Raspberry Pi Radio Uses NFC Cards to Play Family-Recorded Fairy Tales

Living away from your family can be difficult, particularly when you have kids. Most people want their children to have a relationship with their relatives, but that’s tricky when they don’t live nearby. Kids’ memories are short, and a grandparent they only see once a year during the holidays may as well be a stranger. That’s why Lukas Vierhaus built this fairy tale radio that gives his daughter a personal connection to her geographically-distant family.

The fun, brightly-colored radio uses NFC (near-field communication) cards to trigger the playback of audio files of fairy tales and short stories. Vierhaus had family members record themselves reading the stories so that his daughter can listen to their voices whenever she wants. Those recordings are stored on an SD card, but the radio can also stream songs from Google Music using the same NFC card system.

The heart of the radio is a Raspberry Pi, which can either be a full-size model with a built-in sound card, or Raspberry Pi Zero W if you attach an USB audio adapter. If you use the Zero model, you’ll need a separate WiFi adapter. An NXP Explore NFC Shield reads the NFC cards, and Trust Remo 2.0 speakers provide the audio output — though any speakers with auxiliary input should work. The enclosure parts are 3D printed, and are designed to be easy to make on any 3D printer. The playback functionality is programmed in Python, but Vierhaus doesn’t appear to have provided his code, so you’ll need to write that if you want to build one of these for your kids.