Vintage Philco Radio Looks Stock, Contains Modern Secret: A Raspberry Pi

July 7, 2019 by Jenny List 69 Comments

Antique radio receivers retain a significant charm, and though they do not carry huge value today they were often extremely high quality items that would have represented a significant investment for their original owners. [CodeMakesItGo] acquired just such a radio, a Philco 37-11 made in 1937, and since it was it a bit of a state he set about giving it some updated electronics. Vintage radio purists, look away from the video below the break.

Stripping away the original electronics, he gave it a modern amplifier with Bluetooth capabilities, and a Raspberry Pi. Vintage radio enthusiasts will wince at his treatment of those classic parts, but what else he’s put into it makes up for the laying waste to a bit of ’30s high-tech.The original tuning dial was degraded so he’s given it a reproduction version, and behind that is an optical encoder and two optical sensors. This is used to simulate “tuning” the radio between different period music “stations” being played by the PI, and for an authentic feel he’s filled the gaps with static. The result is a functional and unusual device, which is probably better suited than the original to a 2019 in which AM radio is in decline.

If you think of a high-end set like this Philco as being the ’30s equivalent of perhaps an 8K TV set, you can imagine the impact of AM radio in those early days of broadcasting. We recently took a look at some of the directional antenna tricks that made so many AM stations sharing the band a possibility.

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Vintage Silvertone Cabinet Gets Bluetooth Treatment

July 30, 2018 by Steven Dufresne 7 Comments

This Bluetooth speaker is full of delightful surprises. The outer shell is an antique radio cabinet, but its practically empty interior is a combination of Dead Bug circuitry and modern BT receiver.

[PJ Allen] found the BT receiver on Groupon and decided to whip up amplifier and threshold detector circuits using only parts he already had in order to make this vintage-looking Bluetooth speaker. The cabinet is from a Silvertone Model 1955 circa 1936. Don’t worry, no antiques were harmed in the making of this hack, the cabinet was empty when he bought it.

The amplifiers, one per speaker, began life as a circuit from TI’s LM4871 datasheet. Some of the departures came about because he didn’t have the exact component values, even paralleling capacitors to get in the right range. The finished board is a delightful mix of “Dead Bug” and quasi-Manhattan style construction, “quasi” because he carved up the ground plane instead of laying pads on top of it.

Look at the front of the cabinet and you’ll see a rectangular display. Watch the video below and you’ll see that it throbs in time to the music. To do that he came up with a threshold detector circuit which started out based on a circuit from a Sharp/Optonica cassette tape deck, but to which he made improvements.

Not all cabinets come empty though. Check out this post by our own [Gregory L. Charvat] about restoring these wonderful old radios.

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This IS Your Grandfather’s Radio

February 14, 2018 by Al Williams 9 Comments

Tube radios have a certain charm. Waiting for them to warm up, that glow of the filaments in a dark room. Tubes ruled radio for many decades. [Uniservo] posted a video about the history and technology behind the 1920’s era Clapp-Eastham C-3 radio. This is a three-tube regenerative receiver and was advanced for its day.

If you are worried he won’t open it up, don’t despair. Around the ten minute mark, your patience will be rewarded. Inside are three big tubes full of getter and bus bars instead of wires. Add to that the furniture-quality case, and this is a grand old radio.

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Vintage Tube Radio Restorations

November 17, 2016 by Rich Hawkes 22 Comments

[J.B. Langston] has some vintage late-40’s/early-50’s tube radios that he wanted to repair – a Motorola All-American 5 AM radio, an Air Castle AM/FM radio and a Sears Silvertone AM/FM radio. He goes over, one by one, the three vintage radios, the problems they had, and how he got them back into working order. No finding a replacement microchip here, this was all about replacing capacitors and finding vacuum tubes!

In contrast to most modern builds we see on Hackaday, vintage radios are fairly simple – mainly turret-board builds with a transformer, resistors, capacitors, coil and tubes. The main issues in any vintage electronic repair is checking the capacitors because old wax paper and electrolytic capacitors can degrade and will need replacing. When repairing the All-American 5, [J.B. Langston] had an issue with the transformer, and he goes over how he fixed what’s called silver mica disease in it. While many parts were replaced with modern equivalents, only a selenium solid-state rectifier in one of them was replaced by a different part – a silicon diode and a high-wattage series resistor.

Looking at the inside of some of these radios, it’s surprising that they could be restored at all – 65-odd years of rust, dust, dirt and grime will take their toll – but [J.B. Langston] was able to fix all three radios and clean their Bakelite cases so they look and work like new. He goes over what he discovered, how he fixed the problems and the links to where he got help when needed. We’ve seen some great vintage radio projects over the years, including adding RDS (Radio Data Systems) to a vintage radio, converting a vintage radio with modern technology and even some other radio restoration projects.

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Hackaday Links: January 5, 2014

January 5, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 26 Comments

While we can’t condone the actual use of this device, [Husam]’s portable WiFi jammer is actually pretty cool. It uses a Raspberry Pi and an Aircrack-ng compatible dongle to spam the airwaves with deauth packets. The entire device is packaged in a neat box with an Arduino-controlled LCD and RGB LEDs. Check out an imgur gallery here.

You can pick up a wireless phone charger real cheap from any of the usual internet outlets, but try finding one that’s also a phone stand. [Malcolm] created his own. He used a Qi charger from DealExtreme and attached it to a 3D printed phone stand.

A while back, [John] noticed an old tube radio in an antique store. No, he didn’t replace the guts with a Raspberry Pi and an SD card full of MP3s. He just brought it back to working condition. After fixing the wiring (no ground cord on these old things), repairing the speaker cone, putting some new twine on the tuner and replacing the caps, [John] has himself a new old radio. Here’s a video of the complete refurbishment.

Here’s a Sega Master System (pretty much a Game Gear) running on an STM32 dev board. Also included are some ROMs for some classic games – Sonic the Hedgehog, Castle of Illusion, and The Lion King. If you have this STM Discovery board you can grab the emulator right here.

[Spencer] wanted a longer battery life in his iPhone, so he did what any engineering student would do: he put another battery in parallel.

Breadboarding something with an AVR or MAX232? Print out some of these stickers and make sure you get the pinouts right. Thanks, [Marius].