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My Aldi JokeBox


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Yep, spelt correctly. It is a joke it actually works with virtually nothing inside it..

 

There's the "speaker" well pair of speakers sort of inside that "no expense spared, custom designed, acoustics matched" speaker box :o ....

 

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The LED Driver Board designed to produce, "a dazzling lighting experience":blink:....

 

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The CD Player/ SD Card Reader / USB Port and the Amp Board....

 

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The Turn Table....

 

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And Power Supply...

 

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As you can see, not a lot inside there.

 

Good things about it are the cabinet. It does look the part sort of.

 

Like if you were a block away in bad fog with a mild case of conjunctivitis, you may think it is a real jukebox from the 50s given the right lighting conditions.:huh:

 

There are also many mounting locations for flat wooden shelves to be mounted inside the cabinet.

 

I like to mount stuff in my projects on wooden flat shelves. It allows smaller sections of the project to be individually unplugged and removed for service and further modding without needing to tear the whole thing to bits.

 

I thought I may be able to recover the board mounted wiring connectors and harnesses for the project however when I tryed to separate one of the wire connectors to pull a board out, the pins pulled straight out the housing so they look like they need to go as well.

 

The inline power supply, (in the mains cable) is 13.6 VDC @ 5 amps. Not really enough to be dangerous so I think I'll replace that with an old Xbox 360 brick to give both 5VDC and 12VDC or maybe just a PC power supply although I will need a lot of 12volt so maybe the brick is the way to go.

 

The cabinet isn't bad but looking at this picture you can see the front upper door open just waiting to snap off. I'd give that door a day at best to last if everyone in the house is super careful.

 

F8saVoXl.jpg

 

This door is there to allow access to the turn table which will go as I have no need for a turn table at all in this project. I'm thinking remove the turn table and mount a near flat laying 19" monitor in it's place to use for navigation of the program and an on board display for the music videos and music visualizations as this JokeBoxs' primary use will be a video juke.

 

May as well put a pair of those cheap "water dancing speakers" you see everywhere to fill the upper turntable area each side of the monitor as the monitor I have is a 4:3 aspect ratio unit. I actually think they look cool and they are about the right size.

 

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As much as I have enjoyed bagging the shit out of this thing, I do actually like the colours that it makes with it's LED lighting. I quite like it but it simply changes colours or can be locked as one colour.

 

I'm thinking I'll use the LED light strip but make it change colour to the beat and depth of the music.

 

I just so happen to have such a board to do exactly that already here so it may as well live in this thing.

 

Here are some of the colours it produces as it is now....

 

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I still am thinking I make it a RPi project running a cut down version of Kodi as it does all these features I want except the music beat colour changing feature but I have a EBay kit I made that does just that feature.

 

Normally I would use a USB keyboard or wireless Xbox 360 remote to control Kodi on the RPi but seeing as this JokeBox has so many buttons on the face, I'm looking at interfacing the required keyboard keys to some of these buttons and a custom mask around the buttons to suit so you know the new purpose for each button.

 

While the RPi sound output is headphone level only, (pre amp), it certainly dances when plugged into a car radio 3.5mm input plug and then the joke has 4 channels @ 25 watts.

 

The RPi has USB ports so a large hard drive with content loaded on it can contain all the songs/ music videos as well as pre set playlists including startup playlist so when you turn the joke on, it will autoplay through the startup playlist with both random and resume features for it's playlist operation.

 

All these features and operation of Kodi on the RPi is exactly how I have the radio/entertainment unit working right now on my farm unit however as the joke will live here and I have a net connection here, I can include an app that plays playlists off YouTube.

 

Thoughts, can I make the joke any better?.

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I didn't see how much you paid for it...................................................that matters....................................a lot!

 

Found this catalogue online.

 

Looks very similar

 

726f3d87fe20f7168335e4527e0207ff.jpg

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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I didn't see how much you paid for it...................................................that matters....................................a lot!

 

Arr $399 it was @Homepin and it's the wife's unit by the way. I just inherited the "make it useful" bit.

 

Parts I discussed I want to put in will be about a further $200 including a 1TB HDD.

 

Fortunately, I have all the parts already here.

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Like if you were a block away in bad fog with a mild case of conjunctivitis, you may think it is a real jukebox from the 50s given the right lighting conditions

 

Yer I know what you mean, but I guess they are clearly for a home situation,

 

But

I had a burger shop for about 5 years which I had a pinball in, when I sold the shop I offered the new owners the option of buying the pinball as it made good money, plus it looked cool in the shop.

The new owners who are hotrod fanatics told me they didnt need it as they were changing the shop too a rock and roll theme and were putting a jukebox in that area.

I thought fair enough A juke box would be cool, as I was envisioning a big fancy classic juke.

But Instead They put one of these juke boxes in, I dont know what the hell they were thinking It made the entire shop look fake and tacky

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Yer I know what you mean, but I guess they are clearly for a home situation,

 

But

I had a burger shop for about 5 years which I had a pinball in, when I sold the shop I offered the new owners the option of buying the pinball as it made good money, plus it looked cool in the shop.

The new owners who are hotrod fanatics told me they didnt need it as they were changing the shop a rock and roll theme and were putting a jukebox in that area.

I thought fair enough A juke box would be cool.

But They put one of these juke boxes in, I dont know what the hell they were thinking It made the entire shop look fake and tacky

 

I guess more disappointing than the fake looks is it is merely a player. You need to start everything you want it to play.

 

It also only plays mp3 or wma files.....WTF.

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I guess more disappointing than the fake looks is it is merely a player. You need to start everything you want it to play.

 

It also only plays mp3 or wma files.....WTF.

 

They just have it there flashing its lights with a radio playing in the background for that very reason.

 

I thought it was a waste of floor space they arent making money on. I took pity on them so I recently offered to site an EM gun game Or a classic EM pinball in place of this juke, they took great offense to that. lol But I think it would have helped make the place look more Authentic and would have been a draw card.

 

But yer they are clearly for home use as we know a full size juke is expensive and less compact.

And maybe with some modifications it can be a good unit

Edited by jason1
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Here are some pics of the Rpi media center board I use in the farm unit.

 

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The board is a slide in slide out unit for ease of maintenance.

 

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It uses a 2TB HDD because this unit has movies loaded as well. I use a 4 point USB hub for extra USB ports. There is a 12volt to 5 volt voltage converter as well. Farm is 12volts and Rpi is 5volts.

 

Pinball rubber holds the hard drive in place.;)

 

Video is HDMI or composite.

 

Red switch beside the HDD is boot up and safe shutdown of the RPi. No safe shutdown on a RPi can corrupt the RPI OP on the SD card.

 

9l9iheN.jpg

 

There are a couple of non stock pin headers on that RPi board. All to make it a bit more user friendly. I do it to all my RPi boards.

 

Here is the unit fitted to the wall with the monitor mounted on the wall beside it...

 

1zs4XNR.jpg

 

The joke will use pretty much the same parts.

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I didn't see how much you paid for it...................................................that matters....................................a lot!

 

its a hobby, dont be so nosey. let him have his fun.

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Well I pulled the speakers out and had a look today. Might seem like work to some on Christmas Day but to me, I love ripping stuff apart and what better day to do what I love is the way I see it.

 

I found two speaker enclosures made into the one box but facing two directions both towards the lower grill in the face of the joke.

 

Each speaker enclosure has two speakers in it. A 5" 50watt 4 ohm and a 1 1/2" 30 watt 4 ohm wired in parallel with a cap exactly as Williams Bally did in WPC machines.

 

The speaker box has 4 wires going to it, two wires per enclosure so the joke actually is stereo.

 

I powered up the joke and found max volume is 30 on the LCD and according to the specs, that should be 20watts RMS per channel.

 

There is no way those speakers were being driven with 20watts RMS.

 

Rather than jumping straight into it and fitting new speakers, 6" 50watt RMS Sony car units I have, I think I'll wire in the Sony Car radio first and see how the original speakers handle that rated at 25watts RMS first.

 

Who knows, the original speakers may actually be suitable.

 

With a little bit of work I will separate the enclosures so they make two separate speaker boxes, bolt these boxes to the inside of the cab. Make the holes and fit a grill on each side of the joke box so the sound comes out the sides of the cabinet rather than all through the one front facing grill.

 

I'll also fit some enclosure cloth inside each box. No need to fit new enclosure tubes. They are actually already fitted in each enclosure.

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  • 2 weeks later...
@Autosteve Any updates?

 

Sorry mate. Only just got back from a week down my farm. As always head clearing time creates new ideas and thoughts on the projects including the JokeBox as well as the HomeBrew Pin.

 

Funny how in the middle of the bush with just yourself and absolutely no distractions of normal life opens my mind to some, what I would regard, different ideas.

 

Here's one thing I thought of just to give you an example...

 

In all the time I have worked on pinballs one major complaint by many operators was the noise factor of a pinball VS a video game.....how about I try reducing the noise factor of a pinball basically consisting of installing sound deadener exactly like that used in up market cars in the cabinet and head as well as the cabinet base to reduce the background noise?.

 

Not the game sound because you can control that or the knocker because it is intermittent and can be disabled if need be but all the "incidental" noise of the solenoids including the flippers, bumpers etc that makes a pinball a racket to some owners steering them away from pinballs.

 

As far as I know, no one has ever actually thought to quieten down a pinball's "incidental" noise including myself until a couple of days ago.

 

To a pinball purist, you just blank that background noise out but I figure that metal on metal banging "could" have a major impact on who operates pinballs, who plays pinballs and possibly scare off potential new players from going near a pinball for the first time.

 

I know not really linked to the JokeBox project but the Joke has a few ideas as well.:rolleyes

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