Building a Pocket Music Player with a Pi Zero and Pirate Audio

Wed, 04 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000

pirateplayer turns a Raspberry Pi Zero, a Pimoroni Pirate Audio HAT and a small UPS battery into a self-contained, pocketable music player. No phone, no streaming, no subscription: just your MP3, FLAC and WAV files in folders, a 240×240 screen, and four buttons.

I wanted something that behaves like an old-school MP3 player. Everything I tried off the shelf either lacked a decent interface or the Bluetooth kept dropping out. I wanted something that you turn it on, it picks up where you left off, and it gets out of the way. Everything here is written in Python and runs comfortably on a Pi Zero.

Pirate Audio on daniebker

Building a Pocket Music Player with a Pi Zero and Pirate Audio