Blazemaguire
Senior Member
Hi all,
Looking to develop an improved portable speaker project for my electronics students (well.... now D&T, but still doing as much electronics as I can under the new GCSE specs). The kind that plugs into am MP3 player or mobile phone.
It will be linked with a PICAXE (to control lighting) and also either an LM386 op-amp or TBA820 circuit for driving the audio. Does anyone have any suggestions or links to a good, cheap 8 ohm speaker (between about 30mm - 60mm diameter)
In the past I've brought these speakers from Rapid,
https://www.rapidonline.com/primetone-lp400-0-1w-8-ohm-40mm-ultraslim-speaker-0-1w-35-0120
but not only are they expensive (In my opinion, given school budgets!) they're also very poor audio quality as I think their rated RMS Wattage is very low.
Just experimenting with various old recycled speakers from my shed I've managed to get notably better sound quality (and louder volume, without distortion) using 9V to 12V supply into the LM386 and cruddy speakers from old recycled kids toys / radios etc.
This will be the next project with circa 50 Students. In an ideal world, I was also going to run 2 x LM386 circuits and 2 speakers per student to give stereo sound as well.
The kids are all willing to chip in £5 for the project (and I have £3 per head from my capitation to add to that), so I need to get 2x op-amps (about 50p each), 2 speakers, the PICAXE and all the caps/resistors/LEDs in for that budget. (case and PCB material is already brought and paid for)
I guess I have about £2 - £3 to get 2 speakers, but I want something that's better than the version above and would appreciate any reccomendations.
Any ideas? Audio/amp circuits are not my specialty at all. I just want to improve upon the current version I run, and the speaker is certainly a weak point. Though, the audio amp itself could also do with being beefier (any ideas on that front).
The traditional version I build using a single TBA820 and the Rapid speaker above is eclipsed by most internal mobile phone speakers nowadays, so makes it kind of irrelevant to the kids!
Rob
Looking to develop an improved portable speaker project for my electronics students (well.... now D&T, but still doing as much electronics as I can under the new GCSE specs). The kind that plugs into am MP3 player or mobile phone.
It will be linked with a PICAXE (to control lighting) and also either an LM386 op-amp or TBA820 circuit for driving the audio. Does anyone have any suggestions or links to a good, cheap 8 ohm speaker (between about 30mm - 60mm diameter)
In the past I've brought these speakers from Rapid,
https://www.rapidonline.com/primetone-lp400-0-1w-8-ohm-40mm-ultraslim-speaker-0-1w-35-0120
but not only are they expensive (In my opinion, given school budgets!) they're also very poor audio quality as I think their rated RMS Wattage is very low.
Just experimenting with various old recycled speakers from my shed I've managed to get notably better sound quality (and louder volume, without distortion) using 9V to 12V supply into the LM386 and cruddy speakers from old recycled kids toys / radios etc.
This will be the next project with circa 50 Students. In an ideal world, I was also going to run 2 x LM386 circuits and 2 speakers per student to give stereo sound as well.
The kids are all willing to chip in £5 for the project (and I have £3 per head from my capitation to add to that), so I need to get 2x op-amps (about 50p each), 2 speakers, the PICAXE and all the caps/resistors/LEDs in for that budget. (case and PCB material is already brought and paid for)
I guess I have about £2 - £3 to get 2 speakers, but I want something that's better than the version above and would appreciate any reccomendations.
Any ideas? Audio/amp circuits are not my specialty at all. I just want to improve upon the current version I run, and the speaker is certainly a weak point. Though, the audio amp itself could also do with being beefier (any ideas on that front).
The traditional version I build using a single TBA820 and the Rapid speaker above is eclipsed by most internal mobile phone speakers nowadays, so makes it kind of irrelevant to the kids!
Rob