A Real Speaker System (Concept)

This is an idea I had while lying in my bed last night thinking about the Doom 3 project. (And right off the bat that made me sound like I don't have a life) Any way. I had an idea to integrate a PC into a sub woofer box while leaving the entire speaker system functional. I will probably start working on this some time here soon. So I will show you the pics as I get stuff done.


Products I plan on using:

Speakers
Creative Inspire 5.1 5200

PC Specs
Some old Crappy 333 gateway I have around here some where. Smallest motherboard and I cant afford new parts.

awesome idea it would be really cool to also put like a window in it :D

Yeah. I think I will end up putting a window in the top. I'm also thinking about lighting up the front logo using the Doom 3 airlock LCD pad technique. I just ran into a problem though. The motherboard is about an inch bigger than the "Case". I am about to upload the pics to my server and I will show you what I mean. I'm thinking I'm just gonna extend the back a little to fit it all in. I am also thinking about turning the motherboard around so all the connections are made inside the case. I only want a few to be exposed to the back. Like agp and maby a usb. I dont want it to be clutterd with connections as its gonna have plenty to start with.

EMI, EMI, EMI.

A sub puts off tremendous electrical frequencies for obvious reasons.

Having a computer in there is not a good idea, nor is it safe for your hardware. Tons of magnetic energy is put off by those speakers (as speakers are basically electromagnets), and it WILL destroy your hardware. I promise you that.

If you want a PC in a sub so much, just build yourself a case and save yourself a sub. There isn't much room in those sub boxes anyway.

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Well I hadn't planed on keeping the sub in there. I don't think I could fit everything in there and keep it in there if I wanted to, but since you bring it up, there is some protective barrier that can keep your equipment safe right?

There's also the fact that a running harddrive can be very tedious when it comes to vibrations, and a subwoofer does simply that 'make vibrations'.

If you were gonna keep the sub operational, both points would come into play, but its something to try!

Hmmm, if you take out the sub, then you might be okay.

Apart from lead, I'm not sure what else you could use...
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Lead as a barrier?

I could be wrong but I'd think it would have to be a conductive metal to be an EMI barrier. Steel is the usual barrier that I've seen but if I'm right about conductivity, then Gold would be better! Of course, if it needs to have magnetic properties too (i.e. ferrous metal) then there goes the gold idea. Now I'm curious to know, does it have to be a ferrous metal, just conductive, or none of the above? Any knowledgeable please speak up.

The big ass magnet in a sub will destroy your data in a heartbeat. Put two NON PC speakers near a CRT and see what happens to the image. Computer internals are no different and awfully sensitive to EMI and magnetic interference. You can put the stuff in the sub but not if you also want the sub to be operational. I would first try using a small SBC or Single Board computer with a CF card as the HD and see how that works for you.

Another thing to think about is that if you notice. Sub boxes dont have screws, or most dont atleast. Sub Boxes such as the one your looking at are vacuum sealed. If you take the casing off then you risk breaking the seal which in turn would wreck your new purchase. I would try it on an old goodwill sub or something like that before you risk wrecking a completly good sub.

Well, mine has screws. And I can get to the inside. The way it is put togeather is its got wood glue on the wood pieces to hold them togeather. I think a heat gun on that will loosen it up to where I can get it off. To get it to stick togeather again I can use some more wood glue. I would show you pictures of all this but my digital camera is messing up (See what happens when you let your mother borrow things).

What is the material of the speaker boxes? By doing so, you may be able to build a acrylic chase to hold the PC, and create all the necessary punch outs for cards, powersupply,etc, and don't forget the actual subwof. Once you have then encasement, then work on the asthetics. If you can find a match on the original color and material of the speaker, then go find a close replica of it.

Oh yeah, make sure you sheild the board and its components from the magenet of the speaker, or else you're dead lol. And one more thing, throw some lights in :)

Ha ha, I really haven't planned on the sub being in there. But how would I protect it if I do. I think I am going to go with one of the smaller boards though weather I have the sub in there or not so I don't have to physically make the box bigger. Although it will cost more money it will be worth it in the end. And the box is made of wood.

Best shielding for EMI is braided copper mesh of different aperture sizes. Each aperture corresponds to a particular frequency range of EMI, so you can use layered screens of different sizes that will shield your hardware within the frequency response range of the sub.

Google: faraday cage

or check out this wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage



:eek:

"Some of me are glad that we aren't schizophrenic"

Sounds good. I will probably do that. Thanks for all the feed back. I have a few other ideas I want to work on too. We will see how things go.

with a sub you'll prolly have to be concerned about vibration as well. a decent driver and the right track could shake a video or peripheral card loose.

it sounds like a good ide but as others said, there are just too many problems with it if you want to keep the sub functional. I'd suggest to do it in a separate sub box and have 2 subs, but one would be the comp. the big hole of the box would be excellent for a fan :)