I am going to show you how I built a portable speaker lantern from an old construction sight lamp and some little speakers!

You can find more information here

http://www.doityourselfgadgets.com/2014/06/portable-homemade-boombox.html.

Step 1: Finding and Preparing an Old Lantern

I bought an old defective construction site lantern on ebay for this project. You should be able to find an appropriate one somewhere on the internet.

Now lets unscrew it at the bottom and remove the old batteries as well as the broken electronics.

Simply lift the hull after unscrewing it and the batteries will slide out.

Cut two holes into the front panel of the lantern using a holesaw. The speakers will be inserted into those holes later.

Then pull out the circuit board with the leds at top of it. If they still work at your lamp, use them. Mine did not work and I replaced them with my own yellow leds.

Step 2: Gathering All Electronics Needed

If the leds in your lamp still work , use them. Mine did not work and I replaced them with my own yellow leds. You can find yellow leds here.

Use this resistor calculator to find the right resistance you'll have to connect in series to your leds.

I bought the mini speakers on Amazon for 4€. They are called Sony Ericsson MPS 100.

The speakers are so cheap because they do not have their own batteries. Each speaker has its own amplifier and filter board, though. Sound quality is stunning for such small speakers!

As battery I bought a 18650 3.7V 3600mAh Lithium Ion cell with holder. You could also use four 1,2V AA rechargeable batteries and a holder.

Now we will need two switches, one in series with the Leds and one in series with the speakers.

You'll also need an audio extension cord so you'll be able to connect your music player to the speakers.

Step 3: Connecting the Electronics

Connecting all electronics is pretty straight forward. Just take a look at the circuit diagram.

Identifying plus and minus on the Sony Ericsson Speaker plug is not a problem, just take a look at the picture above.

Now plug the Audio 3.5mm male/male extension cord into the speakers and feed the cable through the hole in the bottom as seen in the video.

Put the leds on top of the removable circuit board, right where the old ones were. You can also glue the battery holder onto the back of the removeble circuit board.

The toggle switches can be shoved through little holes at the sides so they're accessible from the outside.

Take a look at the last picture above and you will see the switch for the speakers on the left and the switch for the led on the right.

After testing and making sure everything works secure all components with hotglue!