Art Deco FM Radio

I am fond of Art Deco design - household goods that look like they may take off any time at the speed of light - and some of the coolest examples are radios from the 1920's and 30's. Great design, yes, but cumbersome vacuum tube technology, irreplaceable parts, and frayed wires aching to electrocute you are not my cup of tea. Plus, these old units are rather too bulky for most apartments.

OK, then, why bother with over the air radio? Why not just stream through a Raspberry Pi? Why not just a Bluetooth speaker?

These are legit questions, and I have been down that path. There are plenty of projects you could follow. But I did not enjoy waiting for the Rpi to boot up before I heard anything. It was frustrating to fix bugs and library incompatibilities in the code. All too often, things broke because of changing streaming formats or failed logins, and I would have to debug all over again. Or just reboot, AGAIN - you get the picture.

In contrast, FM radio has been around for ages, it's free and works without the internet. The user interface is consistent and accessible to seniors. Turn it on and it plays. Simple, and simple to build too.

3D printed Radio housing - STL files below for case, speaker base, speaker grill and feet.

ICstation digital FM receiver module - available cheap from Amazon. This is a really cool unit with LCD display, volume and tuning controls.

3" (76mm) 8 ohm 1 watt speaker - Adafruit or Amazon. Don't get carried away with higher powered speakers as the FM module may not have the juice to drive these.

Cloth to cover speaker grill - a piece of burlap works too

5 Volt micro USB power supply

Hookup wire, solder, contact cement, 4 pieces of 3mm bolts and nuts

Optional: 3 - 5 Volt rechargeable battery, if you want the radio to be portable

Tools - 3D printer, soldering iron, screwdriver

Slice and 3D print the attached STL files. The radio housing has been sized so a typical home printer with a 200 x 200 mm bed can handle it. It took more than 24 hours on my Ender5 to get these printed. Remember to duplicate the foot, as two will be needed to complete the project.

The only purpose of the speaker base 3D part is so we can glue the speaker to the housing rather than to drill ugly holes for mounting. Use the 3mm bolts to mount the speaker. Once this has been assembled, you can solder the wires between the speaker and FM module. Since we are only using one speaker - as in a classic radio - you can solder it to either of the stereo ports on the FM module. 8" of 2 conductor wire is sufficient to have some slack for assembly, but it has to be fairly thin as the holes on the module are tight. Pay attention to polarity (indicated as + and -) on both the speaker and the module.

While you are at soldering, there are a couple of mods on the FM module one can do. The first is to solder a small jumper wire between the mono/stereo terminals (see photo). I am not sure how much difference this really makes.

The second is to solder a 75cm (27") long wire to the ANT (antenna) terminal. This definitely improves radio reception of marginal stations. For stress relief, pull this wire through one of the mounting holes on the printed circuit board.

Having prepared the electronics for mounting, the radio case needs to be finished. The how is really up to you - paint it, cover with wallpaper, vinyl, leather, or what have you. The old radios were made of wood or painted Bakelite ( a type of early, muddy brown plastic material), so painting - particularly in a pastel color, is authentic Art Deco. I also built a version in raw PLA, which I quite like.

I tried another version of the housing covered in wood veneer. Of course, wood also needs to stained or finished, so this option is a lot more work. If you go this route, please google how to glue and trim and finish the veneer as that would take too long to describe here.

One last point - if you are covering the case with some material, leave the feet off for now, and do not cover the bottom so that you can glue on the feet later. If on the other hand you are going to paint it, glue on the feet first. In either case, the location of the feet is up to you; I glued them with crazy glue just where the base starts to flatten out ( see pic above).

Before we install the speaker, we need to attach the grill cloth on top of the speaker base. You can use contact cement or special fabric glue, and then trim it to size. Don't try to do it too neatly as any overlapping cloth will not be visible. If you have access to speaker grill cloth, great, but burlap is pretty close.

I glued the speaker inside the case with hot glue.You don't have to be precise, but try to center it over the hole in the enclosure.Now you can also hot glue the speaker grille to the front of the housing.

The module is held to the case by the two nuts around the shafts of the controls. Take off the nuts and washers provided with the module, stick the shafts through the holes in the case, reinstall the washers and hand tighten the nuts. The LCD display should be aligned with the rectangular window above the controls. Stick back the control knobs, and easy-peasy, you are done!

To power the radio, just connect the cord of the power adapter to the micro USB on the FM module. Press the knob on the left (volume control) to turn the radio on. Tuning in stations is done by rotating the right knob. I also used some tape to stick the antenna wire to the inside of the case. If you are having trouble receiving your favorite station, leave the antenna hanging out the back of the case.

To tidy things up, one can glue cardboard to the back of the case. This was the commonly used material for this purpose, back in the day.

If you choose to make the radio portable, the easiest way I can think of is to use a small power bank made for smart phones, which will provide the 5 Volt power and have a built in charger too. You can stick it in the bottom of the case with Velcro to make it removable for charging.

Happy listening!