I decided to post a fun project that my hubs and I did together. We inherited an old tube radio about many years ago. We’ve been displaying it in our home since. It’s always been in the back of my head to revive it in some way. Since the radio actually still works, but the speaker is not hooked up, I didn’t want to dismantle it too much. I don’t think that they’re worth a ton of money, but there are a ton of great memories that came with this radio, so keeping it in tact was very important to us. After purchasing a few components, I was ready to roll. I placed an echo dot inside and let my imagination take over the rest of the automation. So far, I was able to get the radio to light up when I call her name and stay lit when I ask her to play me some music. Here are a couple of videos of her in action. I hope you find this fun. Since it was something that increased the HAF, I enjoyed working on this with him very much! I’m certainly not done with this project, but I need to wrap my head around how to make other things possible.
I was inspired by adamkempenich as he is supposed to be coming out with his version of the same automation, which will probably be way cooler than mine. I’d post a jab, and considered having Alexa mention him in a video, but in the end he’s a pretty cool guy that’s just really busy. So consider some slack cut.
I’ve added some inside photos and a device list below.
I grabbed my Echo Dot from the corner and put it inside of the radio. I had some sylvania lightify LED strips hanging around, so Jeff and I figured out that we could thread the strip through the top of the radio display and it looked like the classic lighting. SCORE! then I attached a second strip and fed it down through where the speaker was attached. We loosened the screws that hold the board for the speaker and fed the rest of the strip down through it and attached it to the inner side of the center spoke of the radio. That concealed the strip fairly well. Because of that, we were able to keep the power components on the inside of the radio. Added a power strip and a Homeseer light sensor to complete the installation. We also put a bluetooth speaker in the bottom, but I find it’s a bit muffled. I’ll have to work on that one. You’ll have to excuse the dust. I didn’t clean it out.
![image|236x500]
(upload://fPatoJnhznxuXvteli6T6hFBvwD.jpeg)
)