Atari iPod dock

Hi Everyone,
I recently put some tech knowledge to some use by creating an Ipod dock with some unique features to it. I'll take you through some of the steps to how I made it.

Firstly, I had my old Atari from way back. I didn't play it any more and it was really just collecting dust. I knew there was something creative I could do with it, so the time had come to get my hands dirty.

I've found that expression often involves taking some foundation of your development and manipulating it. That's where this beauty came in... Unfortunately, my Atari was in bad shape and so I went to to cleaning it up and gutting the insides to make way for its resurrection.

It was easy enough to get inside and take out the major components and really discover what kind of technology kept me entertained as a kid. I love seeing the internal components of something as definitive as the Atari. I was actually quite surprised at how solidly this thing was built.

Then it was time to start cutting. Of course there was some hesitation and a bit of fear, but as an artist, every work I make is another step at loosing my fear. GO FOR IT!!!

I realized early on that what was actually the back of the Atari would work best as the front of the dock. The angles seemed awkward, but I was determined to make it work.

I would be using the cartridge slot as the dock for the ipod, but I actually wanted the MP3 player to be sitting inside of an old cartridge. Of course, more modification was necessary. I got a ipod cradle with and audio output jack (this was important) from Amazon and with some handy work, set it inside my cartridge of "Breakout".

For the speaker I used an x-Mini (from Amazon, about $15.00). It has great output in a small size.

Then hooked it up with an Apollo Jammer from www.elementalled.com. It's not available yet but I was fortunate enough to get a chance to play with it. It's a color controller for RGB lights that responds to audio signal and was really the inspiration for this whole project.

I don't have the price for it yet, but keep an eye out for it!


Then it all got put inside the Atari case with some fancy color changing lights.

And when it all came together....
Magic!

I hope this little project inspired you.
Thanks for reading.