The Functionalist design philosophy that Dieter Rams brought to Braun from the 50s to the 90s still inspires the look of a few devices, including Apple’s iPod, Teenage Engineer’s synthesizers and recorders – and [2dom]’s IR7 streaming radio.
The streaming radio was inspired by Braun’s portable radios, particularly the SK2, TP1, and the T3 pocket radio. [2dom] started with the T3’s circular pattern of holes and experimented with several variations, finally settling on a cylindrical shape with a central display; a prototype with a low-power monochrome rectangular display was eventually rejected in favor of a circular LCD. The housing consists of four 3D-printed components: an upper and lower shell, a resonator for the speaker, and a knob for a rotary encoder.
Electronics-wise, an ESP32 handles the computing requirements, while the LCD and rotary encoder provide a user interface. For audio, it uses a VS1053 MP3 decoder, PAM8403 amplifier, and a wideband speaker, with an audio isolation transformer to clean up the audio. To reduce power consumption, a MOSFET cuts power to the peripheral components whenever the device is in sleep mode. The full design is available on GitHub.
The end result of this effort is a quite authentic-looking 21st-century adaptation of Rams’s original designs. If you’re interested in more Braun designs, check out this replica of one of their desk fans. We’ve also seen a restoration of one of Braun’s larger radios, the TS2.
A Modern Take On Iconic Industrial Design
That’s a beautiful build. Well done.
Thanks man!
I see no reason to use a vs1053 in combination with an esp32. The esp32 is powerful enough to decode mp3 in software.
Never got it to work reliably with display scrolling text and all that in the background but very open to pull requests …
This should work without problems by creating a separate FreeRTOS task for MP3 decoding and pin that to core 0 and run the other stuff on core 1 (or vice versa)
Seems like a call for version 2.0 :)
Really nice. The illustration picture on hackaday lacks a reference of a T3 pocket to show the inspiration and how much you make it your own.
IMO it would be better with an unique shell rather than top and bottom , and the knob should be sunken rather than at the surface.
Great job anyways
@frenchone Great idea with the sunken in knob – will try this out for sure
I wholly agree with revising the knob. That’s a glaring bit of incongruity with Rams’ design philosophy, in an otherwise nice and clean aesthetic. Maybe a nice rotary ring around the display could take its place, like a house thermostat’s control ring.
Dude this is a beautiful project, big thumbs up. My feedback for you, hopefully constructive:
The form factor strongly suggests we should be gutting discarded smart speakers and just re-using the hardware wholesale, which I realise becomes a jailbreaking challenge but could lift a whole load of devices out of e-waste. They tend to be quite high-end hardware too.
Also I can’t see anything in the git that actually documents the software/firmware, not even how one might install it let alone use it.
I’d really love a device like this that can just play MP3’s from my home server via a simple web interface and having read the entire readme I am none the wiser as to whether this thing can do that or not.
@Johnu … thanks … I will add a section flashing the software. It is really just opening Arduino, downloading the libraries and selecting ESP32 as the target.
Regarding you home server – it will only play streaming audio not from a file share. If you have one running at home, just add a line with you server URL in the station list and you are good to go.
Yes, but: even at a low bitrate, it eats up all the RAM and most of the CPU, and you have nothing left for the rest of your application. Good luck driving the TFT without it.
Teenage Engineering*
Great effort: looks good and seems to work great! I do feel it would have looked much better if the Braun logo wasn’t placed on top like that, next to the circular edge – I don’t think Braun would have ever done that. Just put it on the side of the unit, perhaps opposite to the button, so its horizontal bottom aligns with the horizontal bottom of the device. Also, the holes have this jarring misalignment and spacing difference after the 2nd row from the center. A Fibonacci-like hole pattern may have been much nicer, something like Nest uses.
Thanks for the feedback – agreed on the logo – could go someplace else but I kind of like the gap though.
I love the inspiration and have high respect for building such a device and finishing fully functional.
Still, the design philosophy seems not to be carried through. The crammed UI somehow departs from the outside look and feel.
Thanks for the feedback – I really appreciate it. And I agree with you … fortunately it is fully customizable – background and menus are simply images that can be swapped. Maybe someone out there has more talent in creating minimal UIs 🙂
Lovely design. You have taken the inspiration of Dieter Rams and paid it back with this gift to us :-)
Thanks @cdilla … appreciate it!
Looks like an electric salt shaker with poor ergonomics. Braun products designed by Rams. Were much more refined and usually had great ergonomics
I find it rather unattractive, but to each his own. It seems some people really like it and there should be room for various tastes.
It can be annoying when some things are available only in one design and manufacturers ignore the concept of different people with different tastes.