MIT graduate student David Mellis is interested in how designers are combining high-tech parts like microcontrollers with low-tech materials in clever ways. Yesterday, I pointed everyone to Mellis’s inspiring 3-D Printed Mouse project. Now let’s look at another creative design—Fab Speakers.
Whether you’re a microcontroller fanatic, professional engineer, audiophile, musician, or all of the aforementioned, this open-source Fab Speakers project will surely inspire you to customize your own. I’d love to see how others tackle a similar DIY project!
Fab Speakers (Source: D. Mellis)
Mellis writes:
These portable speakers are made from laser-cut wood, fabric, veneer, and electronics. They are powered by three AAA batteries and compatible with any standard audio jack (e.g. on an iPhone, iPod, or laptop).
The speakers are an experiment in open-source hardware applied to consumer electronics. By making their original design files freely available online, in a way that’s easy for others to modify, I hope to encourage people to make and modify them. In particular, I’d love to see changes or additions that I didn’t think about and to have those changes shared publicly for others to use or continue to modify. The speakers have been designed to be relatively simple and cheap in the hopes of facilitating their production by others …
Use 6mm (1/4″) plywood. For the veneer, 1 9/16″ edging backed with an iron-on adhesive is ideal (like this one from Rockler), but anything should work if you cut it to that width. Pick whatever fabric you like. For the electronic components, see the bill-of-materials above. You’ll also need two-conductor speaker wire, available at Radio Shack… There’s also a wall-mounted, oval-shaped variation on the design. It uses the same circuit board, but combines both speakers into a single unit that can hang on a nail or screw in the wall. You’ll want to replace the batteries with a 5V power supply (included in the bill of materials); just cut off the connector and solder the wires directly into the + and – holes for the battery holder. You’ll also want to omit the power switch and just solder together the holes where it would have gone.
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The design's battery holder (Source: D. Mellis)
Mellis gave me permission to write about the projects and post some of the photos from his website.
Click here to check out all the files for this project.
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