Dayton Audio KABM 215 Radio Project

I’ve been making some serious progress on my Dadio radio project. The original goal was to replace a single Bluetooth speaker in my tattoo studio with a true multi-zone audio system. Using Raspberry Pi Zero boards running Snapcast, each artist can have control over their own zone of sound instead of everyone being stuck listening to the same thing. The first generation of the radios used an ESP32-WROOM connected to the Raspberry Pi over UART to drive the display and audio visualizer. It worked, but it was somewhat limited. Recently, I discovered the I2S interface on the Dayton Audio amplifier board, and that changed everything. Now the ESP32 visualizer can see the actual digital audio flowing through the amplifier, whether the source is Bluetooth or the line input coming from the Raspberry Pi. That means the visualizer is no longer tied to just one source—it reacts to everything the radio is playing. It’s a huge step forward and brings the project one step closer to becoming a real product that I can eventually bring to market. Still plenty of work to do, but seeing all the pieces come together has been incredibly rewarding.