Acordeonador, an 555 accordion powered by a CD player based genrator

CD Player Powered 555 Piano Goes Accordion To Plan

December 30, 2021 by Ryan Flowers 8 Comments

Ah yes, the 555 piano project. Be it the Atari Punk Console, or some other 555 based synthesizer, Hackers just love to hear what the 555 can do when attached to a few passives and a speaker. It’s a sound to behold. But for [Berna], that wasn’t quite enough! Below the break, you can see his creation, called the Acordeonador.

A portmanteau of the Spanish words for “Accordion” and Generator”, the Acordeonador does what no project we’ve seen so far can do: It turns a CD drive into a generator for a 555 based synthesizer.

To give the Acordeonador a more analog feeling, a large 4700uf electrolytic capacitor stores just enough energy to make the music generation more than an on/off affair. It’s a great effect, and it works well! Not being one to leave any details out, [Berna] prototyped the build on perf board and then covered the board in what appears to be an wood grained contact paper, giving it that 1970’s dual keyboard electric organ feel.

It really just goes to prove that a 555 project can be the source of a great time! Hackaday is rife with 555 projects, but if you enjoy this, be sure to check out The Most Important Device In the Universe, which is of course powered by a 555. Continue reading “CD Player Powered 555 Piano Goes Accordion To Plan” →

Circuit Bent CD Player Is Glitch Heaven

January 1, 2017 by Lewin Day 19 Comments

Circuit bending is the art of creatively short circuiting low voltage hardware to create interesting and unexpected results. It’s generally applied to things like Furbys, old Casio keyboards, or early consoles to create audio and video glitches for artistic effect. It’s often practiced with a random approach, but by bringing in a little knowledge, you can get astounding results. [r20029] decided to apply her knowledge of CD players and RAM to create this glitched out Sony Discman.

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$15 Car Stereo Bluetooth Upgrade

December 1, 2014 by Marsh 29 Comments

We’ve seen all sorts of ways to implement Bluetooth connectivity on your car stereo, but [Tony’s] hack may be the cheapest and easiest way yet. The above-featured Bluetooth receiver is a measly $15 over at Amazon (actually $7.50 today—it’s Cyber Monday after all) and couldn’t be any more hacker-friendly. It features a headphone jack for plugging into your car’s AUX port and is powered via USB.

[Tony] didn’t want the receiver clunking around in the console, though, so he cracked it open and went about integrating it directly by soldering the appropriate USB pins to 5V and GND on the stereo. There was just one catch: the stereo had no AUX input. [Tony] needed to rig his own, so he hijacked the CD player’s left and right audio channels (read about it in his other post), which he then soldered to the audio output of the Bluetooth device. After shoving all the bits back into the dashboard, [Tony] just needed to fool his stereo into thinking a CD was playing, so he burned a disc with 10 hours of silence to spin while the tunes play wirelessly. Nice!

Vintage DACs And A Raspberry Pi

February 23, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 25 Comments

DAC

Before the days of iPod docks in every conceivable piece of audio equipment, most devices were actually built very well. Most shelf top equipment usually came with well designed circuits using quality components, and late 90s CD players were no exception. [Mariosis] heard of some very nice DACs found in some of these units and decided to take one out for a spin. He’s using a Raspberry Pi to play audio with the DAC found in a late 90s Kenwood CD player.

After fortune favored a CD player with a dead drive on [Mariosis]’ workbench, he dug up the service manual and found some interesting chips – a PCM56 DAC, a little bit of logic, and an SM5807 oversampling chip that does all the conversion for the DAC.

This oversampling chip uses an I2S – not I2C – bus to carry the data from the CD to the DAC. There is, of course, an I2S driver for the Raspi, but the first attempts at playing audio didn’t result in anything. It turned out there was a problem with what the oversampler expected – the ‘standard’ I2S signal delays the data one tick behind the LRCLK signal.

There are two ways to fix this problem: programming a kernel driver, or building some custom logic to fix the problem. Obviously breaking out some flip-flops and NOR gates was the cooler option, giving [Mariosis] a great sounding stereo with a vintage DAC.

Fubarino-Contest: 1980’s CD Player With MPD

December 22, 2013 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

fubarino-cd-shelf-player

[Ronald] had to scramble to get his submission in, but we’re glad he did. His demo video shows the display of a 1980’s CD player working with Music Player Daemon. It’s really just the original display itself that works, but the project is not yet finished. However, is far enough along to show our URL when a track reaches the 22:00 mark.

The display is driven by an ATmega32 chip which uses a USB connection to receive commands from the computer running MPD. [Ronald] had troubles figuring out how to send int values over USB so he hacked his own protocol that just uses the LSB of each byte coming over the bus. After the break you can see the video, and read the description which he included with his submission. There is also a code package available here.

This is an entry in the Fubarino Contest for a chance at one of the 20 Fubarino SD boards which Microchip has put up as prizes!

Continue reading “Fubarino-Contest: 1980’s CD Player With MPD” →

Fail Of The Week: [Caleb’s] Phosphorescent CD Player

October 17, 2013 by Mike Szczys 35 Comments

When [Caleb Kraft] was in full production for Hackaday he pumped a pile of awesome videos. But not every project worked out. He’s been a fan of the Fail of the Week posts, and sent in his own recollection of a project gone wrong. Above you can see his phosphorescent CD player. He prototyped the project in May of last year but technical issues and looming deadlines meant it never saw the light of day. We’ll fill you in on his fail after the jump.

Editor’s note: We need more tips about your own failure! There are a handful of submissions left in our reserves, but to keep this topic as a weekly column we need help tracking down more failed projects. Please document your past failures and send us a link to the write-up. If you don’t have a blog to post it on you may do what [Caleb] has done and email us directly. Remember to include any images and links to video which you may have.

Continue reading “Fail Of The Week: [Caleb’s] Phosphorescent CD Player” →

CD Phonograph Brings Old-time Charm To Modern Music

March 13, 2011 by Mike Nathan 23 Comments

phonograph

[Jozerworx] had always wanted to build a CD player that looked like an old-time Victrola Phonograph player, though he never seemed to be able to find the time to do it. With all of his other projects out of the way, he decided to finally get started on building his phonograph.

He went garage sale hunting and found the perfect base for his project – an old wooden box adorned with tarnished brass hardware. He started in on the project immediately, dismantling a cheap CD player and mounting the motor/laser assembly on the top of the box. The CD player internals were installed inside the wooden box, along with a small audio amplifier stripped from a portable iPod speaker.

A brass horn was fashioned out of an ornament, in order to complete the phonograph feel, but also to act as a passive amplifier. He then mounted a series of switches on the top of the box to allow him to control the CD player’s basic functions.

[Jozerworx] says that it sounds decent, though there are some things he would change. He plans on switching out the audio amplifier and possibly the speakers at some point in the future. He is also still keeping his eye out for a larger, and more effective horn.