Author: Smruti
Arduino Experiments : This lights and sound show
iHome Digital Clock and iPod Player Teardown
Product : iHome IP11B Spacesaver Alarm Clock iPod/iPhone Speaker Dock (Black)
The iP11 is a digital alarm clock and iPod speaker. It has Alarm ON/OFF, iPod Play/Pause, Volume Up and Down, Alarm Set, Hour and Minutes Sleep, Alarm Set and Snooze/Dimmer Buttons on the top. It comes with an AC adapter to convert to DC 10V power. The clock can also run on its own with a 3V CR 2032 battery.
Total time taken for the tear-down : 50 minutes
Step 1 : Remove the two screws at the bottom holding the base.
Step 2 : Remove the two screws in the back and unplug the power cable.
Step 3 : Remove two screws from the bottom.
The two plastic parts of the body should then come apart.
Step 4 : Remove the battery cover from the back of the bottom part.
Step 5 : Remove these four screws to take apart the iPod dock unit and unplug the wires from the unit. The iPod dock unit itself comes apart by removing two screws in the sub-assembly.
Step 6 : Unplug the different cables from the circuit.
Step 7 : Remove the two screws holding the keys sub-assembly.
Step 8 : Remove the six screws shown below holding the circuit board and the speaker assembly. Also, remove the two screws on the other side holding the speaker assembly. One of the screws on the other side wouldn’t budge, so I had to tear apart the plastic. A small frame holding the display screen will also come apart along with the screen itself. The keypad from the top are sealed with the plastic body so they didn’t come apart. They might have been insert molded along with the plastic body.
Step 9 : The grill in front is held in place through a few tabs bent inside. Bend them outside and the pull apart the grill.
The bottom assembly is now done.
Step 10 : In the top assembly, remove the nuts and bolts holding the heat sink in place. The heat sink is a bent strip of aluminium.
Step 11 : Remove the six screws shown below holding the circuit boards in place. Unplug the connector fixed to the plastic. The bottom part is also done.
Step 12 : Remove the four screws take apart the speaker from its housing.
Here are all the major components in the device.
A few wires holding the top and bottom sub-assembly were soldered on to the boards so I had to cut them to take them apart. Hence, I couldn’t re-assemble the device back together.
Below is a list of the components, their materials and manufacturing processes.
Two design elements I found interesting are the cable winding feature between the base and the bottom part and the slight recess of the bottom body from the top surface. This not only gives an edge to hold the product one-handed but it also makes the body disappear from a lot of angles.
I’m Smruti Adya
An Industrial Designer from Mumbai, I love making things using lots of different materials, and I have always wanted to document it and put it up on my (now inactive) blog as a step-by-step tutorial just showing the process and trying to make the idea of “making” accessible to more people. Here’s a shoe I made recently (just one shoe, not the pair). I love taking photos so I do have shots of the whole making process, but never got around to actually doing a blog post. I have experience with electronics but not so much with code. So looking forward to this class for a lot of reasons!
P.S. – I am a potato chip junkie.