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Bluetooth Speaker Dock Conversion

Converting an old Creative Zen Vision M Speaker Dock to a Bluetooth Speaker

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The Zen Vision M is about 10 years old and long ago died. It's not much any use any more as most phones can do what it did plus a lot more. However the Speaker Dock is still working well. But my wife doesn't want to faff with cables etc., she just wants it to connect over Bluetooth automatically just like the hi-fi. Enter the Dock Conversion project.

The main things to be done are:

- Conversion of 8xC size battery holder to hold a standard 4x18650 USB power bank

- Adding a 5v to 12v DC-DC converter to run the speaker from the USB power bank

- Adding a car Bluetooth module to the line-in port and mounting internally

- Adding some way of controlling all these devices so they can be mounted in the cabinet


First step was to dismantle the speaker - this is done by prising off the fabric grille and undoing the screws. This reveals the hot glue abortion that is inside. Luckily there is plenty of space.

I decided to mount the USB power bank in the battery compartment - this is a sizable 8 x C cell compartment so easily fits the bank with the removal of the cell row dividers.


I then got to work on the logic board - basically I want to be able to press the power button on the speaker and have everything else turn on for me. So I set up a small logic board with a microcontroller. This then connects to three relays, one turns on a DC-DC converter to power the speaker, one presses the button on the speaker to power it on, and then one presses the button on the bluetooth module.

I also connected to the bluetooth module LED so I can tell what state it is in by measuring the pulses with it.

The rig on cardboard is the main circuit to do all this - the logic board with the relays and DC-DC - this connects to the bluetooth module (which will connect via a 3.5mm jack for audio to the speaker's line-in). It also connects to an RGB LED to give a status update to the user, and also connects to a switch to put it in to pair mode. And additional set of volt-free contacts simulates a pressing of the power switch on the speaker.

The basic mode of operation is controlled by a state machine in the PIC which has the following states:

- POWERING UP

- POWER ON, NO BT CONNECTION

- POWER ON, BT CONNECTED OK

- PAIR PREPARATION (preparing BT device for a pairing)

- PAIR WAITING (waiting for a device to pair)

- REBOOTING

The user interface consists of:

- Power button on speaker now connects to power button of USB power bank. (When this comes on, the PIC will do the rest in terms of powering up devices).

- RGB LED (mounted behind the grille somewhere) will indicate the state to the user.

- A switch mounted on the back or similar to initiate a pairing

At this stage most of the software has been completed using the cardboard rig, the project is currently awaiting installation of the device into the speaker. The speaker's switch has been modified to turn on the USB power bank, and the volt-free contacts from the logic board are awaiting connection to the speaker's logic board.


Why relays etc? Because they provide volt-free contacts and are easy to use. This is a multi-voltage system and I didn't want to mess about with isolation etc.

Why a PIC16F88? Because I had one laying about - it's a touch overkill and you could get away with pretty much most 14 to 18 pin PICs. It also just about supports debugging and has an internal oscillator, and has two 8-bit timers. FOSC in this project is kept at 32.150kHz to minimise current use since it's pissing current away in LEDs and relays already!

  • 1 × Microchip PIC16F88 microcontroller
  • 3 × ebay special 5v DPDT relay
  • 3 × B589 PNP transistor relay drivers
  • 4 × 1kR resistor (3 for the transistors, 1 for switch puill-up)
  • 1 × ebay special boost converter module, set to 12v

View all 14 components

  • It's Finished!!

    Stefan Kratz04/25/2016 at 22:04 0 comments

    Finally, it is all back together and now working.

    Some changes I had to make:

    • USB power bank PCB. There was an issue with the USB power bank I selected in that it would not support the instantaneous power draw of the speaker powering up. Why, I don't know, as I gave the DC-DC a long time to stabilise before powering up the speaker. The solution for this was to use a different power bank PCB from an old power bank l had. This powered the speaker up fine with no problem, even using minimal capacitance and long leads.
    • Speaker power-on. For some reason (and I was losing patience by now) the speaker would shut down 1-2 seconds after powering on. It did not look like a voltage issue or a relay bounce issue and it only seemed to happen every 10 power-ups or so. Again I don't think it was related to voltage as it did it even powered from a PSU. It may have been to noise from the BT module I suppose. The solution to this was to find a spot on the PCB that was over about 3v during power-on so I could retry the power-on. After a bit of faff I found one and soldered some resistors and a pulldown on there to get a signal. To avoid any new layout or connectors I used the ICSPDAT and ICSPCLK on the PIC - the ICSP I simply used as a ground (setting to output and low on powerup) and the ICSPDAT was the clock. A small adjustment to the software ensured that the power up was retried as many times as necessary.

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