Do you have old speakers that you no longer use and they are taking up space at home? Are you considering throwing them away? If you have patience and are a little handy, you may want to reuse them instead of throwing them away, and for this in this article we are going to try to give you a handful of ideas to give your old PC speakers a second life (or not); whether they work or not, with these ideas you can reuse them.
Nowadays, there are no longer few users who have dispensed with the speakers in the PC in favor of other solutions, such as those integrated in the monitor or, of course, the headphones. Obviously there are many audio connoisseurs who have simply acquired better and newer speakers and the old ones have been forgotten, but in any case there are always alternatives to be able to reuse them as we are going to tell you below.
Projects to repurpose your old PC speakers (if they still work)
If the speakers are still working fine, there is little point in throwing them away, especially when they can still be of great use to you. However, keep in mind that for most of the projects that we are going to list below you will have to “gut” these speakers, so you will hardly be able to use them again in their original functionality.
Charging station with mobile speakers
This project would only be possible with PC speakers that have relatively small drivers, and implies, as you will already suppose, disassembling these components from their original casing. In any case, this alternative is very simple and does not require you to weld anything, just get a plastic container and make some holes on the sides as you can see in the image above; you will have to glue or anchor the speakers just below, leaving their electronics inside the container.
Basically by doing this you will have simply changed the housing of your PC speakers for a plastic container, but the idea is to also put a cable to connect a smartphone and thus listen to music with it, but at the same time you can add a wireless charging station so that, at the same time, you can leave the mobile terminal on top and recharge its battery.
You have complete instructions to carry out this project in Instructables .
The old speakers of your PC, in an Internet radio station
Do you remember the times when you tuned in to the radio to listen to your favorite songs? With the advent of the Internet, the way we listen to music changed, but that does not mean that you cannot set up an Internet radio system to reuse your PC speakers.
You will need a pair of speakers that still work and a Raspberry Pi (of course) for this project; In fact, if you are a bit of a handyman when it comes to carpentry, it can look as good as you can see in the image that we have placed above these lines, but in any case here we leave you a complete guide to configure Internet radio on a Raspberry Pi and, the rest, it is already open to your imagination on how to integrate it all.
Reuse your PC speakers for… a BoomBox!
PC speakers, no matter how old or bad, usually sound quite good and can therefore be used for almost any audio system (unless you are an audiophile who always wants to have the best possible quality, of course). In any case, for this project you can use PC speakers but the creators of the project recommend using those of a car, since they tend to have better quality than those of PC, especially in their drivers (yes, car speakers require a power converter, something you won’t need to reuse PC speakers).
To create a BoomBox you will also need an amp if you don’t have one; In any case, we are giving you the idea and you will see how you carry it out.
Projects to repurpose non-working PC speakers
So far we have given you a series of ideas to be able to reuse some PC speakers that still work, but what if at the time they broke down and that is why you were no longer using them? They may still have a new life, but it will depend a lot on the type of speakers you have.
For example, the metal grilles that usually cover the front of PC speakers are ideal for creating a stand for earrings or anything else that has hooks, but if you decide to do so we recommend cutting and integrating the grille into some type of box and covering the edges with hot glue, as they are quite sharp.
A better idea to reuse PC speakers (or not, in this case) if they are large is to create bookshelves, especially if your speaker box is made of wood. Simply open them and remove all the electronics inside, leaving them hollow inside, and see what furniture you can make with a little skill and imagination.
Another potential project that you can do if you have large speakers (and especially if their box is made of wood) is to reuse them with other speakers, especially if they are wireless (Bluetooth). Simply open the box and empty it to throw away the electronics of the speakers that do not work (remember that in this section we are talking about speakers that no longer work) and insert a bluetooth speaker inside; Generally, if the soundboard of the old speakers was good, you will noticeably expand and improve the sound of any bluetooth speaker, even the smallest ones.
At this point, you can imagine that the limit is set by your imagination; It does not matter if you create a new shelf, a charging station or any other device that comes to mind, the fact is that if you are a little handyman and you feel like you can create very interesting projects to reuse old PC speakers.
