New project (first actually)

[john_smith_scot]

Hi guys, never modded anything before (other than my xbox), so hopefully this will go well.

I go to a lot of beach and garden parties and quite frankly I'm sick of the crappy little stereos that people put out and assume that that will do for the music...

This leads to the mod....I want to build a computer with two big a** speakers and a power amp so that I can just carry this in, plug it in and all my mp3's etc will be there with visualisations etc...

I'm looking to see if anyone has done anything similar or if anyone can suggest any problems I might run into...

Cheers

Oh and here are some CAD pics of the plan...

[Bucko]

The main issues I see are what affect the speaker magnets may have on the PC, the fact that the speakers look just like sub-woofers, so not really suitable for higher frequency sounds and finally what will power the amp?
It looks like a car amp, which while it's 12 volts, the computer PSU won't be able to supply the current required.

My suggestion would be have separate speakers that plug in, and maybe integrate a mains powered amplifier for them.

[john_smith_scot]

I was a little concerned about the magnetic field and the hard drive, going to encase the hard drive in a wire mesh, should scramble it. The speakers wont be quite that big, if i have any probs with treble i can through in a couple of tweeters, there is plenty of space. I know that is a car amp...couldn't find a model of the thing i actually wanted so thats just so that i can get positioning right in my head (the real one will take a splice off the mains going to the pc and lcd.

[Bucko]

I would also mount the CD drive at the top of the case. As there is a good chance this would be sitting on the ground, if it's higher up there is less chance of dirt/sand getting in.

What sort of dimensions is this going to be?

Another thing that may work is building an amplified box, but having a laptop sunken into the top. So all cables from it go inside to the amplifier, power supply etc, but gives you a keyboard and a screen that can be better protected during transport.
The laptop could be modded so it still goes to an external CD drive in the back, and some USB ports. Another opening on top could hold the wireless mouse for transit/safe storage too.

[john_smith_scot]

Good idea with the cd drive up at the top.

Dimensions are rough at the moment, approx 1 foot high by 2.5-3 feet wide by just over 1 foot deep.

I really want to build the whole thing in one box, there will be plexiglass over the screen to protect it. Planning on operating the thing just with the trackball so it will be superglued to the top and the keyboard can be plugged into the usb in the back when required, but i don't expect that to be that often. Primarily to be used for mp3's / divx.

[sirkillalot617]

First of all welcome to TBCS

I like the look of your idea as i was also planing on doing something like that when i finshed my current mods Good luck and i will be watching closly.

Sir K

[john_smith_scot]

Cheers, I'll upload pics as I go along, probably not going to get the chance to start on it for a couple of weeks though, just planning and researching just now.

[jdbnsn]

Not sure but I would take vibration damage into account when designing this. If you work around the magnetic issue, current needed, and large amount of heat produced by those auto amplifiers, I think vibration from the subs could be a problem. I would personally design it as separate compartments that stack/arrange together somehow. That would allow you to address all of these concerns rather easily.

[xmastree]

You mentioned glueing a trackball on top? Why not mount it flush?
Use something like this or this

Oh, and you'll need a USB port so others can connect their thumbdrives or MP3 players.

[armadilloben]

id love to see someone market an emp proof jagunda hdd cage and like sell it to the military or sumtin that was made out of lead lol

welcome to the forum john