I started drawing a podcast player.

Today I started drawing a podcast player for kids. A notebook, a pencil, and a few pages of shapes.

The reason to try is two months old. A Toniebox with a brand-new figure on it refused to play in a hospital parking garage. The figure is only a key: the story itself has to come down from a server the first time, and neither a hotspot nor the hospital Wi-Fi could reach it. The story was paid for, and the box did nothing. Every player I have looked at since has the same shape: a locked library, a fee per story, and anything a family already owns is more trouble to load than it is worth. So: a player that plays what you have, and keeps playing when the internet is not there.

The obvious objection is that everyone has a phone, and a phone already does this. Last week I almost talked myself out of it on exactly that. But a phone in a toddler’s hands is a screen, a camera and every app in the world. This would be a player and nothing else: small enough to carry, worked by hand, with no screen if I can manage it. Whether that’s different enough is a question I’ll keep coming back to. I’m building it anyway.

The first sketch is my iPhone traced onto the page, portrait, with a speaker at the top and a big round play button in the middle. Too big, with plenty of room inside. The next page shrinks it, and squeezes in a small display, which argues with the no-screen idea. Undecided.

A notebook page with a pencil sketch of a portrait handheld player: a dotted speaker grille at the top, previous and next buttons, a play button below, and the dimensions written underneath.

The shorter sketch, June 20, 2025.

Then a page on whether the small computer inside, a Raspberry Pi, can fit at all, and a page with a knob: turn it for volume, press it to play. Whether a two-year-old understands a knob is something I can test at home.

A pencil drawing of the player's outline with a rectangle inside it marked with four mounting holes and the dimensions 23 mm across and 58 mm tall, the body marked 65 mm tall and 30 mm wide at the bottom.

What has to fit: the Raspberry Pi’s mounting holes, in a body barely taller than the board.

Next: a quick test before any real design work. A Raspberry Pi, a small amplifier and a speaker on a breadboard, playing a podcast. And the sketch in cardboard, to see how it sits in a small hand.

A full-size Raspberry Pi wired to a breadboard with tactile buttons, a green and a blue LED lit, and a 9 V battery behind it, on a dark desk.

A week later, a Raspberry Pi wired to buttons and two LEDs on the breadboard.

A cardboard mock-up of the player held in one hand: a pencil circle of pinholes for the speaker at the top, a play button drawn in the middle, previous and next drawn below, the sides taped with blue painter's tape.

The sketch in cardboard, held together with painter’s tape.