Project: Haro, the iRadio mod

[|NQ|Squelsh]

Hey guys,

welcome to Squelsh's speedmodding (:
I thought it would be fun to have two mods going, so I can work on one while the glue or stuff on the other one is drying.

It's one month left till the DCMM, the German Case Modding Contests. There will be three contests: CaseCons, CaseMods and the customer electronics mods. One of the sponsors is NOXON. They produce the famous iRadio, a nice litle WLAN radio box. NOXON gives some of them away for modding projects which are then presented at DCMM. I always wanted to own one of those boxes so it was time to come up with a nice idea for a radio-mod.
Well, one and one came togehter: I had one big 40cm diameter sphere from my Orb project left and ran into the "Haro PC Case" on youtube. ==> Idea was born

As I still have lots of work to do for my Orb, this mod needs to be something simple that can be built up quite fast. So it's gonna be a trade off between professional high precision work and a funmod. In this log I will also try to keep track of the time I put into the case.

I hope you will enjoy the story and come up with lots of comments and ideas, because there is absolutely no plan how that thing will gonna look like, when it's completed.

[|NQ|Squelsh]

So, lets get started:

Here are my ingredients for a new kind of web-radio-player:

The untouched NOXON iRadio:

The little radio next to it's new huge case:

Give it two eyes and a smile and you just have to hug it:

Time for marking: 15 minutes - Sum: 0,25h

Cutting the ears and eyes:

For that I drilled one million small holes and then teared out the pieces and sanded the edges. I think the result is nice.
Time for cutting: 45 minutes - Sum: 1,0h

The disasembled radio:

I searched for a way how to mount the controls and where to connect the speakers.
Time for electronics: 15 minutes - Sum: 1,25h

My dad sponsored me two nice speakers. They will be mounted inside the ears. The radio panel goes into the back of Haro. But the radio can be remote controlled, so that is no disadvantage.
Time for disasembling the speakerboxes: 15 minutes - Sum: 1,5h

How do you like it so far?

[|NQ|Squelsh]

Hey guys, thanks for your posts. I am glad you like it.
Here comes the next update:

I made the cut for the mouth. This is me with a biiiiig smile

Haro sticking out it's tongue:

Time for cuts: 30minutes - Sum: 2,0h

Those are the new control buttons:

Time for marking and drilling: 30minutes - Sum: 2,5h

Last thing was the circuit board, where I started to solder new wires for the control-buttons:

Time for soldering: 30minutes - Sum: 3,0h

Thats it for today. More to come tomorrow.

[|NQ|Squelsh]

@Ned: The wont be any hands. Dont know yet, if he will get feet...



Here we go again: I spent a whole afternooon working on Orb and Haro.

This is what I bought today: Two flower pots and some blue spraypaint.

And this is what I made of:

I glued the pots into Haros ears:

To make them fit perfect I had to cut them on one side:

Also connected them in the middle:

Looks funny:

Then I made a paperboard model of the speaker mounting to determine the right size:

Fits perfect:

For cutting exact circles I built a mounting for my Dremel so I could rotate the plastic sheet with the drillpress:

Here is a vid of the process:


But after one hour of work it simply broke apart when I cut the inner circle for the speaker

So I had to do that again, but this time I used the router. Results are even better:

This is how it looks placed in the ears:

In the next step I cut the pots flush with the sphere and added two hinges to the ears:

Now it looks a lot like MikeyMouse

I don't know exactly how much time each step took, but I spent about 6 hours in the workshop today.
Makes a total sum of 8 hours till now.

Looking forward to your comments.

[|NQ|Squelsh]

Thank you Lord Ned and Scar~face.

Here is a pic with the ears closed:

I need to add a kind of bumpers inside the ears, so they close flush with the sphere. Right now they fall into the sphere about 3mm.

Last night I added the hinge that connects upper and lower hemisphere and two guidances so the mouth can't move right or left.

Working time: 1,0h. Total: 9,0h

[|NQ|Squelsh]

Double post:
I spent lots of time with the electronics today, adding wires for external pushbuttons. I hate soldering SMD stuff!

I made a terminal board which will be glued to the original circuits board where I can easily connect the buttons to. The little black thing in the middle of the four SMD buttons is the IR-receiver. So this board will be placed behind Haros eyes where IR can pass through.

Also I desoldered the volume potentiometer so I can place it on the sphere. Formerly it was mounted on the lower right corner in the pic above. Fortunately the potentiometer has its own wires and is not using the cable that connects the control-panel and mainboard. That way I could connect the potentiometer directly to the cable:

And finally I replaced the original cable between the control panel circuits and the motherboard by a regular IDE cable, which is a lot longer and therefore makes the placement of the boards more easy.

Time for electronics work and testing: 4h. Total: 13h

I hope the sun will shine tomorrow, so I can paint the sphere.

[|NQ|Squelsh]

Well, now it's a triple post.

After a bit of bondo and a lot of sanding I was ready to paint today.

Time: 3h. Total 16,0h

Things left to do: Mounting stuff for LCD and circuit bords.

[|NQ|Squelsh]

Thanx Froop and Xperiment. I almost got high while painting because I had to do it inside in the basement because it was too cold outside.

Today I gave Haro it's eyes back after I painted them:

I also glued in the mounting for the display and added the buttons:

But I ran into the problem that the cable between the display and the mainboard is verry short. But I can't replace it, so tomorrow I will have to figure out how I can mount the mainboard...

Time: 1h. Total: 17h.

[|NQ|Squelsh]

Sorry, Eclecticos... Those buttons need 18Volts to light up, and the radio runs with 12Volts. So I have to disappoint you .

Bad idea Froop... Even though I cut almost all stuff to make it suit my mods, I don't think I could solder those cables printed on foil . Don't know, how to call them, see yourself:

So what I did today:

2 clamps that hold the circuit bords:

One for the front (IR-receiver behind the eyes):

And one in the back right above the display:

The whole thing looks like that:

I had to install the board in that wonky way because of the mentioned cable to the display... The green angle in the center holds the WLAN antenna.

Little add on to the eyes: Two blue LEDs:

Still workin?

Yeah And the sound is much better than with the original speaker.

Time put in today: 6h. Total: 23h

[|NQ|Squelsh]

I think I am too stupid to take good pictures. Either way, this morning I finished my Haro mod and have to show you the latest photos

In my eyes he looks sad with the ears closed:

The control buttons (btw: The green ones are for the five faourite stations, the ones left are navigation up down left right and the ones on the right are regular audio controls)

With ears open I have to think about a fat Playboy Bunny

Well, the hardware is workin, the eyes are glowing and the sound is coming. It's time to box Haro for the DCMM so nothing can brake within the next 3 weeks.
I would like to keep this thread open till I come back from DCMM to show you some other iRadio mods if you like. And then move it to the finished logs.
Hope you had fun so far. I enjoyed this quick mod verry much and will now focus on The Orb.

See you, Squelsh