Alternative to Faceplate/Preamp unit for Table Radios...

[tomzarbo]

Also, on a related topic...
I found this Double din radio for the 'Bang'-ing good deal of $31.50 shipped. Has Bluetooth, remote control, touch screen, FM radio and plays videos and audio files from USB jump drive and the small memory cards. Looks to be pretty much the same deal as the other radio, just a bigger screen. I'll know in 2-3 weeks.




Has pretty decent reviews and it's not deep at all, like the single din unit. Should not take up much space in a table radio. I'm going to try to design something around this player as well. I have a couple of non-brick, in-cabinet 12V power supplies so if they are not too noisy, this may be a cord-only project.

Best of all... you can "TURN it Up!" with a real volume knob!

Fun!


TomZ

[3rutu5]

Pretty cool, I might have to invest in one and build it into a unit for the kids. They seem extremely cheap don't they, considering they have an inbuilt amplifier as well, I'll be watching this thread ')

[Dukk]

Nice Find! Looking at it right now.

[tomzarbo]

So, I just wanted to update this thread for posterity and additional information regarding the SWM 7805C Single-DIN car radio...

A poster named Noah had a question on this on my other YouTube channel where I posted this review and I put it on the bench again to test it out.
Basically he wanted to use this for a battery-powered radio and was concerned about the current draw since the screen always stays on when you turn the unit off by the power switch to display the time.
Only if you cut the power to the red line does the screen go off and it basically goes idle (except to save settings which is powered by the yellow lead) which is what would happen in a car when you turn the car off to leave... the yellow lead always hooked up would save settings, but the screen would go out.... Not a problem in a car with a 500 amp battery, but would be an issue in a portable radio powered by a few 18650 Lithium cells.

So here is what I found out:

*With the unit ON (FM Radio) and the volume down it drew around 400 mA (to simulate the unit running, at a low volume)

*With the unit OFF but still connected to power (red and yellow leads) it drew around 200 mA as the screen was still active displaying the time.

*With the unit OFF (No Screen Showing) and the red lead disconnected (similar to the ACC being off in a car) but the yellow (memory) lead still connected, I only read between 0.01 and 0.00 mA. So the power draw was so low as to be basically nil.

So basically, in order to use this in a boom box/table radio type of situation without killing the batteries, you would have to put a switch on the red lead and power that down so just the yellow/black leads were connected.

I confirmed that this held the settings and drew basically no current. A bit inconvenient to have to turn a switch on and then turn the unit on, but in order to preserve power when you're not using it, I guess that's what we will have to do. Thanks for posting the question!

So when I use this in a portable radio situation, I'll be putting a switch somewhere to kill the screen (red lead) so that's not always on. Even as a plug-in device, I don't think I'd want the screen to ALWAYS be on, there just would be no reason to have this be the case, I don't sit across the room to remote-control any of my radios basically, so getting up to turn off/on the radio isn't an issue for me either by battery or by 'mains' power.

Here is that video on my other channel again for reference in case you're interested: SWM 7805C Car Radio Video - YouTube

TomZ