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It was around Christmas, free from work, high energy level.
Endlessly scrolling on the internet, and bought me a Beosystem 7000 black edition with a nice set of Beolab 8000 speakers.
Beomaster, Beogram CD and the rare black edition Beogram 7000 🙂
Yes, the Beocord is missing. Still missing.. But maybe I don’t want a Beocord, for those 2 audio cassettes I have.
I have also a 5500 set and a 5000 set which are both complete, but the Beocord is never playing in those sets.
Maybe I need some more modern component, but it doesn’t exist. Some sort of networkplayer to lift the system into the new era.
If it doesn’t exist, maybe I can create it myself. A new search on the internet learned me I am not the first, but let’s get inspired by what others did.My first inspiration: The Beomodern project by Henryk.
Introducing BeoModern
He created a real nice device, and it triggered me a lot. But it’s based on microcontrollers I have no knowledge of.
So I decided to see if I can create something like this project but with the audio streaming software of Volumio on a Raspberry Pi.My requirements:
– It has to integrate within the existing Beosystem ecosystem (5000/5500/6500/7000)
– The Beomaster is the master, and has to stay the master. The streamer system has to listen to the Beomaster commands (ir remote commands also from the Beomaster)
– It has to look like it was made by B&O
– I want LED matrix screens in the same color as the rest of the system to show what the streamer is playing
– Audio streaming from different sources (the more the better, Volumio helps me al lot)
– Internal SSD harddisk for ripping music from my CD collection
– A modular system. If a component fails, it has to be pretty easy to replace it.In the next few posts I will guide you through my journey of building this neat little device which is at 80% of completion at the moment.
First things first. How to listen to a Beomaster datalink? I didn’t have a clue.
But happily you are rarely the first one to try and find something out.
So a search on the internet pointed me to a project on Github.
GitHub – toresbe/datalink: B&O datalink reverse engineering effortThis project analyses the Datalink port with an Arduino. Just what I needed.
A microcontroller which can control the system on the lowest level, and listen to the commands from “the boss”
In my case I use the BL80 analyzer as starting point.
A tape device on this ecosystem talks with the older BL80 standard, an AUX device talks over the more advanced BL86 standard.
I want the Beomaster to think the device is a “Tape 2” device. So I can use the more basic BL80 standard.
Let’s try. My good old Beomaster 5500 which I use for tests like this will be the test candidate.
A 7 pin DIN connnector with 2 wires soldered on pin 2 -> ground and pin 7 -> datalink which will be connected to the Arduino.
At first I didn’t get anything, but reading the article again helped me. The commands were coming in.
A lot of Hex codes, what’s all this info…
After a lot of testing with the remote control, the codes were making sense to me so I created a little sheet with the commands I am interested in.
Now that I understand what the codes mean, I can try to do something with the received commands from the Beomaster.Let’s try to switch a relay as soon as we get code 0xAB.
I need it to power on the Raspberry Pi with the Volumio streamer when we switch the input to Tape 2 on the Beomaster.
Wow, it works! I can toggle a relay by pressing Tape2 on the remote control!
This gives me the guts to proceed with the project.Now we need a housing which gives the look and feel of a real B&O device.
There was another Beomaster 5500 lying around in the most appaling state you can imagine.
Full of scratches, all working internal components were transplanted into other 5500’s to give them a new life.
All defect parts were put into this little old scratchy fellow. Time to take his internals of and use the housing for something nice.
Another requirement I didn’t mention before: Try to use the original frame and mounting points.
No drilling in the bottom plate, all components have to be mounted on the internal framing.
Drilling a hole is not a problem, but no angle grinders or other barbarian tools please.
In the left corner on the photo where normally the transformer is situated, I placed a switching 5V/10A power supply.
In the middle where normally the cooling fan is situated, I placed a mounting bracket for a SSD harddisk.
On this mounting plate I put u 500GB SSD disk with a USB to SATA interface.
Above the harddisk I mounted a 5V powered USB hub. This is because I want to connect both a hardisk, but also want to be able to connect an external USB CD drive for CD ripping.
In the right corner is the Arduino situated for the low level controlling of the system.As mentioned before, I want the system to be modular and parts need to be replaceable without a lot of soldering.
Also, I don’t want hundreds of single wires from one to another component.
Ideally there should be one connector with a flatcable on each part, and some sort of connecting board where all comes together.
This meant I had to create a breakout board for the Arduino. I found a nice board on Amazon which could help me with this.
Combined with a 10 pin IDC connector it ticked all the requirement boxes.
Power can also be applied via this connector, so the huge power plug which normally supplies the voltage to a Arduino could be omitted.
Flatcable and connectors were ordered so I could make my own cables at the disired length.
Next: Create a baseplate which houses a standard universal grid PCB, and a Raspberry Pi.
This baseplate is also mounted on the internal frame, and is not connected to the bottom plate of the Beomaster housing.
The universal grid PCB will be the central PCB, to which all components will connect (ideally by a flatcable)
In the background already a sneak preview of the testing of LED Matrix displays from the Raspberry Pi.
The Raspberry Pi on the picture is not the Pi which will be the Volumio streamer, but this Pi will control the LED displays and talk to Volumio with API calls.
Via this API calls we get the currect state of the streamer to project on the displays, but also sends commands to Volumio like start/stop/next etcetera.
Designing the print layout takes a lot of time but I was able to position all parts on a small layout. This gives me room for future expansion.
The first components are mounted on the print. A 40 pin IDC connector to the Raspberry Pi, a 20 pin IDC connector to the Arduino
The power supply is connected to the PCB and the first relay is situated.
Underneath the 40 pin flatcable you see 2 small PCB’s. Those are voltage translators.
This is because the Arduino has a 5 volt GPIO voltage, and Raspberry Pi operates on 3,3 volt level.
More to follow, for today this is it.
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