It a new year and it is time for some junk box cleaning. After going through my stuff I found an old MP3 player. All the function on the player work and I wonder what I could use it for. I had always wanted to buy a digital recorder but money is an issue. So this was my compromise.
The player had a recorder that could record FM or your voice. I didn’t what to record to the player by FM because that would require a small FM transmitter and it was not something I had or wanted to make. I didn’t want to record by using the voice and use the on board mic. It would pick up to much background noise. So I wonder if I could replace the mic with a phone jack.
After opening the player and locating the mic I could see that replacing the mic with a phone jack would not be a problem. So I look in my parts box and found a 1/8″ phone jack. I solder two wire to the jack and test my connections. Then I removed the mic from the player making sure not to add to much heat to the small circuit board.
I made a small hole on the cover of the MP3 player. This would be for the wire from the mic to the new phone jack. I solder the new wire to the board and test the new mod. I connection a computer mic to the new phone jack and recorded a small sample. I then connected headphone to the MP3 player to check if it recorded and it did.
I was excited to know that I could record nets or events now. After checking and changing some of the settings on the MP3 player I found out that I could record up to 70 hours. I am sure a AAA battery would not be able to record that long but it’s good to know I have that much room on the player.
A fully charge or new battery should last 2-4 hours. I plan on recording some of the local nets and they run no more then 30 minutes. At this point I will just use it like this. Maybe in the future I will add a battery mod.
Parts:
- Kanguru 1GB Micro MP3 Pro:
- USB2.0 Flash Drive, MP3/WMA
- Player & Digital Voice Recorder
- Solder-Type•Stereo
- In-Line 1/8″ Phone Jack
- CR-91 Mic Adapter
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