Mexican developer Rodrigo Méndez has built a physical Winamp player. The device, in the style of a compact hi-fi component, has a 7.9-inch touchscreen on which a user interface of the cult player reprogrammed by Méndez runs – including a graphic spectrum analyzer.
The Linamp The player, dubbed the “Linamp”, is based on a Raspberry Pi 4B, and accordingly the device has a 3.5 mm output and USB ports. Méndez wrote the software himself. The Linamp supports both music files and CD playback. The music files can be fed in via the SD card, but in his YouTube video the developer accesses his music database via SMB over a network connection.
CDs can also be played via an external CD drive that is connected via USB. The Linamp recognizes when a CD is inserted into the drive and automatically downloads the artist and title data from the Internet. The CD can be ejected using the eject button; when playing digital music, this opens the file selection.
Controls like the classic Winamp
As with the classic Winamp, volume and balance can be controlled directly in the UI. Track information scrolls through a small text bar, and the media controls including shuffle and repeat functions are located in the lower area. The equalizer function is currently not working.
The various music sources can be selected using the Winamp logo at the bottom right. Méndez is still working on connecting devices via Bluetooth, and Spotify integration is not yet working smoothly and is therefore not yet activated in the current version. The Linamp housing is made of metal, the front is 3D printed and in the style of the Winamp window.
The Linamp project page at Hackaday is currently offline, as is the entire project section of Hackaday. Therefore, it is unclear whether Méndez intends to distribute Linamp in any way. The software is available at Github as open source. Winamp recently had announcedto make the source code of the software available free of charge.