Introduction: Hack That Musical Greeting Card! (Headphone Edition)

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About: I love making things and simple electronics!
After listening to a musical birthday card being played about 85,000 times in a row, I decided that I needed to create a musical card that would only play when headphones were in.  This simple project costs next to nothing and can be built by somebody with little or no experience in electronics.  In fact, I didn't even solder when I was making this, and the total cost for me was free because I already had the materials on hand.  I hope you enjoy hacking a musical greeting card!

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Step 1: Materials

You will need...

* A musical greeting card
* A headphone port (I got mine from a mini FM radio from the dollar store)
* Thin stranded wire

Tools

* Wire strippers
* A Hot Glue Gun (With Glue)
* Scissors

Step 2: Dissecting the Card

Cut open the card so you can see the circuit board and speaker as shown above.  Cut the speaker's wires about halfway between the speaker and the birthday card, and remove the speaker with the help of the scissors (It may be glued down pretty well!).  Save the speaker for future projects such as www.instructables.com/id/The-Altoids-Tin-iPod-SpeakerCase/.

Step 3: Assembling the Headphone Port

Hot Glue the headphone port to the bottom of the card.   The reason it is placed here is so when the the card is put back together, you can easily access the headphone port.  Attatch the wires from the circuit to the small prongs on the headphone port as shown in the picture.  Secure your connections with hot glue.  You may want to hot glue down the wires to the card so they don't get in the way while you're opening and closing the card.  This will also prevent the wires from tearing.

Step 4: Testing

Plug in your earbuds and test if it works.  If it doesn't, go back through the steps and try it again.  Your problem may be a few loose connections or maybe a few wires came undone, so you are going to want to smother all new connections with hot glue and even electrical tape if you have it.  If it does work, hot glue the card back the way it was so it looks like a typical greeting card, and you're finished! 

Step 5: Enjoy!

I hope you enjoyed hacking your musical greeting card, and say goodbye to those noisy, annoying speaker cards that seem to be set on and off by themselves!  Questions and comments are appreciated!  Enjoy!

-Doctordv