True story: when we were in Tokyo for the Big Tokyo Raspberry Jam back in May, surrounded by engineers from NEC dressed as techno-maids and men wearing CD-ROM drives as hats, we suggested an evening of private karaoke.

Everybody blenched with horror at the idea and suggested we just went out for beers instead.

So we did. And it was great.

I know you’ve seen this picture before, but it’s my favourite picture of 2013, so I’m using it again. That was a *brilliant* evening.

But I’ve got to admit: much as I love Japanese craft beer and nibbling at unidentified things on sticks, I was still dying to go out and do some singing. So, this Christmas, what could be better for breaking the ice with the in-laws under the tree than a rousing family chorus of Bohemian Rhapsody?

This is a Raspberry Pi-powered karaoke machine from Dextrus at Pi-Fun. You’ll need a USB microphone and a wireless dongle, and a powered hub is a good idea if you don’t want to run out of USB slots for mouse and keyboard (but you can get around this by using SSH – which is what Dextrus is doing in the video, using a tablet as his display).

The machine uses a stripped-down version of YouTube (Whitey, running under OMXPlayer) to find a songs database. You’ve got time to find a microphone and hack this together before Christmas: there are detailed installation instructions at Pi-Fun.

Thanks Dextrus – and everybody else, let us know if you use or adapt Dextrus’s solution for your parties this season.