Anyone here garage sale? Park N Swap?
Well I do every so often and when I do I just go to see what I see, never expecting anything. Well today I will tell you that on one of my recent outings I came across a radio and well to be honest I knew it was old because it was made from wood. I mean really what isn’t made of plastic these days.
Here in Arizona it’s hot (like all the time) so when I was out and saw there was a garage sale it was still early in the day, early enough that they were still setting up and hadn’t put their price tags on everything. I liked around wondering if it was worth the effort to ask about the radio, when I came across two more radios of varying sizes but similar enough in appearance to know they were from the same general time frame. I decided to ask about those two because they already had price tags on them ($80 and $100). The price was well beyond what I was willing to spend, but I wondered if they worked and how they sounded. They both did and both had that sound I was hoping for, just a twinge of static over the music. But again I didn’t want to spend that much for a radio when I have a phone full of music in my pocket. I decided to ask about the other smaller radio on the table I saw just as I arrived. She forgot they had a third radio and had to walk over and give it a look. She informed me the radio didn’t work and that she was asking $50 for it. Forget that $50 for a broken radio that I probably can’t fix or find parts for (Old enough it had to be tubes). I must have made a face of disappointment, but I thanked her and kept looking around. As I was leaving she asked if I was interested in the radio, I told her I was but I’d had to think about it (definitely not coming back for it at that price) She said she would drop the price on it since it didn’t work and to make an offer, I knew I had her then… I reached for my wallet and opened it up, to my surprise (I never have cash) I had $60 on me… “I only have $20 would you take that?”
So I drove home with my new broken radio wondering what to do with it, at first thinking it can be hollowed out and I can put in a Bluetooth speaker in it, but I didn’t like that idea because it would just be a box around a speaker, I wanted an option that would be more like a working radio.
After testing the radio I confirmed it was broke, no idea how but it was broke. So I took it apart, and my guess was right tubes, and I have no clue what’s wrong with it.
The quick and short of it I decided to gut it and see what individual parts still worked. The speaker thankfully worked, and the on/off switch and the volume dial, but everything else from my limited knowledge was dead.
I did some research and found out there are circuit boards that should allow me to use the parts that still work to play MP3’s and keep the original look. Amazon here comes my money! I also ordered a rechargeable battery that will allow the radio to be used where ever I like. (I will put links to what I used below, not an affiliate link, just a link in case you are interested)
Here is where I realize I screwed up and ordered the wrong part…
The MP3 board I ordered will work for what I need but the issues is that there has to be a trigger to play the mp3s and there is no easy option for play all shuffled. The board is designed to be in an animatronic that would move and trigger sound effects like talking or screaming like in the figures you would see at Homedepot or Lowes around Halloween. Now the decision be lazy and work harder to make it work, or return it and find and order what I thought I was getting from the beginning. As you might be able to guess I choose to be lazy and work harder…. I hate myself lol
So I started thinking how to make this work for me and I realized since the MP3s need to be triggered and there wasn’t an easy way to have it play all what if I made just a few giant MP3s that were a collection of songs like a playlist that is combined them into a few single file. I have the songs as individual MP3s I just need to make the “playlists” and combine them. I decided to listen to all the relative music before making my “playlists” so I can decide the variables (How long do I want each giant MP3 to be, how many to make) before combining anything.
Two and a half day later I decided that I would make five tracks for the radio to play.
- Classic Tiki No Vocals
- Classic Tiki with Vocals
- Modern Tiki no Vocals
- Modern Tiki with Vocals
- Current Tiki and Tiki like Music
Classic Tiki is essentially music from before the 1950’s,
Modern Tiki is generally songs from the 1950s until maybe the 2000’s, and then the
Current Tiki and Tiki Like music is anything in the last 20 years with or without vocals and audio from TV shows (SpongeBob) or video games (whatever I have that sounded close enough and my kids might like)
Now keep in mind these playlists aren’t perfect and there were duplicates and probably a lot of overlap between categories because I had a lot of music to go through and didn’t focus too much on the finer details….
Look it’s my bar and I’ll do it how I want stop judging me!!
I settled on approximately an hour per track with the thought that I might play two at most every time I might use the hut.
So now to combine them, I used a free program called Audacity (https://www.audacityteam.org/) to combine the songs, and then export them to a single MP3. After transferring them to my phone so I can review them and make sure there wasn’t any issues, it sounded to me that it was kind of basic and something I could just do with my phone and any Bluetooth speaker and needed something more. Then it accrued to me since I was going to play these MP3s through a radio why not set it up like a radio and do it RIGHT!
After some digging I was able to locate some radio sounds (Static and tuning sounds) and even some old radio commercials (https://www.oldradioworld.com/). So I decided to redo the first four playlists to include the tuning sound (as if I was looking for the right radio station at first) and then every few songs I would drop in a commercial or 2 so it seemed more like a radio would be.
To push the nerdy envelope a little further I came across a Morse code generator that would allow you to download audio that was generated from a phrase you created. (https://www.mobilefish.com/services/morse_code/morse_code.php) I decided that I would put a little message at the end of one or two of the playlists (I don’t remember which ones). Here you can hear the message “Thank you for visiting The Lava Hut”
OK all the music has been combined and exported as an MP3 now how to get it to play…
Luckily I had a bunch of plunger style buttons left over from a Christmas figure I fixed for my mother in law. After working my magic with my soldering gun (I am horrible at this kind of magic) I was able to wire up the buttons to the circuit board to the proper ports to allow them to trigger each of the 5 “playlists”. The working on/off switch and volume control were also wired in with the speaker being the last original internal working part.
The battery was easily wired in and provided enough power to run my Frankenstein radio. (Don’t judge my horrible wire job). but the battery needed a full charge, so while it charges I decided I should do something else.
Some measuring and scrap wood, and about 3 hours later I came up with a radio shelf in the hut. (Took 3 hours for the wood stain and clear coat to dry)
I have this fear when ever I do projects like this. I tell my self don’t close it up completely as if everything was “done” so I need to run one more test. It was already late so I might as well test it out in the best possible location… maybe with rum… IDK… maybe?
