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PyPortal NPR Station

Use an Adafruit PyPortal to show what's currently playing on an NPR station.

The project defaults to member-supported WBGO 88.3 FM Newark Public Radio, the world’s premiere jazz public radio station.


Great for listening and learning about Jazz.

Prerequisites

Initial Setup

1. Insert Micro SD

The app uses the card for local storage when it downloads and displays album art.

Make sure the card is FAT32 formatted, and plug it into the PyPortal.

Any size Micro SD card is fine since the app will write over the same file – /sd/cover-image.bmp – on each download.

2. Update secrets.py

cp ./CIRCUITPY/secrets.py.tmpl ./CIRCUITPY/secrets.py
vim ./CIRCUITPY/secrets.py

Adafruit IO credentials are needed to convert and display album artwork. Signing up for Adafruit IO is free and easy – not to mention it's a great service.

3. Copy code to PyPortal

Drag and drop all the files from the repo's CIRCUITPY directory into the PyPortal's CIRCUITPY directory.

Or if you prefer the command-line:

rsync -avh ./CIRCUITPY/ /Volumes/CIRCUITPY

Links to PyPortal documentation are available at the bottom of this page.

Changing Stations

A few updates are needed to change the station:

1. Find the UCS value for the NPR Composer API for the target station:

This can usually be found by going to the station's online playlist search and using Chrome Dev Tools to find the background XHR requests to /v1/widget/.../playlist or /v1/widget/.../now.

For example, go to WRTI 90.1 FM playlist search:

and you'll see HTTP calls to:

https://api.composer.nprstations.org/v1/widget/53c7dbe1e1c8b9c77b4b9b6e/playlist?...

In the URL, the 53c7dbe1e1c8b9c77b4b9b6e portion is the UCS number for the WRTI widget.

2. Update the code:

Edit code.py and change the following lines:

STATION_DEFAULT_SHOW_NAME = "WRTI | Your Classical & Jazz Source"
STATION_DEFAULT_HOST_NAME = "WRTI Staff"
STATION_PLAYLIST_UCS      = "53c7dbe1e1c8b9c77b4b9b6e"  # <~ the new UC

See more example configs below.

3. Add a station logo (optional):

Logos should be 120x50-pixel, 24-bit true color bitmaps with a black (0x000000) background for the best rending quality.

The logo file must be named ${UCS}_slug.bmp – where ${UCS} is the station token identied above. The file must be placed the top of the CIRCUITPY directory, e.g.

$ ls /Volumes/CIRCUITPY/*_slug.bmp
/Volumes/CIRCUITPY/53c7dbe1e1c8b9c77b4b9b6e_slug.bmp

On MacOS, you can use convert to covert from another image format to bitmap:

convert ./120x50-source-image.png -type truecolor /Volumes/CIRCUITPY/53c7dbe1e1c8b9c77b4b9b6e_slug.bmp

convert can be installed via Homebrew, if necessary.

Example Station Settings

WBGO 88.3 FM - Newark, NJ

STATION_DEFAULT_SHOW_NAME = "WBGO | The Jazz Source"
STATION_DEFAULT_HOST_NAME = "WBGO Staff"
STATION_PLAYLIST_UCS      = "5834b54de1c8aada9f4d7a9e"

KNKS 88.5 FM - Western Washington State

STATION_DEFAULT_SHOW_NAME = "KNKX | 88.5 FM"
STATION_DEFAULT_HOST_NAME = "KNKX Staff"
STATION_PLAYLIST_UCS      = "5182a1e0e1c8fe41acbefe4a"

Action Shots


The perfect companion for Amazon Alexa.

Related Info

NPR Composer API

Adafruit

FAQs

Why am I getting a "Timeout waiting for v2 card" error with my Micro SD card?

If you see a "timeout waiting for v2 card" error, you may have a Micro SD card not supported by the PyPortal. See this blog post for more insights on that issue.

Why is the portal a song ahead of the stream?

The playlist API is in sync with what's being broadcast over the airwaves. If you're listening to a digital stream, there's potential for a non-trivial amount of lag. This lag is sometimes long enough to be one or more tracks behind the Composer API.