How do I get Room Remote/Bridge on a small screen?

I am hoping the good people of the forum can point me towards the correct threads/guides to help me get Roon ‘now playing’ information on a small screen.

I really love the aesthetics of retro silver cassette players and it strikes me that the cassette part would be an ideal size to be replaced with a screen, displaying ‘now playing’ info. I would then like to put a RPi+HAT in the case or maybe even my current set-up (SotM SMS 200 + Metrum Octave MK2). I currently use an iPhone and iPad as remotes but if I am pottering about and radio mode brings up something I am not familiar with, it is nice to be able to glance over and see what has come up. In that respect, I don’t even really need album art - a scrolling text screen would be sufficient.

With my current skill levels, I would love to just plonk an iPod touch in the cassette space but the problem is, it only displays in the vertical. So, as another easy alternative @support, what is the smallest phone/tablet screen that will display in horizontal mode? What cheap devices are people using for remotes?

From some preliminary investigation, the next simplest solution appears to be Ropiee with the RPi touch screen. However, at 7", the screen is much bigger than the cassette space, so will Ropiee allow the display window to be shrunk down? I am happy to lose the rest of the screen to blank space.

The final solution appears to involve the API but this is currently well beyond my comfort level. I see that there are screens available for the RPi that would be the perfect size for a cassette slot. I believe, that in order to display the info I want, I would have to use the web application extension that was created but I have no idea how to go about making this happen. I currently run the core on my MacBook Pro if that makes a difference.

So who can help fill in the gaps with those options?

I have an electrical engineer colleague that I am hoping will be able to take the audio output from the RPi to make the VU meters and balance control etc work (can’t beat a good meter and dial!). I think the play/forward/reverse control link to the player may be beyond us. Probably depends on the model of cassette player I pick up.

Any help much appreciated!

@spockfish can you help with the Ropiee screen question? You have the most appealing solution to me at the moment!

Well through some small miracle I managed to work out how to install the web controller, so I think I have everything in place to try a RPi with a small screen. I will post pictures if something successful emerges!