How To: Convert an old Bluetooth headset for wireless streaming

A colleague in our office had an old pair of Bluetooth headphones with a slightly broken, tarnished shell and badly worn out ear pads. Fortunately for him, the headset was working perfectly with all functionalities in place. When he approached us to have them fixed, we told him that the shell couldn’t be repaired and that the ear pads were not easily replaceable.  He’d simply have to opt for a new one. Then we thought of an alternative - why not convert the same working Bluetooth headset into an audio module, which can be used with any stereo headphones of his choice?!

The Bluetooth module would also have multiple uses, thereafter. For example, he could use them with regular headphones, to connect it to his home theatre and have a wireless Bluetooth audio speaker system, connect it to a car stereo auxiliary input and have a BT hands-free for the car, use it to stream audio from a PC or laptop to an external speaker set, and many other options. The method of hacking into a unit and modifying the circuit was a bit of a task and needed a few hours of thinking - how could we simplify the work? This is what we did, and you can implement the similar idea with your BT headset, if you have a slightly damaged one just lying around.

The main ingredients

Getting down to the nitty-gritty

Firstly, to get to know the whole circuitry, internal parts and its connections, we had to get inside the headset. We started by carefully studying the headset and separating the ear units from the head loop. We had to remove the ear pad foam cushions because the screws to the shell were underneath. 

What the innards look like