Since Christmas I have been building smartphone passive speaker boxes. To be honest I was prompted to do so by my daughter who has instigated a regime of making Christmas presents that cost less than $20 which leads to a lot of pre Christmas stress for me and who knows, could be a topic next December!
Then I spotted an idea on Pinterest and was intrigued by the idea of making a speaker that could amplify the phone’s internal speaker.
First I bought a plan with 3 designs from Stockade, and built each one shown below. They all redirect the sound towards you and probably double the volume. They make a handy place to put the phone during long calls.
Then I spotted this “Folded Horn Passive Phone Speaker on Instructables.com
I liked the design because it keeps the phone accessible, directs the sound nicely, is more space efficient on my desk and I can see everything on the screen.
The only drawback is its not easy to get a charge cable in place.
Building the box was easy to do, though time consuming because of all of the parts I had to make. Once the pieces were cut out, I only needed some white glue and clamps to construct it. I painted it and made some fancy wooden sides to improve the look and voila, I had my gift!
Then I had requests to make some more, and now I am working this week on number 4.
I did make a couple of slight changes to the design, adding weight in the base and changing the slope on the phone mount in order to make it more stable. I experimented with pathway, adding custom curves to the internal path in the hope of improving the sound but in the end I don’t think it did much.
It needs tests for volume and frequency response but so far I can say its noticeably louder and it works as a player speaker even though its a bit boxy sounding. (Considering its an iPhone speaker what can one expect?)
So if you are interested I am making drawings to share (see next weeks blog) and I am making a design for the laser cutter so that we can create a kit of parts. You can make the parts yourself or simply buy the kit and glue it up. For diode members the costs could be pretty minimal, for non Diyode members we can charge a bit more.
Let me know what you think. Is the a good idea, would like to hear of more projects, and do you have some to share?
Chau,
Cliff
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