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In this project we convert a neat looking radio into a voice-enabled, interactive storyteller. Future, here we come!

Like most retrofitting projects, this one starts with some old electronics, to be precise, a Bjazzo Ts by Telefunken, made sometime during the 1960’s in West-Germany.

First up is determining what’s reusable. The best way to find out is by disassembling our vintage tech. This step is different for every device, but removing all screws you encounter is a great start.

Lucky us, we can salvage both the original speaker and the on/off button. We also keep the part that’s holding up all the buttons.

After this successful operation we are left with some reusable components and a semi empty frame.

Hardware
With our newly created space and reusable parts we move on to the next step, adding our own hardware.

The aim is to make a voice controllable, interactive, storytelling device. This means we need a microphone and speaker, combined with some sort of processing power. Que the Google AIY Voice Kit, a hardware package perfect for our endeavor.

Following their build instructions is straightforward, but instead of the provided speaker and button, we connect the ones we recovered from our old radio. With all the hardware assembled and ready, we can now run any of the provided examples.”

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