Low power usage USB speakers – ideal for raspberry pi

I am in the middle of building a raspberry pi bartop gaming cabinet that runs off battery. One of the issues I ran into was that the 7″ monitor I was using had no speakers, and other speakers took up too much power from the battery to run the PI.

Step 1: Parts and why to make?

This is a small speaker that uses under 500 mah for its current. It can be played at full volume off a simple USB 2.0 port. My arcade project is fully powered by a 2.1A 5v battery, so I needed a speaker with a low output.

Parts and Cost

ILUV speaker – 5$

I originally bought this at 5 below last year, and it only ran off of 2 AA batteries. I think ILUV has discontinued selling it, so only some 5 belows will have it. If not, find it on eBay.

any kind of usb cable – 1$

I used an old camera cord, but dollar tree has usb cables for 1$

Step 2: Tools and Skills needed

This project requires beginner skills in soldering, and knowledge of Knife work and glue gunning

you need
A Exacto Knife or Stanley Hobby Knife

A soldering iron, type of solder doesent matter.

a hot glue gun

I also used a flat head screw driver to pry up the battery casing

Step 3: Pull up the battery pack and solder

first thing to do is pull up the battery pack. I used some elbow grease, a flat head screw driver, and my knife and after mabye 10 min I got the pack free.

Once you have the battery case free, twist it around so you can see the back of the case you put the batteries in. There should be 2 solder spots with cables running out of them.

WARNING – I was unable to tell what was positive and what was negative due to no labels, and connected it wrong twice. I shorted out my connection, but thankfully I was using a battery pack instead of a wall socket. The battery pack came back to life after I plugged it into a wall socket, but you can electrocute yourself if you are using a wall socket.

Figure out which solder spot is which on the case. Then use your knife to cut the usb cable in half, and strip down the wires (wire stripper or knife) so you have access to the positive and negative wires on the Male usb port side. If you have data cables ( usually green and white ) clip them off.