DIY Boombox build log, part 1

Posted by mikael on 2010-04-05 01:13, section: Hardware Preliminary sketch

The last couple of days I've begun planning the construction of a DIY boombox for the summer's parties and this is part one of the build. More precisely it's the planning stage.

The case

I'm planning on building the case out of 12 mm thick MDF and after a few revisions I've come up with the above sketch, it's not set in stone but I like the basic design. I'll be making the speakers closed as I don't want to mess around with all the extra trouble of a ported enclosure.

The speakers

Since I'm building this on the cheap I'm going for a pair of cheap car speakers called Avant CS220, max out at 125 W which the head unit will never touch.

The stereo

Obviously I'll need something to feed the speakers. I considered just hooking up an mp3 player through an amp but decided against this as it felt a bit to unrefined, instead I decided on using a regular car stereo. The unit I chose was the cheapest I could find with the features I was looking for which in this case was that I could use a USB flash drive or an SD card for music storage instead of CDs. The choice fell on the Denver CAU-415 (although I've been warned about this particular brand).

The battery

Obviously I'll need to power this and AC power is out of the question. Since I'm trying to avoid excessive weight I've decided on using a motorcycle battery in the 12-14 Ah range. I've found one model that I'm considering buying that has a very useful feature, the battery acid is in a gel form so it won't spill if the boombox falls over.

Further updates will come once the hardware starts showing up and the build has started.

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