The MagPi Issue 139

29 Feb 2024

Magazine cover for The MagPi Issue 139

The MagPi issue 139 is now available, specially release to coincide with Raspberry Pi's third birthday. (That's right, third, Raspberry Pi is a leap-year baby!)

I've been busy in this one. Firstly the cover feature is a beginner's all-purpose troubleshooting guide. A lot of the stuff covered seems basic, but that's because we know it. There was a time we didn't and thats the sort of up-and-coming one-day-soon-experts this is for. Everything from powering on to diagnosing audio issues and your first GPIO hook-up. I'm hoping it saves someone out there some time and frustration.

That's not all! In the tutorials section you can find the first of a two-parter on upcycling Sonos speakers. A while ago the S1/S2 debacle caused my Sonos Play:1 speaker to become less useful and recently I decided I wanted something that could play ambient music just by pushing a button. So, some mangling with a Torx screwdriver later and I had a Raspberry Pi 3A installed running both AirPlay (for Apple device streaming) and a custom script to stream channels from the excellent SomaFM. Part one details how to get inside the Sonos player and install some Raspberry Pi hardware. It can, of course, be applied to any audio device such as a vintage radio. Part two will cover the software side of things.