Building a Lego MP3 Player

Step 6 The headphone socket

Oh, this bit was fun. The picture doesn't show much, but it was quite a feat. The thinnest wire I could find was still a thick, unflexiable, industrial sized slug... well, sort of. It certainly wasn't the easiest thing to use. After connecting all the pins with their original pads, it was a matter of shoving it through another hole, and smothering in hot glue for it to withstand many plugging ins and outs.

It's important to test before covering in glue though, if you can hold a battery to the awkward terminals. The first time round one of the pins shorted and the sound was only in mono, which isn't quite what we want.

Also the glue mound I built helped keep the springy battery terminal in place. I actually held it to a blowtorch first so I could change the shape slightly, but that doesn't really matter. The SMT components are quite heat sensitive, they shouldn't be under heat for more than a few seconds.

Of course once that was done I could glue the case together permenantly. The thing now looks pretty good.