Orange Pi Media Center

Description

The Orange Pi Media Center is a series of compact and neatly designed hardware projects that combine the power of the Orange Pi board and the high-quality audio capabilities of the modern stereo DAC. This versatile media center provides a customizable and fully open-source solution for home entertainment. With an IR remote control and addressable LED for media controls and a design inspired by commercial audio gear, it offers a seamless user experience. It aimed to support Mopidy, Volumio, or any custom firmware you may come up with.
The HiFi version of the board uses the capabilities of the TI's PCM5100 32-bit DAC with line-level output, while the Loud version is based on MAX98357 DAC with a D-class amplifier delivering 3-5W per channel. The Louder version is based on TAS5805M with a stereo amplifier delivering 20W per channel.

Project Logs

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The big redesign
andriy.malyshenko • 05/08/2024 at 10:37 • 0 comments

Following my Raspberry Pi and Onion Omega Media Center series, I decided to re-design the Orange Pi version of the board. The main reason for that was the price and complexity of the original design. Both casing and PCB costs could be halved based on my current knowledge and resources, and this is what I did.

First I'm using an off-the-shelf aluminum case with a basic design. Both the front and back panels are custom-made, but they do not have any components on them, which is much cheaper than before.

Second, both the screen and rotary encoder are headers hidden inside, while I come up with a better approach for the front panel. So they are more of a development platform at this point.

Moving forward I will refine those design choices further, but for now, it looks great, it sounds great, it is fantastic fun to develop with and that's good enough for me.
Initial prototype
andriy.malyshenko • 11/25/2023 at 18:37 • 0 comments

Initially I made a line-level Hi-Fi version of the board. I use it myself with the off-the-shelf amp to sort of modernize pre-internet era audio gear with Spotify and the rest.

It works great, but it lacks proper integration between music source and the amp. I even connected the amp via relay, but you cannot control input switch remotely etc.

At some point I came to idea of standalone device that would have amp on-board. In that setup amp would probably not be that sophisticated, but at least I can have as much control over it, as I need.

Prototype for the title device was a Hat that accommodated most of the Media center hardware but in compact shape

At that stage it also made sense to add screen, since now it self-contained. It works more or less same way as Pimoroni's Pirate Audio, but it required porting to Orange Pi, since all GPIO libraries are platform specific.

End result is 3-layer stack which works perfectly, but is not very neat to use. Hence the idea of Media Center project