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A good hacker hates to throw away electronics. We think [Matt Gruskin] must be a good hacker because where a regular guy would see a junky old 1980’s vintage Fisher Price cassette player, [Matt] saw a retro stylish Bluetooth speaker. His hack took equal parts of electronics and mechanics. It even required some custom 3D printing.
You might think converting a piece of old tech to Bluetooth would be a major technical challenge, but thanks to the availability of highly integrated modules, the electronics worked out to be fairly straightforward. [Matt] selected an off the shelf Bluetooth module and another ready-to-go audio amplifier board. He built a custom board to convert the stereo output to mono and hold the rotary encoder he used for the volume control. An Arduino (what else?) reads the encoder and also provides 3.3V to some of the other electronics.
The really interesting part of the hack is the mechanics. [Matt] managed to modify the existing mechanical buttons to drive the electronics using wire and hot glue. He also added a hidden power switch that doesn’t change the device’s vintage look. Speaking of mechanics, there’s also a custom 3D printed PCB holder allowing for the new board to fit in the original holder. This allows [Matt] to keep the volume control in its original location
We couldn’t help but think that if you were wanting to become a hardware hacker, there are a lot of lessons here. You might not be able to find a Fisher Price recorder, but the same electronics would allow you to convert lots of things into a functioning Bluetooth speaker. [Matt’s] methods for fitting everything together might not apply when you create your own Bluetooth backpack or flower pot. However, his ingenuity ought to inspire your own.
If you want something less original than a backpack, you could modify some headphones (check out the second video below), or maybe an old AM/FM radio.
Filed under: Arduino Hacks, how-to, wireless hacks
