I'm wanting to make a wooden boombox/stereo/kitchen radio type thing.

I've sorted pretty much all the main hardware pieces. It is going to house a Raspberry Pi running the Volumio distro (which is a music player focused distro).

I'm re-purposing some old Creative speakers, found a nice small Class D amplifier. I had initial issues with ground-loop interference but I've sorted those issues.

Things like these were my inspiration:

 

Mine will be lighter (in colour), and smaller in height. Speakers will probably be hidden to an extent since they're not particularly attractive.

I need a few more parts and suggestions on shape/design.

I also need to find some nice looking push button switches for the front for vol+/-, power off, some presets. Any ideas?

What easy to use 3D software is out there to put a design together?
 

I think you just found something to put on my Raspberry Pi! Ha! Thanks :)

Gonna velcro mine to the back of the girlfriend's iPod speaker dock (has a 3.5mm audio input too). Cheaper and less glamorous than building my own, but I don't care.

You're welcome!

The audio output isn't the best on the RPi so I bought a CM108 based USB adapter for the grand total of 99p.

I already have one of these (that didn't cost me £23.99) from when I was trying to use my RPi as a XBMC box. If the onboard 3.5mm is as bad as you say, I'll just use that.

Do USB sound cards work with XBMC? I just ordered a HDMI audio splitter to finally get my surround setup working with my Pi.

Never got around to trying it with RaspBMC / OpenElec, but it worked for Raspbian. It needed some "hacking" to make it work, i.e. you need Alsa installed and set the USB audio as default and it'll work, but I got sound out of it.

I use OpenElec, I read somewhere it doesn't work with that. At least this splitter should just work, cost about the same as the Pi though.

Nice idea. Tempted to use that distro for a barbecue we're having in a couple of weeks. Plug the Pi into my amp (10" subwoofer) and having some music playing (booming). Or maybe XBMC would work well enough for that. Hmm.

The one on the right looks a little shocked by the prospect.

I think one of the better parts of Volumio is the web interface. It works nicely on a phone.

That should do the job nicely.

That does look nice. Can it play audio through the HMDI connection? That through my soon to arrive optical out gadget would give good sound. Think I might try and find a spare SD card and give it a go.

Having just used OpenElec on a Pi as a backup after my HTPC was out of order for a couple of weeks, I can confirm that the rPi outputs audio via the HDMI cable. It was just to my TV's built in speakers so it sounded crappy, but it does work.

I have my Pi spitting audio out to my TV through the HDMI with XMBC but didn't know if it would work with that musicy thing. After searching, it will do but might need some force HDMI setting enabled so it outputs if the TV isn't turned on.

config.txt is your friend!

Woohoo, I have a friend.

I assume that's how I overclocked it, editing config.txt. Not sure by how much, I think somewhere said it was a safe amount but not sure if its ok running all the time.

Well I wasn't expecting it to be shipped from America. Bought it from Amazon UK.

I hate how Amazon don't make it obvious where an item ships from. I've nothing against buying from overseas (I do it quite regularly) but when you want something quick and your confirmation email says 20 days it's fucking annoying.

First time I've had that happen I think. I had a look at the item of Amazon again and there is no way to know it's coming from the USA, and as far as I could tell no way to see it's a US company. What happens if I need to return it?

Email them and they'll no doubt tell you to stick it up yer arse. Or "ass".