers) through a HifiBerry DAC+ in order to improve the sound quality compared to the regular Pi output.

Everything is controlled with a 7” Raspberry Pi touchscreen display, which is mounted to the enclosure. But, Joe still wanted to make his stereo feel like something out of The Jetsons. To accomplish this, he attached some futuristic looking (but non-functional) dials and gauges to the enclosure, and even put a little Astro tail-esque antenna on top. The finished product looks great, and after a little software tweaking of the equalization, Joe reports that it sounds great too!