Tom Granger's Upgraded Sony FX-300 "Jackal" Gets Two More Microcontrollers in a Major Overhaul
The already-impressive upcycling project now gains improved Bluetooth connectivity, a better screen, recording, and even an NFC reader.
Engineer Tom Granger has revisited an upcycling project from 2021, cramming even more technology into a Sony FX-300 "Jackal" hi-fi portable from 1978 — and this time is making the source code available to all under a permissive license.
"In 2021, I upcycled a defunct 1978 Sony FX-300 — aka Jackal — portable TV/radio set into a modern audio system," Granger explains by way of background to the project. "I didn't release any code at the time because it was not fully working (Bluetooth was analog, FM radio didn't work, the sound quality was not good enough, the TFT display wasn't great either). I got back into it in 2024, and after gutting the thing again and redoing it almost from scratch, not forgetting to throw in two extra microcontrollers and a good amount of over-engineering, I'm now sharing what I consider the final version of this project."
The original Jackal upgrade was impressive enough: the portable TV/radio system, purchased in Japan in 2019 after being produced back in 1978, was upgraded using a Teensy 4.0 and a 3.2" color TFT in place of the original cathode-ray tube display. As many of the device's original controls were kept intact: a pulse-width modulated (PWM) output drove the original VU meter panel, and the buttons and sliders all work to provide a pleasing tactility to the project.
Granger wasn't satisfied, though, and now we're treated to Jackal 2.0. The 3.2" TFT display is now a higher-quality IPS display, but the biggest change is in the microcontroller selection: the original Teensy 4.0 board remains as the main controller, but now links to an M5Stack Atom Espressif ESP32-based board as a Bluetooth A2DP audio sink and an Arduino Nano compatible that takes over reading of all physical switches and sliders — and drives a shiny new feature: Near-Field Communication (NFC) driven audio playback, capable of triggering a playlist by positioning a tag — or Nintendo Amiibo — on top of the player.
Other features of the upgraded machine include the addition of a microphone and the ability to both record audio and play it back from SD card, a fixed FM radio mode, real-time fast Fourier transform (FFT) visualization at 30 frames per second, a real-time bitcrusher effect, radio station favorites, a five-band equalizer, battery-backed clock, and a working albeit mono headphone jack.
More details are available in Granger's announcement thread on Bluesky and on the project's GitHub repository, where the source code is published under the permissive MIT license.