BlockBox v1: The Conclusion?

With the end of the BlockBox v1 build, I had finally accomplished my long-time ambition of building my own Bluetooth speaker – it really felt like I had reached a new level in my electronics projects, with the ability to build more complex systems.

Let’s summarise the features of the completed speaker:

  • Two-way cross-over speaker system
  • 100W 6.5″ bass/midrange driver
  • Two 15W tweeters
  • -3dB bass roll-off frequency around 72Hz
  • Theoretical maximum sound pressure level around 110-113dB (@ 1m)
  • Bluetooth audio playback (SBC or AAC), effective range ~10-15m
  • (Roughly) music-synchronised LEDs
  • 166Wh battery (in practice, lasts for more than 10 hours of continuous playback)
  • Battery protection and fast charging
  • External USB (5V 1.5A) for phone charging
  • Optional analog AUX input (not implemented due to lack of practical need)
  • Diagnostics LCD for showing battery and Bluetooth status

Sure, there are many imperfections and mistakes in the design, as is expected for my level of experience at the time, and I tend to focus on these imperfections too much myself when looking back at it.

But taking a step back, looking at the bigger picture of what I built in the BlockBox v1 – I’m very proud of it overall. It’s a powerful, functional, portable speaker, and while its audio quality isn’t “hi-fi” by any means, I would also never call it bad, it’s certainly good enough for most use cases.

However, just being proud of it was apparently not quite enough for me. Yes, it was a good achievement for me, but I wasn’t quite satisfied. The bass roll-off was too high for my taste, the button control scheme was too basic, and the low-volume audio output was too noisy.

And thus, just a few months later, the BlockBox v2 project was born.

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