Philco SAO

1930s Philco Cathedral Radio inspired blingy SAO

jeremy.geppert

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Description

I have long been fascinated with the style of radios from 100 years ago. They are visual works of art and craftsmanship. This simple SAO strives to capture a fraction of that beauty and bring it to badges with a warm amber "tube" glow that would have powered these radios. No PCB. No MCU. Just 2 header pins, a 3.2 VDC LED and a 3D printed diffuser. Oh, and some hot glue.

Details

The main body is laser cut 3.4mm plywood stained dark with a coat of spray matte poly finish.

The speaker grill is some random fabric also laser cut to shape.

The diffuser for the LED is 3D printed in a matte gold PLA.

The 3.2 VDC LED leads are soldered directed to the 2 pin header.

It's all held together and insulated with low temp hot snot glue.

That's it.

I am considering trying to make it into a mini Bluetooth speaker.

Files

PhilcoSAOsvgs.svg SVGs needed for cutting/engraving the wood and fabric, svg+xml - 13.14 kB - 03/24/2025 at 03:47		Preview

PhilcoSAODiffuserV5.stl Printed with Overture brand "Royal Gold" color PLA, Standard Tesselated Geometry - 206.33 kB - 03/24/2025 at 03:40		Download

Components

1 × 5mm Warm White LED 3V-3.2V 20mA https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AUI4VRE
2 × 2.54mm Spacing Head Pin

Project Logs

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Add sound?
jeremy.geppert • a day ago • 0 comments

Turn it into a functional Bluetooth speaker? Ok... let's flirt with this idea more.
This could work. It works well on the breadboard and sounds decent. Adding a 3D printed sound board for the speaker will help too.
The BT module needs 5 VDC so a dc-dc converter will be needed. The blue board is a step down board as a place holder to see if there is room for all these extra shenanigans.
The amp runs great on 3.3 with that speaker. The amp and BT module while playing music only draws 30ma. The LED draws 20ma. 50ma seems reasonable for an SAO?