Hacking the Sony Ericsson MDS-60 speakers (part 1): bluetooth connection
Because if you sound so good, you deserve a second chance
Recently, I got my hands on a bunch of legacy speakers from Sony Ericsson from back in the day when their Walkman products competed with the Ipod for the throne of the ultimate MP3 player. They sounded great (it’s Sony, after all), but they came with the proprietary FastPort connector: 12 pins of incompatibility with anything you may own today.
From the lot, the MDS-60 set, one of the high-end options, was particularly awesome with its sporty look and more than decent sound. It could be powered either by its included AC power adaptor or 4 AA batteries.
I was immediately tempted to take it for a spin, but that bloody Sony Ericsson connector stood in the way. Despair not, because there is a solution that is both fun and low cost, if you fancy messing with the device a little. Our goal: hack the speakers to enable bluetooth music reproduction. We won’t go completely wireless (yet), as we are keeping the AC adapter to power up the machine.
We will need:
- 1 bluetooth audio receiver
- 1 female 3.5mm jack with cable
- Soldering iron and solder
- Multimeter or continuity tester. A decent one, please.
Curious about what we are going to do? Here is the result:
Decoding the FastPort connector
Our first task is to identify the pins in the dock connector. Start by removing all the screws from the back and bottom of MDS-60. Note there are screws under the rubber central foot as well, so you will need to partially peel it off.
Gently, insert a flat screwdriver or similar in the plastic junctions to open the bottom of the case. Just about an inch is enough. We only need to remove the cover around the FastPort connector to access the circuit board.
Once you see the board, give it a slight pull to expose the bottom soldering pads, as shown below.
The signals connecting to the pads are the following:
We have identified the relevant signals for this project (and some for the next one):
- Left sound channel
- Right sound channel
- Sound ground
- +5V (ignore for now)
- Power ground (ignore for now)
If you have a continuity tester (and a steady hand), you can optionally double check the connections with the upper side of the connector:
We now need to route the sound signals to the female 3.5mm connector. Or from the connector, if you want to get technical. I had some spare sound extension cables (male to female), so I just cut one of those about 10 centimeters (4 inches) from the female connector:
I recommend doing the same instead of completely building a cable yourself by soldering a female connector and wires. This way you are likely to get a cleaner sound signal and better looking results. A cheap cable will work just fine.
Once we cut the cable and access the internal wires (left, sound, ground), we will proceed to solder them to the corresponding circuit board pads. The tricky part here is to identify each wire. One simple method is to use the other section of the cable we just cut (the one with the male jack) as a guide. Identify those wires by using the following schematic and a continuity tester:
Typically, the cables are colored so we are ready to continue. In the off chance they are not colored, then first label them on the male cable, plug male jack into female connector and use the continuity tester to classify the corresponding wires in the female cable.
Your new MDS-60-warranty-void contraption should be looking like this:
And that’s basically it! You can plug the power source in, switch the power on button and connect the speakers to your phone with a male-to-male audio cable, if you have one. Volume up and press play on your favorite performer. I would totally open with Bohemian Rhapsody if I was you.
But we promised Bluetooth connectivity, so now that you tested the female 3.5 mm cable works fine, it’s time to use that Bluetooth receiver. Just plug it in and pair it to your phone or computer (or brain implant if you are reading this in 2030):
Our job here is done. But that bluetooth receiver’s battery needs to be eventually recharged. What if we do it with the same speaker power supply? And what if we replaced the AC power adaptor with a USB-rechargeable battery and make the whole thing totally portable? Now we are talking.
All that and more on part 2 of this tutorial.
