An important aspect of gaming is sound. For that purpose we will need a set a good speakers and an amplifier that will connect directly to the Raspberry Pi audio.
I have chosen for 4" speakers. They can be found in Chinese online shops for around 10 euros a pair. The one that I have ordered were car speakers with the type LB-PS1401D. To make it look nice you can also add some covers for the speakers.
For the amplification you can use a small 1W amplifier. Although it is questionable if you maybe would need some more power. The one that I have ordered was based on TDA2822M chipset and costed around 2 euros. It has stereo output and is powered by 12 volts. You will also need a small 3.5mm stereo jack plug which will connect to the Raspberry Pi audio output.
To install the speakers I have predrilled pilot holes for the speakers and the covers of the speakers.
Somehow the speakers holes were a little bit too large and I have to glue the speaker grill to the plastic casing. I have used hot glue.
Then I have soldered provided leading wires to the speakers.
Now the speakers could be fasten with screws to the side panels.
I have covered the holes between the speakers and the grill with black electrical tape.
The last part was to connect the speaker wires to the amplifier board.
At this stage of the build there was no power supply inside the cabinet so I have temporarily connected a 12V power supply to the amplifier board and connected it to the Raspberry Pi to test it. I will cover the power system in the next blog post.
We also want the volume knob to be adjustable from the outside. For that purport we drill a 5 mm hole on the back of the cabinet, so the potentiometer on the board can pass though that hole.
On the inside the board will look like this.
To finish up we connect a rotary control turning knob that can fasten with a small screw.
