Go Music Box

Im headed off to the hills of rural central America, and Im going with my I pod. I decided I needed some kind of case that would keep a low profile, so that the pod doesn't take off.

I saw this design : http://www.retropod.com/. With out a doubt, pretty rad, go box, in that as long as you don't act all hipster advertise it as an ipod in a walkman, it keeps it modest, yet very useful.

I didn't have access to one of those big old walkmans, and didn't have the time to wait to buy one on eBay. Rummaging through my mom's collection of assorted obsolete electronics that she has hoarded away in her basement ( gotta love that yankee pack rat mentality) I pulled out an FM am GE transitor radio, and used the shell to make my case. Not to hard, but here is the step by step in case you're interested:



Here's a picture of the case before cracking it open. The plastice case consists of two pieces of hard plastic, held together by two screws.

I didn't document taking out the circuit board and speaker, but basically all that was required was cutting some wires, taking out some small screws, and using a small flat head screw driver to pry under and break off small plastic tabs.




Here are the two halves of the case side by side.



Once the two halves are apart, I took a Butter Knife to a gas burner to heat it up, then used the knife to melt off the posts that held the screws together. This freed up more space for the Ipod, cardboard, and wires that would come later. The case is not is well put together as it was with the screws, but the cases snap together strong enough, and eventually Ill put some large rubber bands around the body to hold it together.

note: stay away from those plastic fumes, get it done in a well ventilated area.



To protect the Pod from moving around too much and getting scratched by the hard plastic, I cut two pieces of thin pizza box cardboard to the size of the inside of the radio, and mounted them using 3m squares.



I used a controller that connects between the ipod and the head phones, and wrapped the extra wire in the body of the radio.



The controller goes where the 9 volt battery normally would go.


This is a basic design, one hack that would come in handy would be to both weather proof it, and then also have sly opening that would access the bottom of the pod so that it could be recharged without opening the radio case. That will be another post.