SmartVintage #1 – Up2Stream Mini + Pico 2 + Waveshare IPS | Early Prototype Demo
Hey Arylic community! 
Wanted to share some early prototyping from a project I’ve been working on — codename SmartVintage.
The goal is to build a streamer into a classic vintage amplituner in a way that feels native to the original hardware. One specific idea I’m really excited about: the amplituner has an analog frequency indicator (old school voltmeter-style needle) — I want to replace it with a small display that mimics the original look, but when the input is switched to the streamer, it hands over to show actual streaming metadata — track info, bitrate, whatever makes sense.
Current prototype stack:
- Up2Stream Mini (will upgrade to Up2Stream Pro once concept is validated)
- Raspberry Pi Pico 2
- 1.9" IPS Waveshare display
Where I’m at right now:
- Basic display driver on the Pico 2
- UART comms with Up2Stream — up and running
- Simple test data rendering on the display
It’s super early and rough around the edges, but the pieces are talking to each other which is the important bit. 
Planning to document the whole build here as it progresses. Would love to hear if anyone’s done something similar with Up2Stream boards — especially around pulling metadata over UART and any gotchas I should watch out for!
The Pico 2 is more than capable of driving the display and parsing the Up2Stream serial messages.
The main caveat is that metadata availability depends on the active source. Track title and artist are usually obtainable for services such as Spotify, internet radio and network playback, but Bluetooth, AirPlay and some DLNA controllers may provide incomplete or no metadata. I also would not design around bitrate or codec information until you confirm that your particular firmware exposes it.
Arylic’s UART interface uses 115200 baud, 8-N-1, no flow control, with commands terminated by a semicolon. Some status changes are transmitted automatically, but I would still have the Pico periodically request the current player state. That lets the display recover if either board resets or a serial update is missed.
A sensible display-state structure would be:
- Streamer inactive: render the simulated analog tuning scale and needle.
- Streamer active but stopped: show the source name.
- Playing with metadata: alternate or scroll artist and title.
- Metadata unavailable: show the source and play state.
- Temporary changes: briefly overlay volume, mute or input changes.
A few practical gotchas:
- Confirm that both UART sides use 3.3 V logic.
- Share ground between the Pico and Up2Stream board.
- Avoid driving both devices’ TX pins together.
- Add buffering for partial UART messages rather than assuming one complete message arrives at a time.
- Use a font with the characters needed for station and artist names.
- Expect long titles and malformed or missing metadata.
- Test every source you intend to support before finalizing the screen layout.
The concept is solid. I would treat the analog dial animation as the permanent fallback display and streaming metadata as an enhancement rather than assuming every source will supply the same fields.