ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
Hi.
I bagged a problematic Century on eBay for cheap. All it needed was a service and all the sensors cleaned. Lobbed it on the wall but started to think the tape player does look a bit redundant in 2015.
So I dug through my old phones and decided to use my Galaxy S3 as a media player in place of the tape player.
This is a non destructive upgrade, except a little trimming of the front panel. Even if this is degraded back to tape it will look factory.
Measured all I needed to, and drew up some CAD, ready for the laser cutter.
This produced some nice acrylic parts, I sprayed matt black. There is even a button that was fitted to active the home button on the phone.
In the mix above you can see: The main plastic fascia. A black card light blocker, an old 240v to 5v charger & the button.
As the tape function has been removed, it was right to block out the tape and rec button so they never illuminate. This was done with some black card just placed into each button.
Plastic and card parts fitted. This all gets hot glued which is easy to remove if needed.
I had to cut down the USB and audio plugs, as the side space was limited.
Test fitting all the bits from the back...
and the front.
Integrating back into the century. Charger is wired to the 240v feed via a fuse. Audio output is soldered to the PCB aux pins. Phone is hot glued into place.
Testing - all works as expected.
On the wall (excuse the holes, there used to be some shelves there).
No more tape button illuminating.
Close up of the upgrade.
Nice simple project that really enhances the old Century!
Well done! A pretty clever upgrade there and it looks really good as well!
Ben
Ta.
I may even look at hooking up the transport controls from the remote to the phone. But as this is in reach I doubt I will do that.
Steve.
we tend to forget there is more to design than designing.
"You think we can slap some oak on this thing?"
leosgonewild:Amazing job
BeoNut since '75
Beautiful job!
Graham
Here is a quick video of it in action.
Can you embed Youtube videos on here?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mRUKZk_Upo
Very cool, a great job of updating a classic. But, doesn't Darth Vader's wheezing distract from the music?
Jeff
I'm afraid I'm recovering from the BeoVirus.
Impressive! I love it.
Nicely done !
Beo Century ,Beoplay V1, Beocenter 6, Ex-Beolit 12, Beotime , A8. Beolit 15 , Form 2i , Beolab 2000, Beoplay A3.Beosound 1
You have done an outstanding job.
I wish i understood the circuitry of electronics. Amazing :-)
Cheers!
My eBaying just got me a non working Beosound 3. If I can't fix it - it will become a bluetooth speaker, possibly with a new FM tuner just so I can use the ariel.
That should be an interesting project!
Great job, pinter75!!!!! Please make a new thread of your Beosound 3 project! Will you try to keep the aluminium top panel usable for your bluetooth speaker projekt? I'm sooo curious! :)
I will wait and see what the issue with the Beosound is. It has the common - powers on - no around issue. Possibly being the top panel is borked.
But yup if I get on with the project, a thread will appear.
pinter75: My eBaying just got me a non working Beosound 3. If I can't fix it - it will become a bluetooth speaker, possibly with a new FM tuner just so I can use the ariel.
Yes, would be a great project, indeed. The fm tuner is on a separate PCB which could easily be swapped against a custom one with tuner + Bluetooth and some switching logic. The heart of a BS3 is a ATmega64l which controls the tuner via an SPI like bus. Internal audio distribution is analogue.
Shouldn't be too hard to write the firmware from scratch and include some extra functions. :-)E.g. long press on RADIO for Bluetooth and some additional display messages...
BR,BeoMotion.
Ohh it is powered by an ATMega on SPI, cool. I was going to use an ATMega and an SPI FM tuner if I wanted radio. Already build loads of MCU controlled Bluetooth audio products in my time.
I have some induction charging stuff I want to try out too. So maybe this is a good candidate.
Sounds good :-)
Unfortunately the control panel on top of BS3 is a very weak point. I wish the one you bought has an other defect. It is an resistive touch foil that is connected to 4 analog pins of the ATmega.
Which Bluetooth audio chip are you using? RN52 from Microchip?It is a shame that there are only very few dab+ modules available. This would be a cool replacement for the fm part...
DAB would be great but yes expensive at the moment. I have looked at an SPI FM radio, and the bluejtooth audio module is one I have had lying about for a while. I will have to get the specs out.
Is the top panel all capacitive, or a mix of mechanical for the buttons and cap for the wheel?
Edit: just saw it was resistive.
I have a Beosystem 2300, but it is sooo nice it would be a shame to hack it. The Century on the other hand was just crying out for a mod. Tapes are just a bit meh now. I grew up with them in the 80's but today they are just redundant.
Maybe just find a tablet that kinda fits in a space in the 2300, then hook into the aux input. Having all the buttons removed won't be such an issue if you have a remote.
As for plastic parts, sure. I have a laser cutter and 3D printer here. Could be an interesting project. If you are removing the CD mech, then my 2300 could do with one ;-)
If I were to do this, I would get an overture and fit a phone in place of the tape drive. Possibly more of a challenge than the century.
Are all the new Beoplay touch screen systems, just Android tablets with custom roms?
Better video after a few days use. Discovered that the phone is actually charged when the unit is on. This means on battery in standby. Nice feature is that the screen illuminates when you wake up the main unit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVS1Wr1J1D4
It does require some modding to the front fascia to fit in a Galaxy S3. The resaon I went this route is:
a). I had one spareb). iPhones don't display Spotify or Deeza in landscape.c). Having it all flush and factory looking was desired.
An iPhone 5 fits into the space perfectly, and I nearly designed it so you can take the phone out if needed. This would make it more like a dock, but ultimately more work. If 3D printers were just a bit better then the upgrade would literally be a swap out.
I don't think a kit would work as it is not all that plug and play. But it is still an easy upgrade that took a few hours from start to end.
Still if anyone is up for attacking their century, I can make the CAD files I made available . The biggest job was modifying the power and headphone jack. The micro USB literally had to be disassembled, cut down and reassembled. Those pins are tiny!
Oh yeah this is specific to the Galaxy S3.
Ok not related to the hack, but still part of the changeover.
As nice as the green frets are, black would suit better. So remebering how bad pigment based ink stains fabric, I dug out some from my inkjet supply.
Bathed each fret in the stuff - now I have black frets for free!
Incredibly inventive idea. But my post is completely off topic. I love the model of the space shuttle in the reflection on the glass door.
Opman: Incredibly inventive idea. But my post is completely off topic. I love the model of the space shuttle in the reflection on the glass door.
It is Lego, probably more expensive than B&O gear! Think it is long discontinued now :-(
Ok, made some changes.
As I simply used my old S3, I have cleared it, rooted it so I can fool Spotify into thinking it is on a tablet (No more shuffle play only).
Also I think I can hook into the existing remote sensor and use an MCU to decode some of the BeoRemote 1000 codes. This should at least give me transport controls. i will leave the Century to handle volume etc.
The phone can take keyboard commands to control spotify. So if I hack into the USB line I can create a virtual keyboard. Then when the IR sensor gets a command the MCU recognises it will send a keystroke to the phone running Spotiry.
Sounds simple enough.
If I remember B&O use a higher frequency than other IR devices. So if tapping into the sensor is tricky - any one got an idea of what kind of sensor I will need to add?
Thanks.
Oh yeah, I cleaned up the home screen and added a B&O logo.
pinter75:If I remember B&O use a higher frequency than other IR devices. So if tapping into the sensor is tricky - any one got an idea of what kind of sensor I will need to add?
Yes, B&O is using a carrier frequency of 455kHz.Normally all of their IR receivers have a built in hardware demodulator. I think the century is no exception. So it should be possible to bring the S3 into OTG mode and connect a MCU in between the S3 and the demodulated IR signal of the internal receiver..
There is an arduino library for receiving B&O codes on GitHub LINK. Shouldn't be a big problem porting this to another MCU.
This should be the required IR receiver for B&O signals:
Vishay Semiconductor TSOP7000, 455kHzhttp://www.ebay.de/itm/271887204040?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
TWG: This should be the required IR receiver for B&O signals: Vishay Semiconductor TSOP7000, 455kHz
Vishay Semiconductor TSOP7000, 455kHz
That's correct. However, unless you really want to have it separate, it will be more sensible to tap into the built-in receiver in the Century. It's the traditional discrete B&O design that is much more sensitive than the single-chip TSOP7000. It's on a separate board so there will be a clean logic level signal available without much digging, and without problems finding a place for the TSOP where it can actually receive something.
--mika
Great! I was planning to use an Arduino or Teensy to do the IR decoding and virtual keyboard operations.
Even better there is an existing library!
Thanks!
Ok, dug out the IR reciever board, looked through the service manual.
Seems that B&O designed a board to do the pulse counting and conversion, much like the IR receivers with 3 pins. Am I correct in assuming that the output is the pulses expected from a regular IR receiver?
I guess I will hook it up and try it with the Arduino library and see what happens.
Right. Hooked up the IR receiver to an arduino.
It is now dumping IR codes to the serial monitor :-)
Should be simple enough to write some code to detect a certain key, then send a virtual keypress to the phone.
pinter75:Seems that B&O designed a board to do the pulse counting and conversion, much like the IR receivers with 3 pins. Am I correct in assuming that the output is the pulses expected from a regular IR receiver?
Yes, both these solutions output the demodulated pulse train. The couple of codes you posted don't match anything I have written down, but it's possible that the Arduino library has them bit reversed or aligned differently. Doesn't matter if you are going to capture them yourself anyway. The regular "short" commands are 17 bits long.
I tested with the volume keys. According to the library:
VOLUME_UP = 0x60
VOLUME_DOWN = 0x64
Seems I am getting the correct values. As long as I get different values for each key - the concept will work.