I'm too young really to remember old skool 1980's Boomboxes and 1990's field raves, but not too young to admire them :D today's equivalent of the boombox it seems is people walking down the street holding their mobile phones quietly playing some distorted, poor quality and bassless tune. Or little portable I-pod speaker docking stations that are ok but not particularly portable or loud. Wear are the big, loud, anti-social I want you all to hear my music weather your stood next to me or 100 feet away systems! Surely rather than getting quieter and smaller portable music systems should have gotten louder and bigger! After looking around and not finding anything suitable already being produced I decided to make my own, mwhahaha!

Right, so here is the spec...

LOUD, because you cant have a quiet rave!
Portable, and I don't mean portable as in can be moved from one place to another. I mean portable as in can be comfortably carried on a bike, through a field, dropped a few times etc.
Durable, for similar reasons above
Rechargeable, no one wants to spend a fortune on batteries
Easy on the eye. ahahaha.

So we have the plan, time to collect some materials!

Step 1: Materials

Now I'm a student, so the budget I had for my boombox was close to 0.00. Armed with my electronics GCSE, 2 years of studying design and the tools in my dad's garage, lets get started!

Materials

I was pretty lucky with the materials I found and the price I got them for. These were collected from car boot sales and my own home and were...

A set of 2.1 logic3 soundstation2 speakers. I have a set of these already so knew the sound quality was good, bassy and loud (supposedly 300w? but I'm not sure). They were bought second hand for 2.50 which was a bargain! They were fairly beaten up, infact it looked like someone had burnt a hole through the sub?? (What do you expect for 2.50) however I tested them and they worked great, woo!

My old school rucksack. Cost 0.00. It had seen many, many school years and was still in good nick so definitely strong enough for my needs!

Wild things rechargeable PSone battery pack. Bought second hand for 2.00 (looked new) and in working order!

Wood flooring. Cost 0.00 as it was left over from my living room after we replaced it for carpet. Go recycling!

Sofa foam "borrowed" from an old sofa we were throwing out.

...and that's our shopping over!

Step 2: Wiring

Ok, the next step was to gut the speakers and battery pack and work out how to put them together, or see if they even worked together. The speakers ran from 15v and the battery pack produced 12v. Lucky just wiring the speaker to the power pack worked great and despite the less voltage produced awesome sound! Now using the wood flooring I will build a case for this mass of wire, speakers and batteries!

Step 3: Construction

Now this is a portable speaker bag, and as said before by portable I don't just mean movable, I mean TOUGH! I.e. it can be carried on a bike, through fields, occasionally dropped or knocked etc. now that is portable!

I always find pictures better than words so I took lots of pictures right the way through the building process to save me writing up too much. Alot of sawing, sanding, wood gluing, glue gun gluing and screw screwing (ahaha) was involved and the result was not too bad if I do say so myself. It feels pretty indestructible. Take alook at the pics and enjoy :)

Step 4: Finishing

Right so the speakers are built, working and sound great! Now to put them in a rucksack!

The speakers were measured so do fit in the bag (just!). they were then padded on all sides with the sofa foam and double padded on the side that will be on your back when carrying them, for added comfort :) I painted some wire mesh from an old waste paper bin yellow and cut it / glued it to cover the speakers to protect them when being moved / used. The pocket was removed from the front of the bag as it got in the way and holes were roughly cut for the speakers and controls. These holes were then neatened up with a sewing machine. Once in position in the bag the speakers were glued in place.

As a finishing touch I cut some yellow fabric off of an old drinks advertisement banner I had lying around and glued it to the bag bordering the controls and speakers.

Step 5: Done!

And that's it! Here are some pictures of the final product and a there will be a high-quality video of it doing its job once i have edited it.

This is my first instructable and I feel it has gone very well. Its meets every spec I had and works great. Just the other day I was sitting in a field with my mates on a hot summer's day blaring out the tunes! The videos do not do the sound quality this thing produces any justice. I have been thinking of how I can show this but until then you will just have to believe me ahaha.

So yes, hope you enjoyed my story and thankyou for you time.

Any comments, suggestions, questions are very welcome?

superrob.

UPDATE

Here is a video of the final Speaker RuckSack. It is slightly better quality than my other videos but again the microphone of the camera lets the RuckSack down. Enjoy...