If I was you... I forget the touch screen and program 5 stations under the old buttons of the radio itself. You can also ad more stations and use a rotary encoder connected to the old station selector
When using only five stations you don't need a touchscreen. A really nice idea is to use the scale as selector for the stations so you must tune in to a station to keep the analog feel alive. When nothing is selected use some static noise. This can be done with an IR LED (attachted to the back of the pointer) and a few (IR) photoresistors/transistors. When the pointer is above a photoresistor/transistor and the LED shines on it, a station is selected. I think this is a really awesome idea and pretty easy to implement.
Nice project but I had preferred the old radio electronics to come back to live! Old analog radios is an amazing world, with today’s electronics advance they could be improve a lot in quality and features.
I agree, I feel sad about destroying old radio. Old radios had phono input, so he can use tube amplifier of the radio along with the speaker to amplify internet radio signal. I hope, it is still possible to restore such old radio.
I 100% agree on that! What a pity to destroy a superb audio amplifier already present in there. All it usually takes to restore these is to replace some of the old electrolytic capacitors and de-oxide the various switches and contacts. Tubes usually last forever.
when I was 12, I opened up a radio like this one which my grandfather bought from UK back in 1980s. It was made out of plastic powered by a 6V lead acid battery. Components were quite different back then. There were expensive Germanium transistors along with chunky electrolytic capacitors and 1W brown coloured resistors. Only same component I found there which we still use commercially is the knob potentiometer. It all were connected by wires, no modern pcb whatsoever. However back then, I didn’t know a lot about electronics so I just scrapped the parts and collected them in a jar which I still have. This video makes me feel nostalgic.
Record player for me that my mom had from the 50s. This is the type of thing if it's beyond repair, you modify to use. If it still is usable you restore
Check out youtube.com/@MrCarlsonsLab he's got awesome vintage radio restorations. Makes me nostalgic from seeing the old stuff around as a kid and tearing it apart lol.
Those old Grundig's are great when they are restored. I can understand you wanting to completely rebuild the internals with modern components, but they do sound amazing using a bluetooth or other adaptor and just restoring the existing electronics. 90% of the time the Valves/Tubes are good.
@@greatscottlab I like your videos but this is a disaster, even a qualified service would repair it for cheaper and bluetooth modules are cheap on the internet. With the added bonus of saving an old radio
I usually like your projects. Still, this one is hard on me. I love the appeal of those tube type radios, and part of it is their distinctive scent when they get warm. You lost this part to the trash can. Another point is, that musicians spend amounts of money for a tube type amplifier which you had at hand. The only thing you needed, is a Bluetooth to FM converter, and you could have simply played whatever your smartphone throws at the old steam horse. No need for such an invasive solution. Sometimes, less is more.
Are we sure the radio was still working? And I'd find bluetooth-to-FM a bit low tech. Would have been cooler to find a way to directly hook external input to the audio circuit.
@@martinrocket1436 It’s an old radio. It doesn’t matter if it’s still working now, it’s easily fixed. That’s the beauty of old technology. I agree that using as much of the existing hardware as possible would be the best way to go.
Two things worth noting. First off, old electronics are often extremely carcinogenic, thanks to an abundance of polychlorinated biphenyl and other compounds now long banned. Secondly, musicians don’t pay a lot for tubes, they pay a lot for very specific tubes in excellent condition. It’s unlikely that what was lost here was worth keeping.
@@trhosking the very most of post war tube type radios do indeed receive FM stations. And if it doesn't, a good share of these radios have at least a record player input which can easily be put to line level by adding a pull-down resistor. And if both isn't the case, it's not too hard to identify the audio output pin in the radio reception tube section. You pull that specific tube and feed your audio directly into the acceptor of that tube socket. But be aware, tubes work at high voltages. Before doing that, a bit of self-education is absolutely necessary.
2:27 you can probably sell that PCL82/PCL86 tube (on the right) if it still works. The funny thing is that, most of them uses 12V/16V heater to turn on & 220V DC anode for both (!) tubes, you can just feed it line signal and wire it straight to the Trafo & Speaker since that is technically an integrated amplifier (tube version) on a budget for those era. If the circuit looks very simple... because it is; that tube (and something similar) are also being used widely on very old TV's.
P tubes were used in televisions, not in radio receivers ;) This set uses an ECL86 for preamplification and to drive the speaker. PCL86 aren´t worth much, but ECL86 are.
5:58 By the looks of it, it's a PCM51xx breakout board (although mine looks flipped), and if I'm correct, then you forgot to tie the SCK pin to GND! SCK is the System ClocK input, but you can tie it to GND for the internal PLL to activate, and it should support 44100Hz and 48000Hz sample rates in this mode (other modes need SCK generation, it's in the datasheet). Also the output of this chip is line-level (1kOhm), so you need an amplifier to drive anything audible out of it.
6 years ago I did a similar project with my grandpa’s Phillips vaccum tube radio. It has 6 vacuum tubes and takes 2min to completely turn on to heat. Once the vacuum tubes are heated, it outputs the perfect music. Since AM and MW are not there anymore, it has a special button. With a mono input, it works just brilliant with new system. Plugged in the Bluetooth/fm audio board output using banana plugs and Utes perfect. I didn’t remove original circuit. Also your radio doesn’t have the special knobs like mine does. Pulling right knob gives control of bass and pushing to gives treble control. Left know is for turning on and volume control. I restored it and just used 3 times and kept it as a museum piece.
Was it possible to integrate the white buttons for ESP's GPIO input for channel selection and not using touchscreen at all? This would make the radio completely in its original form which in my opinion is a much 'cooler' choice
Would even be better to use the standard dial and round station selector wheel (on right hand side of the station dial) to select the internet stations. Also it is a pity to not use the original valve amplifier. As a radio collector I am not in favour of these modifications. You can instead restore the radio and use the record player input to connect a blue tooth receiver into. In that case the original radio is preserved.
@@rudie2902 But it was a variable capacitor. How would you decode capacitive values to something digital? I am not sure if any aftermarket potentiometer could fit nicely in there
@@FaizanKhan-iq3yd There are capacitance to digital converters, You'd need to check the range they work on vs the range of your variable capacitor in the data sheet tho.
Interesting cool little project. Though I'm not sure how I feel about trashing a vintage tube radio. I personally would have restored the old radio part so you could dial in some radio stations the old way (if/when WiFi isn't available). Then integrated the WiFi radio along with a DAB and Bluetooth/BT device into the cabinet along with the touch screen. I'm working on a project of adding bluetooth/BT to the amplifier of my separates HiFi system by upcycling a broken BT headphones set, the physical headset frame and ear cups are broken but the electronics are still in perfect condition.
nice project. =) i personally would have used the existing buttons on the radio to change station and enable bluetooth to keep the look vintage. the touch screen also works tho.
This hurt me to see, all you need to do is replace all the paper type capacitors and the few electrolytes that are there. Then it works for sure. You connect your internet radio to the gramophone input. There is no reason to throw away old electronics.
That radio may be a bit older than you think. I have a 1960 Blaupunkt radio that could be this Grundig’s fraternal twin sister. If so, they’d both be 63 years old. I really like radios of this period and have three in my collection. Great find, Great Scott!
I did a very similar system but used to send some old time radio recordings to the radio it even sounded like it was back in the 1940s. I still used the valve amplifier for the sound output which gave it a nice warm sound. Thanks for your time and work.
Great stuff, Scott! But those 5 old buttons on the radio made me wonder if you could use them for choosing each station? This will also keep the authentic look, with no touchscreen ,which I'm sure will be useful in some other project).
Maybe should’ve tried to get the old chassis going again, and fed the audio into to the existing circuitry.. just my thoughts though. Those radios are usually simple to repair, and replacement tubes for those are cheap.
While i like the general idea of making something useful of old stuff rather than throwing it away, i honestly don´t really like it how the internals got ripped apart like this. You did an great job anyways but i don´t like the idea of destroying something like this, which on it´s own would be worth a project on doing a restoration of. I mean sure it´s just an old radio but it would´ve been much much nicer to see it properly repaired and working again because FM bands are still useable and there´s nothing more pleasant than an tube radio, which outperforms most modern FM radios in receiption quality and sensitivity. You could then still add bluetooth or internet radio through the TA port (basically a line in) and have all the modern features, but keep the rest of it alive and working. There would´ve been ways to grab one of the internal voltages to power such addons even.
Honestly, after scrapping Bluetooth Volumio on an old raspberry pi (1B or 2B) would have been so much more functionality for around the same cost even if you need an external wifi dongle (because the pi could take over the LCD functionality as well). If bluetooth worked, and you don't want playback with DLNA or from network shares then this might be a better call.
i will never get the point of people using raspberry pis instead of microcontrollers. you don't need a full linux os on an sd card, than can corrupt for such a simple project. and who wants to have a radio, that needs to boot for longer than a blink of an eye?
@@c5e3 because if you need more than two of networking (with multiple application layer protocols), GUI, file systems, multitasking, USB host, it's much harder to integrate these tasks on a microcontroller (even though all of them are feasible on their own). In linux, ready solutions are installed by a package manager. Also hardware accelerators are often exclusive to microprocessors, and especially when dealing with video they make a big difference. And in this case, volumio is a readily available product, that has a community and some level of support, with much more functionality that you may or may not use.
The LCD setup seems a bit overengineered, you could literally use 5 buttons and print a nice label for them. You wouldn't need a separate board for driving the display, the esp32 and the i2s DAC would be the whole digital electronics you'd need.
Interesting, but also sad. That was a fine old Grundig radio in quite good condition as restore subjects go. Though I understand the motivation to create something modern and unique out of something old and worn out, in my opinion one should first restore a vintage radio to work as it did when new, then add some new circuits to modernize its capabilities. That way you retain the best of both worlds, the old and the new, without trampling on the history that made the modern circuits possible. You can always remove the added circuits later and return the radio to its original function if you decide the mods were not to your liking, but once you destroy the old circuitry, its gone forever.
What a shame. This radio was in good condition, probably only needed about 8 capacitors replaced to work reliably again, and had a factory audio input. If you're attaching an external box to it you could've just put everything in the box and kept the radio original, or at the very least left the original electronics inside and just hooked up the speaker to them new parts in the box.
I worked with STM Microcontrollers in college, and I have to say, I quite like them personally. Kudos for that. Supposedly some of the more "advanced" STM microcontrollers come with I2S built in, but I don't think they come with WiFi/BT though. Again, I could be wrong on both of those.
+1 on this STM is honestly the go to if you are doing any kind of serious projects, or commercial/ industrial stuff, the esp microcontrollers have some issues, timing issues and over all not as diverse and supported as STMs, this is one of the reasons why drone flight controllers are based around STM chips, also yes some STM chips have i2s, pio etc but im not sure about wireless communication
Thanks for including the failure and how you chose to move forward from it! Too many projects never get finished because someone gets stuck on one library or microcontroller or something not working as expected.
Love this! One alternative to a touchscreen could be using an LED matrix behind the fabric part of the speaker to display text / simple graphics. The tricky part would be doing it in a way that doesn't muffle the sound too much.
This was a great watch, but I was really hoping you would be able to get the Bluetooth function working (I'm sure you were too), and I was hoping maybe you would put some non-copyright music on a local computer and broadcast it to the radio so we could hear it. This gives me a great idea for an old radio that I have. I will probably try to figure out how to use it with Spotify connect and a small three or four line display with song title on it, as I don't usually listen to traditional or Internet radio stations.
I really liked this channel in the past. But nowdays I feel that doing it for views killed the couriosity and endurance of Great Scott. You never given up on someting what come into your mind and always find a solution on it. It become that typical "I bought 4 different module and soldered them together and than I uploaded a code what I found online". I really want the old Great Scott back, who's videos was exciting and people can learn someting.
Awesome project! Why didn't you use the original valve amp? Its a very good amplifier and it should solve the problem using another amplifier. Also, as equal as others, the original buttons are perfect to use without a touchscreen. A screen is good to show which station is playing.
And then you could hide the hideous touchscreen behind the radio or fridge. Sorry, had to say it. Hopefully he did not screw it on the beautiful woodframe.
I remember these old radios from when I was a kid back in the 70s, I just looked it up and this model was made between 1960-1964 so a bit older than me...
As an aside, there are amplifiers that have built in bluetooth connection built in. I have a plan to do something similar, but I am building the enclosure as well. I have a low cost amplifier from Amazon (of course you can get them from Alibaba or any similar Chinese sourced site). Makes thing a little more simple.
You cruel beast! When I was about your age I took apart an old valve Roberts Radio and transplanted a veroboard circuit with single chip fm receiver. I have recently been restoring it to its original condition. You should have sent it to Dave Tipton.
I modified an old 1970 radio, and working on a 1946 now. The only mod is a Bluetooth receiver module, with a switch on the back to choose between original radio and BT. So no dramatical modification, and easily reversed if needed.
I really like re-using the old style cabinet. A couple of comments though. Did you really need the AC supply? Could you just have used a USB-C PD board and left the AC part to the external power supply? The touch screen module seemed awfully complex and I assume, pricey. Is there a reason you used it and not maybe a cheaper esp32 with a screen? (edit: actually, looking at mouser, the screen was surprisingly cheap, atleast for that size). Could the touchscreen have been mounted and designed like the old frequency chart in the middle of the radio body, between the dials?
Totally agree! USB-C (>5V 500mA) can be a challenge to do by hand, but with the cheap PD boards, which offer a number of voltages (5, 9, 20, etc.), they’ve become my first choice for all new projects. Plus, if you use a quality power block (Apple ones are way overpriced, but well made) the output can be much cleaner than the average external brick or wart.
Uhh, disappointment 😞 Using at least that built-in tube audio amplifier instead of your 20W transistor amp would have been so nice! Breaks my heart! You had all the parts you needed already in the radio, sigh. Using the 5 switches as station keys would have been nice. And you could have used a Web-interface via WiFi to change the channels that are on those station switches. I retro-fitted an even older radio from 1939, made by Körting, with a bluetooth receiver (from broken wireless headphones), feeding the analog audio to the phono input of the radio. All I needed was a small audio transformer to match the impedance and the audio voltage level. Sounds great!
You should have took your project and put it inside the radio and used the radios tube amp to amplify and drive the speaker. There are many sources out there that tell you how to add a line level input to the radio. Its a shame to see a vintage radio gutted and replaced with modern electronic crap. You know they dont make there anymore and the amps in these are actually really good.
Amazing project, except for the added touchscreen. IMHO it collides with the retro philosophy which has driven you away from the modern looks of internet radios. I'd suggest to implement a web browser interface instead. Hidden but accessible by any computer and smartphone in the house. Anyway, nice job. As usual! :) EDIT: and the tuning knob could be replaced by a rotary encoder, so to cycle along a list of stations of your choice. ;)
I make all kinds of these from flea market and thrift store finds. I then upgrade and sell them at craft fairs, festivals, and flea markets. People love them.
While I appreciate that some people prefer to use old hardware and there may have been a way to maintain the old electronics, there are many more old devices than there are people who want to use old devices. It’s great to see someone reusing the parts that they care about.
He destroyed a working radio and ruined the beautifully aged case... He likes the "old" look, just not enough to keep it, so he blobbed a bunch of cheap paint on it? The electronics are mildly interesting, but the radio case part is a horror movie...
That's how culture and invention have always worked. We cherry-pick from the remains of the past and remix them for today. He didn't steal the radio from someone making use of it, he took it from gathering dust and being useless and reused the parts he liked. As a species we'd be stuck in amber if not for this kind of work.
Just a suggestion, remove the touchscreen and use the radio's original tuning dial (read the variable capacitor) for channel selection. Thanks from Colorado.
@@greatscottlab It's in the pico-farad range and is fairly easy to do (and would make a wonderful GreatScott video). Or better yet, find another radio to modify.
Seems like a great project for me. Short backstory: until a few weeks ago I used to listen to MW Radio on my old 1978 GDR (RFT) Radio at nighttime, but the station shut down its MW transmitters. Luckily you can still listen to it via Internet. So, it might be possible to still listen to this station using this radio, keeping the aesthetic but unfortunately taking away the excitement of listening to a Station 1000s of kms away..
There are many things lots of us think could have been done differently, and I think that's the point of this video, to inspire the viewers. if the radio had been made perfect, restoring and keeping the original parts while discreetly adding modern features, there wouldn't be any improvement left to ponder and imagine.
My dad has an old GE radio that’s a lovely half round “toaster” shape and I’ve been thinking of a resto-mod just like this! Amazing work as always-KW in Texas
It would have been nice if you found a way to keep the tube audio amplifier from the original radio instead of just gutting it and just keeping the chassis... The tube amp would probably sound better than a cheap Aliexpress class D lego board...
Personally I would've kept the retro look & used the physical buttons as @(Evny Zislis) pointed out in their comment or inset the display between the two dials (even if it protruded) to keep the form factor. That said, it's still a pretty cool little project. I wish I can find an old radio like that someday & do something like this myself. Cheers & looking forward to your next adventure.
Yeah, Great Scott got me into electronics and now I mostly repair vintage radios and TVs - seeing him ruin this antique and encouraging others in comments to do the same just breaks my heart.
I personally love seeing new life breathed into old electronic shells instead of letting them fester in the trash untouched or put up as non-functional antique displays, but that may just be me
Grundig, a blast from the past. Our first colour TV was a Grundig. It was delivered on a summer Thursday night and we watched “The Invisible Man” TV show with David McCallum. If memory recalls it was the episode he overtook a school bus and was put in the local sheriff’s jail. After that it was Top of the Pops. We thought it was a disco in our living room with all the flashing coloured lights. How young we were.
Could it be possible to keep the original tube amplifier and connect the new analog output to it ? These old tubes have a nice warm sound and feels like a shame to throw them out.
Just a tip for future projects if you are going to stain them to get a smooth even stain finish use a pre-stain form like minwax it works wonders on cheap wood and MDF.
I recently recreated your idea of a Internet and Bluetooth Radio. Thanks for the good base to build on. The bluetooth function is also working great for me.
The ESP32-A1S would be perfect for this build and I have one I’m using for a DIY PolySynth if you get the Audio Development Board with ESP 8388 audio codec, it will work flawlessly.
Possibly a video idea that relates to the Bluetooth aspect of this project; Looking at how those small adapters for older cars (which feature radio only without aux or Bluetooth) that plugs into the analogue aux port and power, and allows you to connect to it via Bluetooth and transmits the audio on a small low power radio for the car to receive, essentially a Bluetooth to radio signal converter. Obviously your radio couldn't make use of it as is, but if you wanted to explore Bluetooth functionality a 'DIY or Buy" video would have parts that could integrate with yours. Thanks for the video and all the content!
Great idea. I did a car stereo conversion where I (mostly) removed the cassette tape player and replaced it with a Bluetooth receiver. It was a bit challenging, but fun and, of course, useful.
Wow, that one second video of the variable capacitor got me the click moment of how the MEM gyros which measure capacitance work. Seeing it in 3d is easier to understand for me
Don't know if you've heard of the Raspiaudio Muse Proto? Specifically designed to use the esp32 for Bluetooth, WiFi and Local music. It's a nice board with everything you would need for the project! And as the rest was saying, please, you should have used the original buttons 😅
You should see if anyone wants the vacuum tube if it's working. I can understand not wanting to see the old devices since high voltage is very dangerous and most folks don't have the necessary equipment like an isolated power supply to bring up the vacuum tube system up slowly to ensure everything is working. Plus, you got the issue with potential failure points like the power transformer which often can't be replaced so you're forced to do bodge work (again very dangerous when powered up after an attempted fix) and other parts like the IF transformers (not as dangerous but a real pain to get right, see MrCarlson's lab restoration videos for how complicated it can be).
Great project, the old variable capacitor is a rare item, also tube. And it still used by many RF hobiest, at least in here, Indonesia. I would like to see, if you want to build a project with these old components.
I like the idea of a "retro" radio look with modern quality audio, good job. I just wouldn't put it on top of the fridge, as it would be absolutely drenched in oil.
How about using an e-ink touchscreen and obscuring it as, for instance, a framed old ink drawing or B/W photograph? The frame would have to look old and be chunky enough to hold all the electronics, but framing the e-in screen in a passepartout could take care of that extra space
If you have an android phone you can enter developer mode and switch between various bluetooth standards, none are necessarily better than the others, some standards just work better with certain devices. I've used this method more than once to fix pairing issues with stuff like wireless headphones and IoT devices.
Nice video but I'm sorry to see instead of increasing the value of the old radio times 10 you have decreased the value by 10. Destroying the inside of the old radio was painfull to see.
I agree with you in principle, the old electronics is very cool. But I understand why he did this, in many places there aren't any AM stations left, or the ones that are are weak or don't broadcast anything interesting.
If you feel you need to touch screen for just a selection between 5 stations, and not use the buttons already on the radio, you could have at least made it wireless so you wouldn't need that cable. :)
Cool project it kinda inspires me to film making and programming my headphone's bluetooth circuit after all if it fails I would atleast get something out of it. The design has so many new rhings I never used before that it's making me nervous. It uses an NRF52832 soc as the bluetooth module and a 24bit dac IC. It also has 3 battery managment ICs(protection,charge,buck converter) and if this wasn't enough I decided to make the pcb at home since I managed to fit everything on 1 side...
I think it would be a good idea to replace the station selection slider part with a touchscreen instead of having it over the top. This way you keep the shape and may change what is displayed at your will.
If I was you... I forget the touch screen and program 5 stations under the old buttons of the radio itself. You can also ad more stations and use a rotary encoder connected to the old station selector
Also possible :-)
@@greatscottlab thanks for the inspiration 🙏
thats great idea. i would have used the vaccum tube amp for that distinct sound quality
I could hide Alexa inside 😂...
I thought the same, five buttons, five radio stations
When using only five stations you don't need a touchscreen. A really nice idea is to use the scale as selector for the stations so you must tune in to a station to keep the analog feel alive. When nothing is selected use some static noise. This can be done with an IR LED (attachted to the back of the pointer) and a few (IR) photoresistors/transistors. When the pointer is above a photoresistor/transistor and the LED shines on it, a station is selected. I think this is a really awesome idea and pretty easy to implement.
Good idea
Or just measure the tuning cap. It's much easier.
@@bzuidgeest Okay, try it and come back with your results. Succes!
@@bzuidgeest need an rc circuit with mcu timer
@@codebeat4192 don't have to, use Google, several options that others have done out there. But you can use your convoluted way if you want to.
Nice project but I had preferred the old radio electronics to come back to live! Old analog radios is an amazing world, with today’s electronics advance they could be improve a lot in quality and features.
I agree, I feel sad about destroying old radio. Old radios had phono input, so he can use tube amplifier of the radio along with the speaker to amplify internet radio signal. I hope, it is still possible to restore such old radio.
I 100% agree on that! What a pity to destroy a superb audio amplifier already present in there. All it usually takes to restore these is to replace some of the old electrolytic capacitors and de-oxide the various switches and contacts. Tubes usually last forever.
well the tubes could be dead
@@LKonstantina915 very unlikely i restore radios and this set is one i do want and tubes of that era are very reliable.
when I was 12, I opened up a radio like this one which my grandfather bought from UK back in 1980s. It was made out of plastic powered by a 6V lead acid battery. Components were quite different back then. There were expensive Germanium transistors along with chunky electrolytic capacitors and 1W brown coloured resistors. Only same component I found there which we still use commercially is the knob potentiometer. It all were connected by wires, no modern pcb whatsoever. However back then, I didn’t know a lot about electronics so I just scrapped the parts and collected them in a jar which I still have. This video makes me feel nostalgic.
Thanks for the feedback :-) Nice story
Same story! Regret opening vintage radio back then instead i would have opened now😢
Same here
Record player for me that my mom had from the 50s. This is the type of thing if it's beyond repair, you modify to use. If it still is usable you restore
Check out youtube.com/@MrCarlsonsLab he's got awesome vintage radio restorations. Makes me nostalgic from seeing the old stuff around as a kid and tearing it apart lol.
Those old Grundig's are great when they are restored. I can understand you wanting to completely rebuild the internals with modern components, but they do sound amazing using a bluetooth or other adaptor and just restoring the existing electronics. 90% of the time the Valves/Tubes are good.
Exactly. Not gonna be subscribing to this channel.
@@cjay2 Ok bye.
My tubes were busted though.
@@greatscottlab I like your videos but this is a disaster, even a qualified service would repair it for cheaper and bluetooth modules are cheap on the internet. With the added bonus of saving an old radio
You guys are being to harsh on him. The man can do as he pleases and he is showing us a neat alternative to vintage restoration.
I usually like your projects. Still, this one is hard on me. I love the appeal of those tube type radios, and part of it is their distinctive scent when they get warm. You lost this part to the trash can. Another point is, that musicians spend amounts of money for a tube type amplifier which you had at hand. The only thing you needed, is a Bluetooth to FM converter, and you could have simply played whatever your smartphone throws at the old steam horse. No need for such an invasive solution. Sometimes, less is more.
That radio would not receive FM.
Are we sure the radio was still working? And I'd find bluetooth-to-FM a bit low tech. Would have been cooler to find a way to directly hook external input to the audio circuit.
@@martinrocket1436 It’s an old radio. It doesn’t matter if it’s still working now, it’s easily fixed. That’s the beauty of old technology. I agree that using as much of the existing hardware as possible would be the best way to go.
Two things worth noting. First off, old electronics are often extremely carcinogenic, thanks to an abundance of polychlorinated biphenyl and other compounds now long banned. Secondly, musicians don’t pay a lot for tubes, they pay a lot for very specific tubes in excellent condition.
It’s unlikely that what was lost here was worth keeping.
@@trhosking the very most of post war tube type radios do indeed receive FM stations. And if it doesn't, a good share of these radios have at least a record player input which can easily be put to line level by adding a pull-down resistor. And if both isn't the case, it's not too hard to identify the audio output pin in the radio reception tube section. You pull that specific tube and feed your audio directly into the acceptor of that tube socket. But be aware, tubes work at high voltages. Before doing that, a bit of self-education is absolutely necessary.
2:27 you can probably sell that PCL82/PCL86 tube (on the right) if it still works.
The funny thing is that, most of them uses 12V/16V heater to turn on & 220V DC anode for both (!) tubes, you can just feed it line signal and wire it straight to the Trafo & Speaker since that is technically an integrated amplifier (tube version) on a budget for those era.
If the circuit looks very simple... because it is; that tube (and something similar) are also being used widely on very old TV's.
P tubes were used in televisions, not in radio receivers ;)
This set uses an ECL86 for preamplification and to drive the speaker.
PCL86 aren´t worth much, but ECL86 are.
5:58 By the looks of it, it's a PCM51xx breakout board (although mine looks flipped), and if I'm correct, then you forgot to tie the SCK pin to GND! SCK is the System ClocK input, but you can tie it to GND for the internal PLL to activate, and it should support 44100Hz and 48000Hz sample rates in this mode (other modes need SCK generation, it's in the datasheet). Also the output of this chip is line-level (1kOhm), so you need an amplifier to drive anything audible out of it.
6 years ago I did a similar project with my grandpa’s Phillips vaccum tube radio. It has 6 vacuum tubes and takes 2min to completely turn on to heat. Once the vacuum tubes are heated, it outputs the perfect music. Since AM and MW are not there anymore, it has a special button. With a mono input, it works just brilliant with new system. Plugged in the Bluetooth/fm audio board output using banana plugs and Utes perfect. I didn’t remove original circuit. Also your radio doesn’t have the special knobs like mine does. Pulling right knob gives control of bass and pushing to gives treble control. Left know is for turning on and volume control. I restored it and just used 3 times and kept it as a museum piece.
Don't know where you live but am is very much still there, just not as busy as in the past. Even long wave still has stations on a good day.
Was it possible to integrate the white buttons for ESP's GPIO input for channel selection and not using touchscreen at all? This would make the radio completely in its original form which in my opinion is a much 'cooler' choice
Surely possible.
Would even be better to use the standard dial and round station selector wheel (on right hand side of the station dial) to select the internet stations. Also it is a pity to not use the original valve amplifier.
As a radio collector I am not in favour of these modifications. You can instead restore the radio and use the record player input to connect a blue tooth receiver into. In that case the original radio is preserved.
@@rudie2902 But it was a variable capacitor. How would you decode capacitive values to something digital? I am not sure if any aftermarket potentiometer could fit nicely in there
@@FaizanKhan-iq3yd There are capacitance to digital converters, You'd need to check the range they work on vs the range of your variable capacitor in the data sheet tho.
@@FaizanKhan-iq3yd Scott is replacing everything so the variable capacitor can be either replaced by or connected to a Rotary Encoder.
Interesting cool little project. Though I'm not sure how I feel about trashing a vintage tube radio. I personally would have restored the old radio part so you could dial in some radio stations the old way (if/when WiFi isn't available). Then integrated the WiFi radio along with a DAB and Bluetooth/BT device into the cabinet along with the touch screen. I'm working on a project of adding bluetooth/BT to the amplifier of my separates HiFi system by upcycling a broken BT headphones set, the physical headset frame and ear cups are broken but the electronics are still in perfect condition.
Preferably it would be a good idea to look for a AM/FM/DAB tuner chip and add it to the circuitry.
He probably could've even powered the newer electronics from tapping off of the heater winding on the power transformer and rectifying/filtering it.
nice project. =) i personally would have used the existing buttons on the radio to change station and enable bluetooth to keep the look vintage. the touch screen also works tho.
Also possible ;-)
I used the existing buttons on my old juke box to interface with a raspberry pi. I used a simple USB keyboard adapter wired to the old buttons.
Yeah, you could just have placed an old Android phone on top and used the radio as a speaker.
@@greatscottlab Hello，would you like to disassembling a LiFePO4 battery?
This hurt me to see, all you need to do is replace all the paper type capacitors and the few electrolytes that are there.
Then it works for sure.
You connect your internet radio to the gramophone input.
There is no reason to throw away old electronics.
Every time someone rip out the guts of an old radio to fill it with modern silicon chips a Glasslinger dies.
That radio may be a bit older than you think. I have a 1960 Blaupunkt radio that could be this Grundig’s fraternal twin sister. If so, they’d both be 63 years old. I really like radios of this period and have three in my collection. Great find, Great Scott!
I did a very similar system but used to send some old time radio recordings to the radio it even sounded like it was back in the 1940s. I still used the valve amplifier for the sound output which gave it a nice warm sound. Thanks for your time and work.
Great stuff, Scott!
But those 5 old buttons on the radio made me wonder if you could use them for choosing each station?
This will also keep the authentic look, with no touchscreen ,which I'm sure will be useful in some other project).
Yes! Why have 5 unused buttons, implement an LCD, then restrict the radio station selection to 5 touch buttons?!
@@msmith2961 When I did mine in an old bakelite radio, I used two buttons for previous/next station, then had 3 left for presets.
Actually the touchscreen makes it ugly now :P
I feel Mr. Carlson cringing at the sight of a vintage tube radio being torn apart.
Would have been nicer if you managed to reuse the tube amplifier.
Not a big fan of the touch screen, but otherwise a fantastic build. I've been thinking about what to do with my grandfathers old CB radio
Go for it :-)
Dont you dare trash the CB radio
Rememember if disaster struck, internet will not work, while you could always call for help on your CB radio
@Vesso266 eye see it's one of us eh. But you are right. About that.
Old radios are AWESOME! Some of the best being from the 70s to 90s.
Namely: Good sound quality and good performance.
that's why he removed the good quality parts and replaced them with shit
Maybe should’ve tried to get the old chassis going again, and fed the audio into to the existing circuitry.. just my thoughts though. Those radios are usually simple to repair, and replacement tubes for those are cheap.
While i like the general idea of making something useful of old stuff rather than throwing it away, i honestly don´t really like it how the internals got ripped apart like this.
You did an great job anyways but i don´t like the idea of destroying something like this, which on it´s own would be worth a project on doing a restoration of.
I mean sure it´s just an old radio but it would´ve been much much nicer to see it properly repaired and working again because FM bands are still useable and there´s nothing more pleasant than an tube radio, which outperforms most modern FM radios in receiption quality and sensitivity.
You could then still add bluetooth or internet radio through the TA port (basically a line in) and have all the modern features, but keep the rest of it alive and working.
There would´ve been ways to grab one of the internal voltages to power such addons even.
I get what you are saying . But it´s not "just an old radio" . It's a dream find .
Honestly, after scrapping Bluetooth Volumio on an old raspberry pi (1B or 2B) would have been so much more functionality for around the same cost even if you need an external wifi dongle (because the pi could take over the LCD functionality as well). If bluetooth worked, and you don't want playback with DLNA or from network shares then this might be a better call.
i will never get the point of people using raspberry pis instead of microcontrollers. you don't need a full linux os on an sd card, than can corrupt for such a simple project. and who wants to have a radio, that needs to boot for longer than a blink of an eye?
@@c5e3 because if you need more than two of networking (with multiple application layer protocols), GUI, file systems, multitasking, USB host, it's much harder to integrate these tasks on a microcontroller (even though all of them are feasible on their own). In linux, ready solutions are installed by a package manager.
Also hardware accelerators are often exclusive to microprocessors, and especially when dealing with video they make a big difference.
And in this case, volumio is a readily available product, that has a community and some level of support, with much more functionality that you may or may not use.
The LCD setup seems a bit overengineered, you could literally use 5 buttons and print a nice label for them. You wouldn't need a separate board for driving the display, the esp32 and the i2s DAC would be the whole digital electronics you'd need.
Interesting, but also sad. That was a fine old Grundig radio in quite good condition as restore subjects go. Though I understand the motivation to create something modern and unique out of something old and worn out, in my opinion one should first restore a vintage radio to work as it did when new, then add some new circuits to modernize its capabilities. That way you retain the best of both worlds, the old and the new, without trampling on the history that made the modern circuits possible. You can always remove the added circuits later and return the radio to its original function if you decide the mods were not to your liking, but once you destroy the old circuitry, its gone forever.
What a shame. This radio was in good condition, probably only needed about 8 capacitors replaced to work reliably again, and had a factory audio input. If you're attaching an external box to it you could've just put everything in the box and kept the radio original, or at the very least left the original electronics inside and just hooked up the speaker to them new parts in the box.
I hope you're not throwing the parts away though, some people (like me) could definitely make use of those tubes, coils and transformers!
I worked with STM Microcontrollers in college, and I have to say, I quite like them personally. Kudos for that. Supposedly some of the more "advanced" STM microcontrollers come with I2S built in, but I don't think they come with WiFi/BT though.
Again, I could be wrong on both of those.
+1 on this STM is honestly the go to if you are doing any kind of serious projects, or commercial/ industrial stuff, the esp microcontrollers have some issues, timing issues and over all not as diverse and supported as STMs, this is one of the reasons why drone flight controllers are based around STM chips, also yes some STM chips have i2s, pio etc but im not sure about wireless communication
Thanks for including the failure and how you chose to move forward from it! Too many projects never get finished because someone gets stuck on one library or microcontroller or something not working as expected.
Love this! One alternative to a touchscreen could be using an LED matrix behind the fabric part of the speaker to display text / simple graphics. The tricky part would be doing it in a way that doesn't muffle the sound too much.
This was a great watch, but I was really hoping you would be able to get the Bluetooth function working (I'm sure you were too), and I was hoping maybe you would put some non-copyright music on a local computer and broadcast it to the radio so we could hear it. This gives me a great idea for an old radio that I have. I will probably try to figure out how to use it with Spotify connect and a small three or four line display with song title on it, as I don't usually listen to traditional or Internet radio stations.
Could you have used the pushbuttons on the front to change the channels? Skip the screen altogether?
Sure. Definitely possible.
I really liked this channel in the past. But nowdays I feel that doing it for views killed the couriosity and endurance of Great Scott. You never given up on someting what come into your mind and always find a solution on it. It become that typical "I bought 4 different module and soldered them together and than I uploaded a code what I found online". I really want the old Great Scott back, who's videos was exciting and people can learn someting.
Awesome project! Why didn't you use the original valve amp? Its a very good amplifier and it should solve the problem using another amplifier. Also, as equal as others, the original buttons are perfect to use without a touchscreen. A screen is good to show which station is playing.
I think the remaining dial can be replace with a rotary switch for channel selection
And then you could hide the hideous touchscreen behind the radio or fridge.
Sorry, had to say it. Hopefully he did not screw it on the beautiful woodframe.
I remember these old radios from when I was a kid back in the 70s, I just looked it up and this model was made between 1960-1964 so a bit older than me...
Looks like a fun project! But, that's not MDF -- it's tempered hardboard (aka Masonite). They're similar but different.
As an aside, there are amplifiers that have built in bluetooth connection built in. I have a plan to do something similar, but I am building the enclosure as well. I have a low cost amplifier from Amazon (of course you can get them from Alibaba or any similar Chinese sourced site). Makes thing a little more simple.
20W is quite a lot compared to the tube amplifier which probably had less than 5W output power. So be careful not to overdrive the old speaker.
Yea looking at the Tubes used id guess it was around 3w .
And these old speakers realy dont like to be overdriven
That old tube amp maybe made 1-2 Watts. But since its only for the Kitchen, i doubt that its an actual issue...
You cruel beast!
When I was about your age I took apart an old valve Roberts Radio and transplanted a veroboard circuit with single chip fm receiver. I have recently been restoring it to its original condition.
You should have sent it to Dave Tipton.
... And perhaps learn from Dave Tipton. He would have had it running in little time.
I modified an old 1970 radio, and working on a 1946 now.
The only mod is a Bluetooth receiver module, with a switch on the back to choose between original radio and BT.
So no dramatical modification, and easily reversed if needed.
I really like re-using the old style cabinet. A couple of comments though. Did you really need the AC supply? Could you just have used a USB-C PD board and left the AC part to the external power supply? The touch screen module seemed awfully complex and I assume, pricey. Is there a reason you used it and not maybe a cheaper esp32 with a screen? (edit: actually, looking at mouser, the screen was surprisingly cheap, atleast for that size). Could the touchscreen have been mounted and designed like the old frequency chart in the middle of the radio body, between the dials?
Totally agree! USB-C (>5V 500mA) can be a challenge to do by hand, but with the cheap PD boards, which offer a number of voltages (5, 9, 20, etc.), they’ve become my first choice for all new projects. Plus, if you use a quality power block (Apple ones are way overpriced, but well made) the output can be much cleaner than the average external brick or wart.
I have an old vacuum tube radio similar to yours that I inherited from my grandfather. It still works.
there are many BT modules that run on 5V and output analog audio, all you would need is a switch of which you have many spots available.
Uhh, disappointment 😞
Using at least that built-in tube audio amplifier instead of your 20W transistor amp would have been so nice! Breaks my heart! You had all the parts you needed already in the radio, sigh.
Using the 5 switches as station keys would have been nice. And you could have used a Web-interface via WiFi to change the channels that are on those station switches.
I retro-fitted an even older radio from 1939, made by Körting, with a bluetooth receiver (from broken wireless headphones), feeding the analog audio to the phono input of the radio. All I needed was a small audio transformer to match the impedance and the audio voltage level. Sounds great!
You should have took your project and put it inside the radio and used the radios tube amp to amplify and drive the speaker. There are many sources out there that tell you how to add a line level input to the radio.
Its a shame to see a vintage radio gutted and replaced with modern electronic crap. You know they dont make there anymore and the amps in these are actually really good.
Don’t forget the lovely smell these old radios used to make .
I had one in the 80’s , smelled like warm Bakelite and pleasant oily dust .
Really? I think my one didn't have a particular smell.
@@greatscottlab He means tubes coated with a layer of nicotine stain and dust. But you ripped that out so that's gone....
Amazing project, except for the added touchscreen. IMHO it collides with the retro philosophy which has driven you away from the modern looks of internet radios.
I'd suggest to implement a web browser interface instead. Hidden but accessible by any computer and smartphone in the house.
Anyway, nice job. As usual! :)
EDIT: and the tuning knob could be replaced by a rotary encoder, so to cycle along a list of stations of your choice. ;)
I make all kinds of these from flea market and thrift store finds. I then upgrade and sell them at craft fairs, festivals, and flea markets. People love them.
While I appreciate that some people prefer to use old hardware and there may have been a way to maintain the old electronics, there are many more old devices than there are people who want to use old devices. It’s great to see someone reusing the parts that they care about.
Thanks for saying that :-)
He destroyed a working radio and ruined the beautifully aged case...
He likes the "old" look, just not enough to keep it, so he blobbed a bunch of cheap paint on it?
The electronics are mildly interesting, but the radio case part is a horror movie...
That's how culture and invention have always worked. We cherry-pick from the remains of the past and remix them for today. He didn't steal the radio from someone making use of it, he took it from gathering dust and being useless and reused the parts he liked. As a species we'd be stuck in amber if not for this kind of work.
Just a suggestion, remove the touchscreen and use the radio's original tuning dial (read the variable capacitor) for channel selection. Thanks from Colorado.
Haha that does sound like fun.
@@greatscottlab It's in the pico-farad range and is fairly easy to do (and would make a wonderful GreatScott video). Or better yet, find another radio to modify.
@@CraigHollabaugh NO please don't let him kill another radio
Seems like a great project for me.
Short backstory: until a few weeks ago I used to listen to MW Radio on my old 1978 GDR (RFT) Radio at nighttime, but the station shut down its MW transmitters. Luckily you can still listen to it via Internet.
So, it might be possible to still listen to this station using this radio, keeping the aesthetic but unfortunately taking away the excitement of listening to a Station 1000s of kms away..
There are many things lots of us think could have been done differently, and I think that's the point of this video, to inspire the viewers. if the radio had been made perfect, restoring and keeping the original parts while discreetly adding modern features, there wouldn't be any improvement left to ponder and imagine.
Warte mal...
Du hast ein Röhrenradio verschrottet? :(
Kann ich das alte Zeugs haben?
My dad has an old GE radio that’s a lovely half round “toaster” shape and I’ve been thinking of a resto-mod just like this! Amazing work as always-KW in Texas
Go for it! ;-)
It would have been nice if you found a way to keep the tube audio amplifier from the original radio instead of just gutting it and just keeping the chassis... The tube amp would probably sound better than a cheap Aliexpress class D lego board...
Personally I would've kept the retro look & used the physical buttons as @(Evny Zislis) pointed out in their comment or inset the display between the two dials (even if it protruded) to keep the form factor.
That said, it's still a pretty cool little project. I wish I can find an old radio like that someday & do something like this myself.
Cheers & looking forward to your next adventure.
It is heart breaking to see that vintage radio being destroyed.
Yeah, Great Scott got me into electronics and now I mostly repair vintage radios and TVs - seeing him ruin this antique and encouraging others in comments to do the same just breaks my heart.
I personally love seeing new life breathed into old electronic shells instead of letting them fester in the trash untouched or put up as non-functional antique displays, but that may just be me
Destroy! 😈
@@KixPanganiban I have old radios they all have Bluetooth but I don't kill the old electronics.
Grundig, a blast from the past. Our first colour TV was a Grundig. It was delivered on a summer Thursday night and we watched “The Invisible Man” TV show with David McCallum. If memory recalls it was the episode he overtook a school bus and was put in the local sheriff’s jail. After that it was Top of the Pops. We thought it was a disco in our living room with all the flashing coloured lights. How young we were.
That looks more like a 60 year old radio. By 1972 almost everything that I remember was solid state and plastic, or the high quality stuff was metal.
Only change i would have made is to keep the tube amp that was originally in the radio
Could it be possible to keep the original tube amplifier and connect the new analog output to it ? These old tubes have a nice warm sound and feels like a shame to throw them out.
Dude! 😍
the most I've done was gut an old console TV and fitted a cheap LCD TV in it, then audio-out to an amp to power its speakers.
Great project, though i would have tried to use the old tube amp instead of the class d one. I just dont know if that would have been possible at all.
Just a tip for future projects if you are going to stain them to get a smooth even stain finish use a pre-stain form like minwax it works wonders on cheap wood and MDF.
A wooden color theme or an actual wood picture wallpaper for the touchscreen background would pair nicely with the vintage radio aesthetic!
I recently recreated your idea of a Internet and Bluetooth Radio. Thanks for the good base to build on.
The bluetooth function is also working great for me.
Big thumbs up for including the fails.
This is a cool project and I wonder if there's a possibility of revisiting this in the future and utilizing the tubes for amplification
The ESP32-A1S would be perfect for this build and I have one I’m using for a DIY PolySynth if you get the Audio Development Board with ESP 8388 audio codec, it will work flawlessly.
Nononono don't give him any more ideas.
Possibly a video idea that relates to the Bluetooth aspect of this project; Looking at how those small adapters for older cars (which feature radio only without aux or Bluetooth) that plugs into the analogue aux port and power, and allows you to connect to it via Bluetooth and transmits the audio on a small low power radio for the car to receive, essentially a Bluetooth to radio signal converter. Obviously your radio couldn't make use of it as is, but if you wanted to explore Bluetooth functionality a 'DIY or Buy" video would have parts that could integrate with yours.
Thanks for the video and all the content!
Great idea. I did a car stereo conversion where I (mostly) removed the cassette tape player and replaced it with a Bluetooth receiver. It was a bit challenging, but fun and, of course, useful.
I hope the next content will be about making a radio using a vacuum tube
pro tip! use allpurpose cleaner moist towels to clean old stuff! smells great!
This will make Mr. Carlson sad. Great video! Thank you!
could u make the bluetooth feature work properly somehow it would be very usefull to make your own bluetooth speaker with custom features
I built the same thing for starters. I bought an old radio, cleaned it, repainted it, put 5V leds inside and an Alexa.
Wow, that one second video of the variable capacitor got me the click moment of how the MEM gyros which measure capacitance work. Seeing it in 3d is easier to understand for me
Don't know if you've heard of the Raspiaudio Muse Proto? Specifically designed to use the esp32 for Bluetooth, WiFi and Local music. It's a nice board with everything you would need for the project! And as the rest was saying, please, you should have used the original buttons 😅
You should see if anyone wants the vacuum tube if it's working. I can understand not wanting to see the old devices since high voltage is very dangerous and most folks don't have the necessary equipment like an isolated power supply to bring up the vacuum tube system up slowly to ensure everything is working. Plus, you got the issue with potential failure points like the power transformer which often can't be replaced so you're forced to do bodge work (again very dangerous when powered up after an attempted fix) and other parts like the IF transformers (not as dangerous but a real pain to get right, see MrCarlson's lab restoration videos for how complicated it can be).
Cool idea and video, I appreciate refurbishing older gadgets, and I always have my eyes open for ideas, thanks for sharing!
It would be better if you had restored the old radio
Great project, the old variable capacitor is a rare item, also tube. And it still used by many RF hobiest, at least in here, Indonesia.
I would like to see, if you want to build a project with these old components.
Love this old school radio
And interesting that you can’t get the right Bluetooth module in. There are enough that will work. Maybe next time 😊
I Love the look of this Build.
Genius work! my dream is to be that professional.
Pretty cool, but I would have tried to keep the valve audio output there. Not very easy but would have been cool.
It's not hard if you know how to work with a schematic. You most likely wouldn't even need one since it's usually just shorted capacitors
I like the idea of a "retro" radio look with modern quality audio, good job. I just wouldn't put it on top of the fridge, as it would be absolutely drenched in oil.
@@whocares281 My fridge is close to the stove.
The "metal cage" is called the chassis.
How about using an e-ink touchscreen and obscuring it as, for instance, a framed old ink drawing or B/W photograph? The frame would have to look old and be chunky enough to hold all the electronics, but framing the e-in screen in a passepartout could take care of that extra space
If you have an android phone you can enter developer mode and switch between various bluetooth standards, none are necessarily better than the others, some standards just work better with certain devices. I've used this method more than once to fix pairing issues with stuff like wireless headphones and IoT devices.
Nice video but I'm sorry to see instead of increasing the value of the old radio times 10 you have decreased the value by 10. Destroying the inside of the old radio was painfull to see.
I agree with you in principle, the old electronics is very cool. But I understand why he did this, in many places there aren't any AM stations left, or the ones that are are weak or don't broadcast anything interesting.
Mr. Carlson has left the chat
If you feel you need to touch screen for just a selection between 5 stations, and not use the buttons already on the radio, you could have at least made it wireless so you wouldn't need that cable. :)
I would have expected you to use the original amplifier from the radio
What about the 5 buttons on the front instead of the extra screen?
Yep. That is another solution.
I have to say I'd have just used a US$16 "ESP32 audio kit" board that has 2x3W output built in, battery management and an SD card slot.
Cool project it kinda inspires me to film making and programming my headphone's bluetooth circuit after all if it fails I would atleast get something out of it.
The design has so many new rhings I never used before that it's making me nervous. It uses an NRF52832 soc as the bluetooth module and a 24bit dac IC. It also has 3 battery managment ICs(protection,charge,buck converter) and if this wasn't enough I decided to make the pcb at home since I managed to fit everything on 1 side...
8:56 Big channel doesn't want to fight the good fight with an easy one. Free to listen to radio...
Thank you for this video! I been meaning to do something similar for quite some time now, now I definitely have no more excuses to do it :D
Do better, repair the radio and just add a Bluetooth module to the line in.
I think it would be a good idea to replace the station selection slider part with a touchscreen instead of having it over the top. This way you keep the shape and may change what is displayed at your will.