DIY COMICBOOK FM RADIO/BLUETOOTH/AUX SPEAKER

Hello, in this instructable I m gonna write about a project that I was planning to make for quite a long time but never got around to do it until recently.

Because of scientific reasons, I wanted to see how cardboard would serve as a speaker box, and I'm pleasantly surprised with the sound quality and loudness. Almost all of the materials used in this project were recycled. For example, I took li-ion cells from an old laptop battery, drivers were found in old desktop speakers, antenna came from old broken pocket radio, an old comic book was used to make cool looking retro cover and cardboard box came from well cardboard box :D.

And I'm sorry because of my English I'm not a native speaker

Cardboard

Comic book/s

Speakers 2x

Bluetooth/FM Radio/Aux decoder board

Anthena (an optional, piece of wire could also be used)

PAM8403 amplifier board Step down voltage converter ( Buck coverter )

Li-ion batteries

BMS board for batteries

Switch

Charging board

Miscellaneous: wires, screws, glue, isolating tape, solder Tools: Soldering Iron, pliers, utility knife

o make the schematic easy to understand I'm gonna break it up into few segments

Speakers + PAM 8403 – solder 4 (2+2) wires on PAM8403 amplifier board (output) + and -. Then solder two wires on the right speaker and then two on the left speaker. And that is it for speakers. Because I used a 12v Bluetooth decoder board to power the PAM8403 amplifier I needed to step the voltage down to 5v, that is where the buck converter comes in. IMPORTANT NOTE: BEFORE SOLDERING BUCK CONVERTER ONTO PAM8403 BOARD FIRST SET IT UP ON 5V, SO AMP WOULDNT BLOW UP. On the PAM8403 board, there are L, R, and GND contacts ( GND on this board is reversed T ), 5 wires are coming out of the Bluetooth decoder board (6 if the antenna is included) 3 of those wires are R, L, and GND, Connect those 3 wires to amplifier board accordingly. ( They are marked on both boards so it really isn't hard.). And 2 leftover wires (usually red and black) are + and – and they are going onto Li-ion battery pack. For radio to work you may need to additionally solder wire on the decoder board to act as an antenna. And regarding the Li-ion battery pack, those BMS boards are usually marked where to connect batteries, so follow those instructions and that should work fine. I replaced batteries later in the build, regarding photos in this step batteries were blue and there were two cells, in the finished version of this build I replace them with three cells and 12,6 volts BMS board (green color), don't get confused there.

Test the board to make sure everything is working properly.

It would be a shame to put them in a box and they don't work :D

Dimensions of my box are 30,5 cm * 7,5 cm * 12 cm.

I doubled each side of the box by making identical part of one side of the box and then gluing it on that side I did this for all sides except for the top one, and on the top side instead of one solid piece of cardboard, I put 3 smaller pieces the reason being If some electronic part fails it would be easier to replace.

This step is pretty straightforward, start by positioning speakers and decoder board, draw outlines on cardboard, and then using a utility knife cut holes in the cardboard. Using this method make holes for the switch and charging port.

Install speakers, decoder board, switch, charging port, antenna, and all other components, connect them accordingly, finish the cardboard box and you could stop here. A step further would be to turn it into comic book radio.

Prepare some old comic book sheets and then cut them up into mosaic parts, and then after you have quite a pile of mosaic parts start gluing them side by side.