Electronics on the kitchen table

I packed everything in my little case. It's really a mess in there, with cables flying around and every card floating, not fixed on the inside. But it looks quite cool ! I removed the old radio antenna to use its hole to pass my USB cable. Here's how it looks ! As you can see, I let the rotary knob (it's a simple angular potentiometer, in fact) from the amplifier out. It holds with a little nut that was provided with it. The buttons you can see are all fakes, they belonged to the old radio and I forgot to remove them (in fact they're simply glued to the back).  Maybe I'll find some tools to make a nice-looking front panel when my stuff arrives. I'll ask people around me to lend me their tools...  In the end, the radio would have a 20x4 LCD screen to display artist + title and useful infos (like the IP or the volume when you change it from the website, maybe). I think I'll need two more buttons to change the station. I won't...

I added the audio transistors. Before diving into this modification, I wanted to see how deteriorated the sound is when you try to link everything on the same power supply WITHOUT transistors. So I made this little video. You can hear the difference ! First, I noticed that my three little wires (on the output of the VS1053) were badly soldered and caused a short-circuit somewhere. So I removed them, and replaced them with a naked Jack plug. (I took it from a selfie stick. True story. These selfie sticks have an audio Jack plug to be able to take a shot from a button near the hand, that acts just like a button from headphones with mic. End of the story, back to business :p ) I wired the output of the VS1053 to the input of the transformers, and I wired the output of the transformers to the input of the PAM8403 (the amplifier). Since on the input and on the output, they have common ground between the two channels, I kept the common ground. You can see a rough scheme below (the ...

I've got speakers, an amplifier, audio transformers, and a KaRadio. Let's have fun with that ! So in order to connect everything, I took the plugs from the original radio and soldered them along with headers, to connect things easily. Then I soldered headers on the amp side, easy connection. And I wired them together. I also soldered a USB cable on the power input of the amp board. On the VS1053 side, I have a Arduino-shaped board, so I took advantage of some unused pins to wire the output speakers to 3 pins. Again, the easier, the better... Except that soldering these 3 little cables was FRIGGING HARD, they kept swinging and moving around, it was hellish. But oh well, it's done now. Finally, I took 3 wires to link the VS1053 to the amp (it's a PAM8403). The pair ESP8266 + VS1053 has its own power supply (it's a USB battery) while the amplifier has a separate USB power supply. Aaaaaaand it works very well :) I tried to put the whole on the s...

I'm moving out of my appartment. Since my kitchen table couldn't go with me, I left it, so you won't have the marvelous tablecloth full of little cakes anymore. :'( Hopefully, in my room where my mother lives, my desk is an old kitchen table. So in the end, I'm still building stuff on a kitchen table, which is nice.

I found the radio fully working in a flea market for 2€. :) The WeMos D1 mini costs 3€, the VS1053 8€ (but there are cheaper models). From the original radio, I'll keep the two speakers. Although they're not the best ones you could dream of, they'll do the job for the moment. I may be able to re-use the buttons and rotary knobs (they work as spammers-buttons : each time you rotate a little, it's like a button is pushed). I'll get rid of the cramped screen, as I have a nice LCD 20x4 I2C screen waiting in a box. But this pleather is so nice, and the size is just perfect ! Plus, there's quite some room inside. Here's some pictures. I wasn't lying : it's really a kitchen table. I mean, in which other table would you put a tablecloth full of little cakes ? :D

Hello everyone ! I decided to start a blog to keep a track of my electronics stuff I want to build. I found the KaRadio Project, that aims to build a webradio - you know, the thing, not the stream. A real object that connects to the Wi-Fi and plays your favourite radios. Some useful links : KaRadio's GitHub :  https://github.com/karawin/Ka-Radio The Hackaday Page :  https://hackaday.io/project/11570-wifi-webradio-with-esp8266-and-vs1053 The KaRadio Group on Facebook (very active !) :  https://www.facebook.com/groups/162949914181385/ As I tried a first prototype, I was really amazed what the main chip, the ESP8266, was capable of. So I decided to buy second-hand stuff in flea market to build a nice little webradio. For the moment, I have my prototype working, but most of the work lies ahead : adding control through a second microcontroller (MCU for short), adding buttons, pushing everything into a case, adding energy support... heh, I'm hyped ! Nonethele...