Cheap Speaker RuckSack Thats LOUD!

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!

Comments

[thumpstarkid]

hi
i am going to make one of these i have the sofa fluff the laminate flooring and the sounsstation but the ps1 charger i don not have could you tell me if it will run on one of these 12v lead acid battery that you have in the pic because they are 12v and you said that the speakers are 15v 

" 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!"         also you say "12v. Lucky just wiring the speaker to the power pack worked great" does this mean you did not use the amp just the speakers(tweeters)    sorry im new to this

[superrob]

Hi thumpstarkid, although the speakers do run on 15v the 12v lead acid battery works fine, it might not go as loud but the sound level is still pretty impressive. Also i did use the amp the circuit is abit like battery - amp - speakers

hope this helps.

[Koekie]

How do you recharge the battery?

[Finnl]

place an on/off switch on the straps.. but its very nice;)

[anibioman]

i was thinking the same thing

[T-K]

HAHAHAHA awesome (Y) ride on time :D

[Alex370]

Wow, thats fantastic! The sound is good too, Id like to try the same but id replace the tweeters with midranges. good job mate

[lomn]

How do you charge the battery? with the regular power input to the speakers or what

[redeyedninja]

I'm thinking of making a rucksack sound system soon. Will make the enclosure design sealed to keep it simple, as reflex enclosures are harder to design, especially when you don't know the full TS parameters of the speaker. The shell will be made of 15mm birch plywood with pine bracing in the corners to save weight. As stuff like mdf is heavy. Speakers will be: 2x Electrovision 5.25 inch dual cone fullrange rated 45w rms, 63hz-20khz, sensitivity at 1w/1m is 92db. 2x 5.25 metal speaker grilles with clamps. Amp: new version of Tripath Class T Amp TA2020 in a case with screw terminals instead of spring clips that the wires could easy disconnect from and short. Amp takes DC 12V~14V 5A. Batteries/battery: I might use a deep cycle lead acid battery. So I'll probably go for vented lithium-ion batteries and a suited safe charger. So I'm pretty certain I'll just need a 5A fuse on the battery. As the amp is 5A. Probably will need a safety circuit too to prevent overcharging the batteries. Could the OP and jamesjamesjames give me more information on how to connect up either a sealed lead acid battery and charge it safely,please. Or vented lithium-ion cells. Thanks

[jamesjamesjames]

Made one a while back with a 12v battery from one of them kids electric cars. a bit rougher, doesn't look as nice as yours =)

[MichaelWhyte]

HAHAHA Thats uncanny, couple o years ago also needed a portable soundsystem for..ahem...gatherings, used the same logitech soundsystem i had for my ps2, and the same wire mesh stuff but mines was gold, i was a bit too rough though cus i had to rebuild mine about 10 times due to kicking spilling etc when under the influence hahahahah, good news though still got it and it still works, although the only original parts now are the power/bass switch and the sub

[ben1994]

 hi superrob 
can you do me a favor can you email me a copy of your own instructions please it would be greatful along with your videos if it is not to much to ask  m8 because i love your idea and i think it would be nice to make or get 1 for my brother for xmas dont you think thanks if you could do it a.s.a.p
many regards ben
[e-mail]

[Yerboogieman]

Sweet bag man. I probably won't do this, every time i wire something for my bike, i blow an amp.

[tuxedo1994]

great Instructable! but could you be a bit clearer HOW to wire the things to geather. like what the battery is attached to, what type of out put the speakers have and how this works with an ipod. all I'm saying is can you put in a couple of more steps on assembly. but other wise GREAT job! :)

[superrob]

Hi tuxedo1994, Its true I have not been very clear on the actual wiring so i will explain. This was actually very, very simple. I cut the end off the wire that would go from the battery pack to the PSone and just soldiered it to wear the speakers power adaptor would fit to the speakers. That was it! almost too easy :S Thanks, superrob.

[tuxedo1994]

OH! that makes sense i had a computer speaker and i was having trouble on figuring out where the power would come from. so ultimally get a battrey equal to that of witch the speaker intakes and just attatch the positive wires of the power cable to the battreys positive out put. and same with negitive. thanks so much! tuxedo1994

[Phoghat]

Very nice work and I think I'll build something similar. Why did you have the sub facing forward and the tweets firing off to the sides? Methinks it would be better the other way round.

[superrob]

Hi Phoghat, Sound wise it probably would be better the way you suggested however the width of the Sub compared to the width of the Rucksack meant it either had to face the back or the front. Thanks, superrob.

[sardines454]

I've always wanted to do this and it looks like you've done a great job. What is the battery life is at a fairly decent volume?

[superrob]

Hi sardines454, I have had it running at pretty much full volume for at least 3 hours with no loss of quality but have yet to use it till it completely runs flat. Thanks, superrob.

[porcupinemamma]

mwhahaha!...love it ;0)

[JuxtaposedIToldYouSo]

I am going on a backpacking trip to Colorado in a few weeks; I'm definitely going to have to mod my backpack like this. Great Idea!!

[LoganSix]

Nice job. A few companies still sell boomboxes, but they are limited. I have one that I want to add MP3 capability to at some point. So many ideas, so little time to do hobbies.

[Oroka]

This is good if you are taking it somewhere to use, but I HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE people who walk around with little speakers blaring rap or any music for that matter. I dont want to hear your music! USE HEADPHONES!

[corey_caffeine]

nice speakers