Making a Smart Speaker - Part 2

In this installment of Making a Smart Speaker, we're going to work on the non-lowend (mid-high range) audio output. I was disappointed when removing the lowpass filter didn't make the subwoofer output all ranges (the acoustics of the shape are too subwoofer-like), so we need to add another speaker to make this worth anything. In this part, we'll do just that.

Here are the speakers. The right channel never worked (that's the whole reason I got these for free), so I decided to cut that one open first. I have a horrible, horrible dremel tool. It's battery powered and the battery life absolutely sucks. I'm thinking of converting it to a wall-powered system but, until I do that, I will just have to suffer with this dremel tool.

So I cut away the somewhat thick ABS plastic housing and cut the speaker free from its wire. All I had left was a speaker rated at 6Ω, 3W. I'd, of course, have to drive this from the amplifier circuit in the subwoofer. I verified that it worked before moving on. It does, so the issue with the right channel must have been a break in the wire. I'm glad the speaker itself works because that means I now have another fully working speaker still in its enclosure.

Now I needed to figure out where exactly I was going to put this. I think it would look good right underneath the horn on the sub box, so I'd drill a hole slightly smaller than the speaker and affix it there. The speaker has convenient screw mounts, but the subwoofer is hard to work inside of, so I may just hot glue it and pray.

I took a 2" hole saw to the front of the speaker, praying it would look good. I think it turned out okay, although it's literally rough around the edges.

I then soldered the speaker wires to the output jack of the amp board. Then I hot glued the speaker in place. Hot glue should absorb some vibrations. So far it hasn't fallen off yet. I used a lot of hot glue.

The speaker now sounds... alright. It's not the best sounding thing in the world. The subwoofer has to be turned down quite a bit, but overall it's looking really good. I'm waiting for the computer that will drive everything to come in the mail, so until then, this project will be put on pause. This update was kinda short, but it's a necessary step in the project.