Self contained sound suitcase

agcraig

Member
Here is the progression of images showing how I made it.

A small community theater hired me to design the sound for an outdoors production. With no sound system in place, I had to improvise. I decided to make a box that'll contain all of my equipment and be easily setup, and struck at the end of the night, or if weather happened.

Because I had low budget (of none actually, all of this was out of pocket) I had cheap stereo system speakers that were most of my outputs. All of the speakers

(except my powered - http://www.pyleaudio.com/sku/PPHP12...wBuilt-In-iPod-Dock-USB-SD-and-Remote-control )

were the kind that have the loose wire out of the back that you connect to the back of a stereo receiver, I put female RCA's on those. (I had a TON of male to male RCA cables.) Since I provided all of the equipment myself, I can easily monitor what gets plugged in where. I provided the amps, computer, speakers, sound cards.... everything.

I am running MultiPlay - http://www.da-share.com/software/multiplay/ , It's free, simple to use, and can have as many as 4 outputs from it.

Which leads me to another obstacle I had to overcome, I needed 5 outputs. (4 to each amp, and 1 to my powered speakers,) So I decided to have 3 stereo outs, but then on the fourth, I panned Left and Right, Left was one set I needed, Right was another, Giving me a total of 3 stereo outs, and 2 "mono."

http://us.store.creative.com/Creative-Sound-Blaster-XFi-Go-Pro/M/B0044DEDC0.htm these are what I use as my sound cards, the sound is clear, and they are affordable.

And My "GO" box....

That was also a DIY project. It consists of the arcade buttons you see (which are also backlit,) the project box, and to run the keys I used a MIME emulator board ( https://www.ultimarc.com/ipac1.html ) to map the buttons to keyboard keys, The blue buttons are the up and down arrows, the green is the space bar, the red is ESC, and the three yellow are programmable hotkeys that are set in the application, but they are mapped to "z,x,c"

I wanted everything I provided to the company to be 'moron' proofed.
 
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Have fun taking that through airport security...

In all seriousness, that's a cool purpose-built project.
 
I use multiplay and want to build something like your DIY control box. Can you give some more information about it? Also, the link to the MIME board is dead.
Here's an updated link for you: https://www.ultimarc.com/ipac1.html

Here's the link to the buttons I bought: http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-LED-lit...914?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item337871091a

I housed it in a basic project box.

I followed the wiring diagram the came with the controller, along with the documentation on their site. You will also have to run a separate line for power for the light up buttons (if you choose to use those ones). What I did for that was I got a USB cable, cut it, used the +5v & Ground wires in the cable (red and black I believe) and made that the power for the lights. Once I had everything wired, I housed a USB hub in the project box to use for the MAME interface and to power the LEDs. If you would like, I can upload my in-progress images from when I was building it.

let me know what other questions you have. Hope this helps!
 
Here's an updated link for you: https://www.ultimarc.com/ipac1.html

Here's the link to the buttons I bought: http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-LED-lit...914?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item337871091a

I housed it in a basic project box.

I followed the wiring diagram the came with the controller, along with the documentation on their site. You will also have to run a separate line for power for the light up buttons (if you choose to use those ones). What I did for that was I got a USB cable, cut it, used the +5v & Ground wires in the cable (red and black I believe) and made that the power for the lights. Once I had everything wired, I housed a USB hub in the project box to use for the MAME interface and to power the LEDs. If you would like, I can upload my in-progress images from when I was building it.

let me know what other questions you have. Hope this helps!

Thanks! Thats really helpful. Could you upload your in progress photos?
 
Thanks! Thats really helpful. Could you upload your in progress photos?
Here's the album : http://imgur.com/a/xkCR7

Sorry there aren't more images. The should be able to give you a decent understanding of the wiring process. Overall, the project took me about 5 hours (with breaks.)

One thing I do highly suggest, is get a larger project box than I did. Everything was so cramped inside of mine it was hard to do the final wiring.
 
Thanks! Thats really helpful. Could you upload your in progress photos?
Also! I forgot to mention what keys I mapped to. The MAME controller is basically a keyboard controller. I hardwired the keys to Space, ESC, up arrow, down arrow, Z,X,C. That way you won't have to modify any hotkeys inside the application to make things work. It'll just work by default. And you have programmable hotkeys. But I would make sure you map a key to "z" becuse if you ever want to plug it into a Mac, It will ask you to press the key to the right of the left shift key. Which is "z". That way you will have the correct keyboard identification and layout.
 
Also! I forgot to mention what keys I mapped to. The MAME controller is basically a keyboard controller. I hardwired the keys to Space, ESC, up arrow, down arrow, Z,X,C. That way you won't have to modify any hotkeys inside the application to make things work. It'll just work by default. And you have programmable hotkeys. But I would make sure you map a key to "z" becuse if you ever want to plug it into a Mac, It will ask you to press the key to the right of the left shift key. Which is "z". That way you will have the correct keyboard identification and layout.

Thank you! It makes much more sense now. Definently will build one of these!
 

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