Abstract
For this independent study, a prototype of a handheld music player will be constructed to imitate a classic 70s Walkman, but with a concealed USB-C port that will connect the device to a modern smartphone to allow the user to play music off of their personal device. This will give consumers a stylish, retro way to listen to their tunes without needing to invest in physical media.
During preliminary meetings, the critical path of the project was ID’ed as the interface between phone and headphones. Thus, I started first with breadboarding a circuit that splices controls between the phone and the headphones.
To make the circuit, I bought a headphone extender, cut it in half, and exposed the three wires.
Red = Right
Blue = Left
Copper = Ground
I then cut three male-female jumper wires in half, stripped the casing back about 2 centimeters, and soldered the jumper leads to the exposed headphone wires. I matched colors to make things easy on myself.
The basic circuit
Things really took off when I obtained a soldering iron. The Penicil V2 is a tiny, USB-C powered digital soldering iron that does the job well!
The bare-bones circuit: no buttons yet, merely a headphone cable spliced into a breadboard. The music plays just fine through my Sennheisers!
Stay tuned to see the advanced circuit complete with buttons!
Product Architecture
Making the initial case of the Walkman was a simple matter of studying existing cassette players, CADing the basic structure, and 3D printing the parts. Next step: redesign the case dimensions to fit a 6.2 inch Smartphone and a USB-C to 3.5mm headphone jack converter!
