Want to add some sound to your bookshelves without adding big speakers that will take up space? Here’s an excellent idea, make a DIY camouflage book speakers. (See Steve Hoefer’s full DIY page here.)
My mom actually has two GIANT speakers taking up a whole lot of space on her custom bookshelves (so she can listen to classical music) but this brings up the idea that she can make a bunch of these camouflage book speakers and finally get rid of those old ones.
I think I might actually try this DIY soon, it’s an easy hack but the idea is fabulous, why didn’t I think of that before. This reminds me of that guy who turned a small bedroom into 4 rooms, he will surely appreciate it I know.
I bought a low power Velleman amp kit. It’s not fantastic, but it’s good enough for this job, it’s small and it’s cheap. In addition to the kit I added a 50k audio taper potentiometer, all the appropriate plugs for audio (3.5mm female mono panel mount, 3.5mm male stereo audio) and power (2.1mm panel mount) and a DPDT toggle switch to select the input. After soldering it all together I was ready to put it in the case. Almost. There was some pretty serious 60Hz hum from a ground loop. (Not surprising on a cheap amp like this.) Since I’m lazy and cheap I solved it by making a low pass filter with a small capacitor and resistor.
