Retro Radio Turned into an MP3 Player, with Cellphone Remote: Thieves Are Clueless

August 25th, 2011 by: Conner Flynn

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We spend a lot of money on our gadgets, so the last thing we want is for them to get stolen. One clever solution is to hide your expensive gear inside of something else.


That’s what this guy did. He didn’t want his electronics stolen while on the road with his band, so he built a music player inside of an old and (this part is key) cheap-looking radio. Something that thieves will pass by while they look for the latest devices.

He took the guts from the old radio and put an Asus WL-HDD 2.5 inside. This provides an easy way to add network storage and it sports a laptop hard drive, WiFi and Ethernet, as well as a USB port. He added another USB port so that he could also equip it with a Bluetooth dongle and a USB sound card.

Music gets synced with the hard drive using a cat-5 cable. The NAS runs Linux, and to make a remote, he has audio playback software controlled from a Mobile Java app on a beat-up cellphone. Yes, I think this guy’s stuff is safe now. Unless of course he encounters a thief that likes beat up retro radios.

[via Hackaday]