UPDATED - REVIEW & TEARDOWN - IKEA’S sound to light box

I reckon it's hackable, make a nice Raspberry Pi Pico project..

weird for teenage engineering to put their name on that. especially with the non-centered default animation. they don't look like they would be any better when tiled either..

Oh noooooo... You broke it! Such a pity.

I did a quick search and stumbled across an Adafruit article which led to this GitHub page: https://github.com/frumperino/FrekvensPanel where someone wrote a rudimentary library to control the LED panel with a microcontroller. No examples shown, though. So your intuition about there being some hacking interest is right on, but it seems limited in scope.

The teardown was a fun addition to the video. It makes for a more solid review and I would have no issues with releasing it.

Nobody else seems to have mentioned the Divoom Timebox Evo here, a device I came across today that sells for £40 at Game and is frankly what this box of LEDs should have been all along. It's a speaker with RGB LEDs, Bluetooth and much better options. As if the Ikea item didn't already seem like a rip off.

Just need an update of being put back together 😀

Sad that so much effort goes into a product that could clearly deliver much better results. I mean that off centre arrow on its own is bad enough… which idiot in an office gave this the all clear? Sack em.

Another useless trinket Well described and displayed by the Master. The effort you put into the teardown was worth the time to show what the guts were. Those who would be able to re-engineer this into something truly unique will find this seriously helpful! Just Another Excellent [extended well] Video!

Entertaining update 😃 ✔️Victorinox ✔️Mini-Mat ✔️Tat destruction I just noticed the grey vinyl-textured workspace - missed it on the first video. Have you redecorated? If you already answered this question I didn't notice on the comments (sorry).

Totally randomly, I had to do a online presentation at work yesterday, which always makes me shit myself a little bit but I remembered something you said ages ago about about seeing a pro TV presenter go from normal human to massively over animated when the camera rolled. I decided to employ the same tactic to present the mundane nonsense I had to deliver and it turns out it works a treat! When in doubt, ham it up!! Feels odd but delivers results!

It might just be me (being a bit slow after a bottled beverage) but is this new video a bit fast? Seems sped up to me. Could be my phone playing up, maybe.

Here someone modified one replacing the single board computer with another one and rigging up a camera to it: https://spritesmods.com/?art=frekvens

Teenage engineering themselves seem to host some 3D print hacking stuff for these. https://teenage.engineering/designs/frekvens-hacks

The Frekvens line overall was a disappointment. Here in the states it was released in small numbers, and then quickly clearanced. I bought a number of pieces cheap, intrigued with the idea of building a custom boombox. This visualizer was the part I was most interested in, and then ultimately disappointed by since it’s barely better than a toy. The speakers sound good, especially at the price I paid. They really should detect when you have a pair, and then work in true stereo. Instead the only way to get real stereo is to use analog cables. The line was also supposed to have a turntable and cassette player. Never happened. You can 3D print some cool add-ons, but still… the core product should have been better. Close, but no cigar.

Good update. Didn't make the product any less hopeless. :-)

For modding information to make sense, you'd need to have close-ups of the chips involved, enough to have their codes readable. That way for instance one could figure out whether the microcontroller there is reprogrammable or not, and the latter means it's just a piece of junk.

Looks like you managed to improve it! I preferred the original ending "I think it's rubbish" and leaving it like that, as it wasn't even worth your time. Gave me a chuckle.

The KE video is a peach - don't fret. I'll pep-talk you with a 1,000 word essay if I need to. 🤍 I'm looking forward to watching the teardown on TV when I get home. Edit: Or send you $1,000 😆

Junkola..

This has "something for the man who has everything" written all over it, or at least on a tiny label on the back. Secret Santa material. And you saved me 35 quid.

My question would be now, whats inside? Is it hackable? Because getting a 16x16 pixel Display in a nice case might be worth the 35€ if you consider the work you would need to throw at such a project, even if you have access to a hackerspace with all the tools, including a laser cutter.

Ummmmmm…. Yep, boring. Fits into IKEA nicely.

It looked like such a nice option. But even de late 70s Atari disco machine is much more sophisticated. Come on Ikea! I hope you can return it still....

I agree - it's rubbish. :-)

I actually bought one going off the Teenage Engineering collaboration. I could live with the lack of color and even the pre-rendered animations. Thought it would look cool sitting on my DC block. But it doesn't work there: you need to turn the volume up pretty high before the built-in mic pics anything up. Even placing it on top of a speaker still required sizeable volume 😔

"designed by teenage engineering". Is that code for it being a lazily designed POS?

Your pronunciation of GIF is going to trigger the approximately 30% of people who pronounce it the correct way, and then the other 70% who insist that they're right. And yeah, it's rubbish. There's a tiny chance that it uses power line communication to synchronize multiple units, but I highly doubt it.

I was hoping you'd get Teenage Engineering quality at IKEA prices, but barely even got IKEA quality at IKEA prices.

One of the best summing up of a product review I've seen! Sorry you had to spend £35, but it may well have saved many of your viewers £35!

That thing is underwhelming. Thanks for testing it, so we don't have to :)

Thank you for this quick review, Mat. I guess it doesn’t require more than 4 minutes to prove that this product is utter garbage. Unbelievable stuff like this actually makes it to market.

If you already have an addressable LED grid why *not* make it actually respond to the music that’s playing? What a waste!

Last time I was in IKEA, my mother was convinced the meatballs were made from moose.

Ikea's little demo/promo video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlUwALQZ2mY&t=30s was enough for me not want one. Now I really don't want one.

I saw this in my local Ikea last week, (London) took a photo of the box to research it more when I got home, forgot, but I think you've saved me £35, does not look that great!

On the video, it looks like i piece of trash. Reactions are really slow

Is it just me, or even though you've said you're going to release fewer videos, yet it feels like you publish very often nowadays. Not that I'm complaining. :)

Upon closer research, it may not be as bad as originally perceived: https://about.ikea.com/en/behind-scenes/products-design/2018/06/07/get-the-party-started-with-frekvens https://about.ikea.com/en/newsroom/2018/03/28/ikea-collection-frekvens-receives-red-dot-award-2018-for-product-design FREKVENS is apparently a modular system, comprising other "blinkenlight" type devices, as well as speaker modules and sources (including a turntable!) Seems a bit pricey, sure, but staying true to their design bureau's name — FREKVENS might be a good fit in a teenagers bedroom, much like a boombox with all the bells and whistles of yesterday.

Spend another £175 and you'll have 6x the disappointment. Hmm, not even colour.

My first thought when watching was that the lack of 3.5mm input was a shame but no, no it wasn't. Maybe it's hackable? Probably not worth it.

I think you've made a significant discovery. After testing out a couple of dozen audio visualizers, you've found one that actually looks more interesting from the back.

Uh, yeah, so ... good video, of course, but of a not-so-hot product. Apparently, I have photo-sensitive OCD, a syndrome I just made up. The default arrow (and the other one) has a single line of lit elements defining the middle (arrow's shaft?). Sadly, there are an even number of LED columns, so the "center" (or "centre") has an off-by-one error. And now I can't unsee it. And neither can the rest of you. Perhaps in a future firmware update they can make the arrow "shaft" two LEDs wide ... :-D Lol - not going to happen.

"Not impressed by it at all, I think it's rubbish" - nice and dry conclusion :-D. Not to the landfill, take the processor out, replace it with an Arduino and program some more impressive less rubbish stuff into it :-P.

35 squid for instant landfill - Corporations are cutting out that tedious middle step of having a product do something useful and lasting a long time between the store shelf and the garbage bin. Efficient!

As a Swede, let me just say: de lighten de boxen moosiken swingen børk børk børk!

Hope you kept the receipt Mat - what a pointless bit of tat.

Q̶u̶i̶c̶k̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶f̶u̶n̶ ... No, no 😲 that's not sounding right... No matter how quick it is, I'll have to wait a couple hours to watch it. 🫤

Jeez, what a rubbish device :(

Thanks for saving me 269 DKK, 30 minutes on the bike along heavy traffic, 30 minutes in a megastore and a headache. I'll just ride around for a couple hours along greener roads instead. It looks nice enough though. Can't help but wonder if it can be easily improved with an Pi Pico and some amateur programming. But I have more than enough projects going already.

It's a great video, clear and to the point. Please put it out there to prevent people spending big money on this rubbish.

Yep I was already saying to myself it was rubbish, glad Mat said the same. Just something for landfill! To have gone to all that trouble designing and manufacturing it, it wouldn't have taken much in terms of cost and time to have made it something more satisfying and interesting. I've done better effects with RGB LEDs using an Arduino and addressable LEDs and for less money.

Truly disappointing, especially for 35£. But I guess that's Teenage Engineering for you.

Oh cool. Teenage Engineering are well-known in the electronic music 'space' for very expensive, very hipster but often quite remarkable music gear. This looks a bit rubbish though. edit: very rubbish

You put it so simply - "it's rubbish" :-))

Why does it say these are New? This is part of their collaboration from early 2020 isn’t it? The IKEA website really is utterly useless.

That's disappointing.

That's a lot of money for... That. I think you'd get more from a Pixoo device personally! Good video either way 😊

Wow that would've been slightly disappointing even if it'd been a fiver. :-)

I love the ropey stuff, thanks as always and have a great rest of your week.