BedWooferBuilt: 2002/06/11 Added to webpage: 2002/06/11 Being a poor UVic student, I couldn't really afford to insure my car this semester, and it's not like I have a lot of free time to drive anywhere while I'm taking 6 cources anyways. Now what am I going to do with this 15" subwoofer, 120 watt amp, and deep cycle car battery that I had installed in the car? Build a BedWoofer!  
My bed has a sheet of half inch pressboard, supported by two-by-fours holding the mattress up.  
I used a pencil to mark all the screw holes in the subwoofer onto the center of the sheet of plywood. I then traced some circles inside of the circle of screw holes and cut them out with a jigsaw. I screwed the 15" subwoofer to the pressboard and then turned the pressboard over so the subwoofer was underneath the bed.  
I then brought up my deep-cycle car battery, put it under my bed and wired the amp to the battery and to the subwoofer. I connected an earphone connector splitter to the audio output of my sound card and left my computer speaker system connected to it. I connected an earphone connector to RCA converter to the other output of the splitter and connected the rca jacks to the amp. I connected 2 wires to an on/off switch and connected them to the +12v leads and the remote connectors on the amp and mounted it on the underside of my computer desk. I tested it out with and without the mattress. Without the mattress, the pressboard vibrated so much that it would shake your head and make everything in the room go blurry if you laid down on it. If you didn't lay down on it the press board would vibrate around and make bad tapping noises. When I put the mattress on, it got rid of the tapping noises. When you listen to music on the mattress, the vibrations put you to sleep. When you listen to music off of the mattress you can feel the vibrations transferred from the bed to the floor. The mattress isn't ass good as a proper box for sound, but it is better than nothing.  
Now the deep-cycle car battery will eventually run out, so I connected my car battery charger to the battery. I moved everything under my bed when I had finished testing it, so it doesn't look all messy like that. I have to remember not to overcharge the car battery, or I'll fill my room up with hydrogen gass and blow it up, or spill sulphuric acid on the floor (Not that I haven't blown up hydrogen in my room, or spilt an acid on the floor, or sprayed it onto the roof already). The car battery charger seems to significantly drop the current when the battery is almost charged, so it isn't the end of the world if I forget and leave it on. It also has a 6v setting, so I can leave it like that 24/7 and it will protect the car battery from ever dropping below 6v. Time to go listen to some music. Good night. |