I have already made a Dewalt Bluetooth speaker, if you have not seen it it is here. But I found some ways that it could be improved. The speaker I made before was not waterproof, the speakers were on the outside (easily damageable), and a few other issues that do not make it ideal. I wanted to remake it better with a few extra features.

Waterproof I want to be able to use this outdoors without needing to cry if it starts to sprinkle.
I want it to charge my dewalt battery's.
I want it to be able to be powered off of my dewalt batteries.
I wanted it to be able to act as a power extension cord/ surge protector
I wanted it to match and lock into my other tough - system dewalt boxes.
I wanted it to have USB plugs to charge phones

Step 1: Gather the Materials

These are the materials that I used to build my speaker set. You can build it however you see fit, but you might see this as a guideline.

Step 2: Cut Holes and Laser Mounts

First step to this is to remove the interior of the lid by removing the three screws at the bottom. Then I marked and cut holes approximately where the speakers will go. I cut the holes in the plastic using a dremel rotary tool. The wood speaker mount will cover any imperfections that are made. When designing the speaker mounts or designing anything of substance, I recommend cutting the design on cardboard first to make sure everything fits first before cutting the more expensive wood.

I have included the DXF file that contains the speaker mount, as well as the coreldraw file if you wish to edit it.

I cut the speaker mounts on the laser, after cutting I sanded all the wood down and painted with a poly-stain that I had to give it a little bit of a sheen.

Step 3: Paint and Mount Speakers and Faceplates

I used some krylon fusion spray paint that is designed for plastic to paint the face-plates of the speakers. If you choose to paint the face-plates make sure to get in all the crevices so that it looks natural. I use a spray booth with a lazy susan inside, it works well to spin it slowly as I am painting to get all the sides. Once painted and dried I mounted the speakers to the lasered speaker mount using The M5 bolts that are listed in the parts step.

Step 4: Hacking the 20V Charger

In order to get the power from the charger we will need to hack it. In order to take them apart you will need a security bit set. After removing the screws the easiest way to see what we will need to do is with a voltmeter. Even with the cover taken apart you can mount the battery on the charger and measure the pins to find the positive and negative.

After finding the correct contact pins I soldered wires onto them so that I can draw power from the batteries when they are plugged into the chargers.

Step 5: Adding All the Electronics

The way I am setting the electronics up is so that there is a switch to power the system form the battery and a switch to power the system from the 12v transformer. I will be adding a Diode on the positive side of both the battery and the 12v transformer so that if both of the switches are turned on the power will not backfeed. I will also be adding a LED Voltmeter to the battery so that I can monitor the voltage to make sure the battery does not drain completely.

I had a little dewalt case (I think it came with a pack of multisaw blades) that I decided would be a good size to mount all of the power management hardware into. I drilled holes for the toggle switches, the cord for the power strip, the cord for the Extension cord, the wires from the hacked charger, and the power wires for the Bluetooth and USB going to the lid.

I included a poorly drawn circuit diagram that I used for the speaker.

Step 6: Mistakes, Version 1.5 Redesign

So this was a lesson for me, I was almost done several days ago. Just needed to finish up a little wiring. But the farther I went, the more I hated it. It had 4 speakers instead of 2, the lid was very heavy due to the logitech speakers, it did not have USB charging, There were three layers of plywood instead of one, so the case itself would not hold that much. I really thought that the whole design was bad. So I removed the logitech speakers that were much heavier and much deeper than the other speakers. I moved the bigger speakers down to the middle of the lid so that the weight was not so high. That made it so the lid was much lighter and would stay open on its own without any difficulty.

All in all it took an extra day of work, but I am much happier with it now.

Step 7: Final Thoughts

I am very happy with my final outcome for this project. I am looking forward to using it on a jobsite. I tested it for about an hour and it played music loudly enough, and charged my cell phone great. I have not had a chance as of yet to test the amount of time that the speakers will play on a normal dewalt 20v battery.

I had a lot of fun building this, I thank you for taking the time to check it out. If you liked it please vote for this in the various contest that it is entered into.

Thank You for Looking

Introduction: Dewalt Bluetooth Speaker 2.0