Solar Powered Speaker

Students

Shayan Monshizadeh
COS, 2019

5B6648CD-8364-4A18-B41D-3ED435D5BDCA - Christian Feiler

Christian Feiler
Economics, 2019

Project Description

This project stemmed from a need to have a portable, durable speaker that could function in the outdoors during activities such as hiking or a day at the beach. The main parts of the project, the speaker, wiring, battery and solar panel, were purchased and assembled last semester and are fully operational. The focus of this project for the second semester was to make durable casing and an amplifier to boost the volume of the speakers and make them operational in outdoor spaces.
The casing was assembled using Pine boards that are light but durable enough to survive outdoor conditions. In addition, a decision was made to have the casing top open easily so magnets were used in place of glue. The casing size is the smallest it can be while still being able to fit our purchased solar panel on top. Next, the amplifier design was designed piece on looking at traditional amplifiers online and designing one that fits our specifications fairly well. The main design decisions that went into designing the amplifier were smooth and conic shapes that increase in diameter as it gets further from the speaker, as well as having the two speakers connected through the amplifier to have a stereo effect. The solar panel was mounted on top of the casing (see attached diagrams) using the precut holes present in the panel.
Since the main goal of this project to design a speaker that can be used outdoors, an assumption is made that the majority of the power will come from the solar panel and thus the battery size was kept to a minimum to minimize weight (a common theme in this project is durability yet portability). The motivation really came from our group’s desire to have a speaker that can be used on sunny spring days outdoors and not have to worry about power.

Technical Background

[1] How Solar Panels Work. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/renewable-energy/how-solar-panels-work

Design Drawings

Fabrication Process

The first step of the fabrication process was 3D printing out the proposed amplifier design. Since the design was made in Fusion, it was simply extracted out to a STL file and uploaded onto the 3D printers in the lab. There were no issues with the printing.

Next, the wood was cut to size. Since the materials did not arrive in time, different (and heavier) wood that proposed was used and since the panels were very large they were all cut in the architecture building machine shop. Only large pieces were cut in the machine shop.

For the outlines of the amplifier in the front panel, the jig saw was used at the EPICS lab. To achieve this, the outline was drawn onto the panel and a small whole was drilled in each corner of the panel with the EPICS drill. Next, the jig saw blade was removed and inserted through the hole and the outline was cut. This process took a good amount of time since our boards were relatively thick and the jig saw wasn’t very good at cutting perfect circles. The edges were then sanded down to provide a more circular look. The small square on the top panel was cut in a similar manner and required much less precision since no rounded edges were necessary.

The pieces were glued together to create a box at this point and left to dry overnight.

Next, 3 small pegs were placed in the correct location to hold up the amplifier and the speakers. The amplifier was then glued in place as well as the speakers. The components of the speakers were carefully hot glued in places to keep them from moving around.

Next small circular holes were drilled in the side of the top panel to allow for magnets to sit uninhibited, after which the magnets were hot glued in place. A synthetic material was cut and drilled into the two long sides of the top panel and acted as hinges on one side and as fasteners on the other side.

Finally, the solar panel was mounted and the wire connection was made between the battery and the speaker.

Students

Project Description

Technical Background

Design Drawings

Fabrication Process

Final Result