This 2004 iPod has Wi-Fi and Spotify

The iPod, regardless of the precise model that is considered, certainly has a reserved place in the hearts of many users. Although as a genre of product it was eclipsed first by the arrival of the iPhone and then by the explosive world of smartphones in general, there are still those who would prefer to have a device dedicated only to listening to music. A YouTuber resurrected his old 2004 iPod to connect it to Wi-Fi and take advantage of Spotify!

Obviously, given the kind of hardware the 2004 iPod had and the impossibility of installing the iPod. Spotify's app on Apple's mp3 player operating system, Guy Dupont basically had to rebuild the iPod from the internal components.

The hardware needed for the project cost Dupont less than $ 100, with the most expensive part that turned out to be the $ 40 display. At the heart of this project there is obviously a Raspberry Pi Zero W costing only $ 10, the most compact of the SBC family if we exclude the Raspberry Pico microcontroller.

The sPot, as it was called, It features a color screen, Wi-Fi and bluetooth connectivity for connecting to wireless headphones and speakers, and even a dedicated haptic feedback engine capable of returning using the iPod's iconic capacitive scroll wheel. Unfortunately, the 3.5mm jack you can see is not working. While the Micro USB port used for charging the 1000mAh battery isn't the most modern, it's definitely an improvement over Apple's proprietary 30-pin connector.

As Engadget points out, the fact that the device works so well is due to a bit of luck. Dupont found a ten-year-old article by Hackaday detailing the operation of one of the connectors inside the iPod. This allowed him to make the Click Wheel work optimally with all the other components.

The code that drives the SPOT is a mix of software written by Dupont himself and an application called Raspotify, which allows the Raspberry Pi to access the streaming service through the Spotify Connect API. The front-end interface he coded also allows the Spot to search for songs, although without a touchscreen keyboard it can take a while to enter a couple of characters.

In case you are interested in to recreate the Dupont project, you can consult his article on Hackaday and the code published on GitHub.

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