I found that the radios in Fallout 4 looked really cool. I’ve seen real vintage radios, but something about the ones from the game just stand out. I wanted to make a Radiation King radio. I found some reference photos and some real radios to base it off of.

As a base, I bought a cheap radio off Amazon. I will be using the enclosure and the electrical components. Everything else, is getting tossed.

I took the radio apart and salvaged what I could. I cut the plastic face out to look like the front panel from game.

I then used fabric to stretch around the plastic.

I had someone I know with a Cricut machine cut out the Radiation King vinyl. I used a piece of VW window trim to go around the dial window.

I found this dial face to use.

The dial is actually a dial from an old multimeter. I used an Arduino Nano to control the dial and to control the flicker of the dial LED when the radio cuts on.

The station control is actually a digital control. It was a simple potentiometer, so that means I could tap off the output leg and feed it into the Nano to control the dial’s position. I also added a switch on the rear of the radio to switch between FM radio and an MP3 player that I had loaded all the game’s song onto. This way, I could turn the radio on, and just have it play The Ink Spots.

Overall, this project turned out okay. The dial control was a little off and finding a station proved difficult.