Speaker

Speaker Designs

Feedback Summary

It's interesting how some other ideas jumped out at people, even ones that weren't circled so my choice is getting even harder. These notes felt important because they made me think more deeply about how the design and creation would go, especially what materials I would want to use.

Phase Two Design

Why do you believe this is an excellent design to design and build?

I'm excited for designing and building these shoes because I feel like I will be able to play around with all mediums: acrylic, wood, 3D print, felt, metal, etc and orchestrate them in a cool way because shoes have interesting features and shapes that give them unique style and characterization. I'm hoping to make mine personalized to me or more interesting than just a shoe by adding fun designs.

How are you challenging your current skill set?

I'm challenging my skill set by creating a design that will be hard to model and design fasteners to keep all the pieces together because there are many components I'm hoping to add but they might not fit together well if my sizing/calculations aren't on point or the design doesn't work with the materials provided.

Brown ring around speaker circle will be made of wood
sole made of cork + wood
body made of 3D filament
magnets connecting sole to body for easy access to circuit board
hole in bottom of sole for battery

Design Progress Update

Here I have the basic shape of the shoe down with a hole for speaker and battery. I've reconstructed the one on the right to add details like magnets and will soon move on to placing the second sideways shoe connected to the upright one. I added the middle part to be slightly raised like a tongue but still figuring out if that would work with the 3D printer and not break off. My design isn't fully symmetrical just like a worn-in shoe should be so I'm looking forward to seeing how I make it turn out.

Design Progress Update

Here's my almost (because I need a quick physical information on size of our school's magnets to finish it) final rhino 3D printed part of the shoe. It has a thickness of 0.05 inches so it is 3D printable and is about 10 inches long. I might seperately 3D print special knobs.

Final Rhino Design!

My idea is to print out this whole photo with the 3D printer while attaching the base permanently to a cork sole and inserting magnets into the top for connection to the top shoe part. I learned a lot of perserverence during this design and that sometimes simpler isn't always bad. I had many moments of confusion and frusteration while modeling this but the main thing to take away is to go slower in building the basics of the shoe so that you don't have to restart once it becomes sloppy. Also, making sure the goal of the build is still intact so that its possible (for me— a solid and closed polysurface so that it can be printed). My design needs to be slightly modified because the bottom part of the curved sides doesn't have thickness while its sides do for some reason.

Final Cardboard Prototype

My idea is to have the shoelaces be sturdy enough to hold the top speaker shoe over the bottom one so it looks like how it comes in a shoe box and more like a traditional speaker shape. This prototype took a while because my first design made the shoe super big and I wanted to change that so I redid it. Through the process I learned to be more creative with design choices like the speaker arrangement and to make sure my choices are right before I jump in. My design might need modifications but I don't know of any yet. The hard part will just be to have the speakers connect and have a sturdy attachment for it to work.

Final Speaker Breadboard

Is there something about the circuit you understand now that you've spent time prototyping it?

Even if a connection is one row off, it can throw the speaker's sound quality fully off course or decide between the sound working versus not working. I also learned that the speaker can still work, even if some pieces are wrong, which was very surprising.

Name one part that is a complete mystery to you. Look it up on Google or Generative AI. What does it say the function of that part is?

A part that's a mystery is the red, five pin piece that connects a cable to volume/bluetooth.

Chat said it is a 3.5 mm audio jack module and carries the electrical audio signal from a device to another circuit. It also said it can provide an audio signal but relies on an amplifier beause it doesn't have enough power to drive a speaker directly.

Collaborative Amp PCB

I worked with Jasper. I learned that this circuit has many pins and places to connect to ground and power while some just connect to each other, but eventually they end up connecting to one of them (gnd or VIN).

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