If we’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that the only thing hardware hackers love more than a device festooned with buttons is one that’s covered in LEDs — so it’s no surprise that this “Mr Christmas” jukebox caught the eye of [Roberts Retro]. But while the holiday gadget might have been mildly entertaining in its stock configuration, he quickly realized that what it really needed was an ESP32 retrofit. After all, what good are all those buttons and LEDs if you can’t bend them to your will?
For the first half of the video, [Robert] treats us to a detailed teardown of the device, which as you might imagine, is largely hollow inside. This gave him plenty of room to graft in new hardware, which is really the best gift any of us could hope to find under the tree. In addition to the ESP32 development board, the jukebox also received a number of WS2812B addressable RGB LEDs, and a DFPlayer module to handle music playback.
With all the buttons wired up to inputs on the ESP32, [Robert] can reconfigure the jukebox to do pretty much whatever he wants with just changes to the software. In the video, he demonstrates how the buttons can be used to trigger the playback of individual songs stored on the DFPlayer’s SD card, which essentially replicates it’s stock functionality. A few lines of changed code later, those same buttons can be used to control devices via Home Assistant.
To get into the holiday spirit, [Roberts Retro] shows off the completed jukebox controlling his ESP-enabled LEGO train set — another of his festive upgrades that we covered back in 2022.
Which has me thinking…
When the new administration (USA) takes effect, there has been warnings of increased tariffs.
Any suggestions of what to stock up on before they are put in place?
Seeed Studio Xiao? Which version?
Soldering stations?
IGFETs?
WS28 LEDs?
18650s?
Other circuits?
Better solution would be to move to a country that’s not a vassal state of US. I live in Vitebsk, Belarus and I can order whatever I want from China without worrying about some political BS that’s happening in Europe or America.
What, leave the greatest country on earth and move to one which has free at point of need healthcare for all, labour laws that actually respect workers and uphold their rights, prevent them being fired on the spot, allows them to join unions, pays sick leave, holidays, maternity etc, social safety nets to help those who find themselves unemployed, disabled, too ill to work, homeless etc, strict gun controls so you don’t need to worry if your kids are coming home from school on a bus or in a bag?
Sounds a bit communist to me
To answer the OP though, I don’t think there’s any way to predict what will or won’t be hit with tariffs, it’s at the whim of a madman and you’ve also no way to know what new products will hit the market so if you’re really worried all you can really do is pick a few favourites now and stock up while hoping it’s all just lies (good chance).
Throw away the factory PCB which had a programmable IC on it and just shove a proto board in it.. Learn nothing..
Yeah, does seem a bit of a waste, I’d have liked to see the content of what looked like a flash chip and the main processor examined a bit and perhaps hacked, could have been a fun reverse engineering video but it seems to have been just reusing the case and buttons.
Still, fun project if a bit superficial.
Plus we have kvass, really cheap beer and cigarettes.
…and low life expectancy ;) Sorry, couldn’t resist. Great that you like it so much where you live. Merry Christmas!
No idea what Kvass is and googling doens’t make it sound appealing but I’d give it a go, I don’t smoke and don’t really drink much but it does sound interesting…