Found this site that offers professionally made coolers:

BoomCooler

They use a large Igloo cooler with wheels and a very serious amp – this thing is LOUD!

There’s a lot of great discussion going on in post comments and email, so I’ve created a discussion forum to make it easier to have public conversations. It will also help for publishing pictures!

Link: Stereo Cooler Forum

If you have a comment or question, please post in the forum instead of the comments section and it’s much more likely to be read and responded to. Thanks!

Todd and Peter both sent me links to their cooler builds. I’m starting to get excited about the coming season!

Todd’s cooler is a great example of how to get a sharp, stylish look.

Peter’s, below, is a really good technical build.

See more at motorboatyourself.com.

I posted this from my iPad so I hope it turns out ok.

In my first post on how to build a river cooler stereo, I said that I thought it might be the first howto on the Internet. Well, it looks like Team Bad Monkey published a cooler build back in 2006, so credit due.

Thanks to Mike Madden for the link.

Delray mailed me last week referring me to the website for his Cooler Stereo business:

http://www.tubintunes.com/

These are some nice stereos! If you would rather buy than build be sure to check out the site.

I decided to take the next step and install a receiver in my cooler so that I can control the audio from outside the cooler without having to get inside and mess with my iPod. I chose the Pyle PL98M4 for $100 as my receiver, mostly because I knew that I wanted to play mp3 from a card rather than CDs, and the Pyle unit is “mechless” in that it doesn’t have any moving parts. This should make it more reliable and eliminate the risk of water penetrating a CD slot. I was disappointed that the unit does not have an REM output that would allow me to turn the amplifier on and off from outside, but otherwise it’s a good unit and the LCD display is convenient.

I’m using the RCA outputs and not the built in amplifier because I already have the 400W Jensen unit. I don’t know whether the receiver’s amplifier draws the same current if no speakers are connected, so I’m a little concerned that it will mean less battery life overall, does anyone know? If it is drawing lots of current then in a future project I will install more speakers – we might as well use the juice rather than waste it!

To protect the receiver from water, I purchased a universal splash guard. It’s not water proof, but should be good enough to protect the unit from a brief dunking if the worst comes to the worst on the river. I had to install it on the back of the cooler due to lack of space on the front. The water resistant seal provided provides a convenient template for cutting into the cooler.

Having done this a few times now, the best technique I’ve found so far to remove the foam is to cut a grid pattern, then pry out the foam in cubes. Once you’ve got most of the foam out, you can simply cut through the inner panel from the outside. You need to make the hole on the inside about 3/4 of an inch larger on the top side to accommodate the lid of the splash guard. A sanding block comes in handy for smoothing and shaping the foam.

The receiver comes with a caddy that you’re supposed to fix into your car and then the receiver can slide into it easily. Push the caddy in from the font and then fold the metal flaps out to  grab the body of the splash guard. Given that we’re putting it into a cooler there’s not much support for the caddy, but fortunately we can use the splash guard itself to secure the whole apparatus to the cooler.

Don’t try to install the splash guard and caddy with the receiver already in it, it would be much more difficult.

This is the view from the inside. I used the nuts and bolts provided with the splash guard and washers to secure it to the panel. I marked and drilled small holes in the panel to slip the bolts through, and cut out foam to get at the nuts from the inside to hold them while I tightened. I would not do it the same way again – it was a major hassle fitting and tightening the nuts. Instead, I would buy longer 3″ bolts, long enough to pass through the entire wall of the cooler. Then it would be easy to just drill through the entire cooler wall and secure cleanly on the inside.

Now to wiring. I already have an amplifier hooked up, but if you’re using just the receiver for amplification then you can use the appropriate steps from my initial post on building an ice chest stereo to set up and wire the speakers, switch, and power supply. As I said before, there is no REM wire to control the amp, so we’ll need to continue to rely on the switch to power the system on and off. It’s important that we can turn off both the receiver and amp at the same time, because they’ll quickly draw down the battery if left on even with no music playing.

The instructions provided with the Pyle receiver were completely worthless – the only useful information is in the wiring diagram printed on the unit itself (see above). I have no idea what “Memory B+” means, but a little testing showed that this is the +12V power line that drives the unit. “Ignition Switch” is the signal line that triggers the unit to turn on. We need +12V on both these lines, but the real current is drawn on the confusingly named Memory B+ (can anyone explain what this means?) [Edit: Jacob F pointed out that Memory B+ is most likely to keep the clock and settings alive and that Ignition powers the receiver - he's almost certainly right]

The solution is to put the Ignition Memory B+ line on the same circuit as the REM switch. We also need to connect power, so I opted to crowd everything on the amp connectors, doubling up the +12V and GND. This looks messy, but is screwed down tight and secure.  Both the amp and the receiver are at +12V, but the switch simultaneously gates power to the receiver ignition and amp REM lines keeping them on or off together.

I also took the opportunity to secure the switch to the side of the cooler. I used a metal strip that happened to come with the receiver, with a nut and bolt and wood screws. I used 3 screws just to be sure because the plastic wall is flimsy.

And here is the finished result.

The Pyle receiver will accept SD and MCC flash RAM loaded with MP3s, and allows you to navigate through one level of folders. I was disappointed that it didn’t handle the track names better when browsing for music, but I usually just listen to playlists on the river anyway, occassionally skipping through tracks, so it isn’t a major problem.

Well that’s another afternoon project completed successfully! Next time I might add some smaller speakers to the front of the cooler to get more of a “surround sound” and take advantage of the additional amplification in the receiver. Comments and feedback are welcome as always!

I love to tube the river in the summer, but what’s a hot Texas day, beautiful countryside, and cold beer without good music?  It’s possible to buy floating or waterproof radios, most of which double as coolers, but I have never found one that actually generates serious volume. Worse, central Texas rivers are often in deep canyons, with little or no radio reception. I had seen people on the river with what appeared to be standard chest coolers that had been custom fitted for audio, but I couldn’t find anyone online that made them or even any information about how to do it. So, I embarked on a project to make my own Stereo Cooler, and what follows may be the first Internet Guide on how to build one. As a standard disclaimer, if you try to modify a cooler using this information, you agree that I’m not responsible for any injury – use at your own risk! [Edit: Note also that contrary to what some links into this article suggets, this is not a free-floating cooler; you need to put it in a tube to take it on the river]

Things you will need:

• A medium to large size cooler with (very important) a latch on the lid – $30 from Walmart or Academy Sports
• Amplifier installation kit 8 or 10 gauge – $35 from Best Buy, or $20 online
• Waterproof Marine Speakers – $60 online
• 2 channel car amplifier – $50 for 400W Jensen online
• Medium sized 12 volt battery, e.g. for a riding mower – $20 at Home Depot (try to get a sealed one)
• Ratchet tie downs for roof rack – I bought Good Year Tie Downs at Sam’s Club for $20, but probably any kind will do
• RCA to headphone adaptor or cable – You can buy these at Radio Shack or Best Buy; they cost a couple of bucks and look like this
• An electric switch – $3 from Radio Shack or Fry’s, don’t worry overly about A/C vs. DC or the voltage, it’s for a signal line only
• Tools: Exacto knife or box cutter, wire stripper, screwdrivers, pliers, hack saw blade

Note that I built my cooler to support an iPod, so I bought an Otterbox Waterproof Case at Amazon for $40, but you might decide to go without this added protection. Total cost, assuming you already have tools is $200.

First, you need to set up your amplifier. There are a variety of marine amplifiers available, but they’re build to withstand salty air and are not really waterproof.  I opted to go for a cheap car amplifier so that if it’s lost in the river it can be replaced cheaply. I’m not an expert on audio, but at the low end of audio you don’t really need to think overly hard about matching speakers omhs with amplifiers, etc. Audiophiles might look down their noses at the Jensen and Clarions I used, but they’re solid, cheap, and do the job. Believe me, they are a LOT louder than they appear for their size and price.

You can see the amp hookups below. +12V goes to the battery positive terminal, GND goes to negative. REM stands for REMote terminal, and typically connects to the “head unit” in your car that has the radio, CD player, controls etc. I chose not to use a head unit for this first project to keep things simple, but we need to be able to turn the amp on and off, so the way to do this is to connect the REM to +12V with a switch inbetween. My amplifier installation kit came with a thin REM wire, and the switch I bought has three settings, and I connected the REM wire to the middle position. This means that the amp is on when the switch is in the middle, but off when to either side, meaning that you don’t have to see the lights on the amp itself to know if it’s on or off. The skirt around the switch is just some heat shrink plastic, it’s probably optional. Note that you can click on the images to see more detail.

Once you have the amplifier hooked up and calibrated (read the amplifier instructions for this), it’s time to start cutting up the cooler. Conveniently, a CD works as a template. Draw the template and cut using a box cutter. It’s very important to not cut the holes too large,  they don’t need to be very big we can adjust them later.

Scraping out the foam insulation is messy, so have a dust buster handy. Once you have it scraped clean, cut the inside holes. These can be smaller, and rougher since they won’t be seen. I finished it with sand paper for a smoother look.

Check the speakers for fit, and use a knife or pen to mark the cooler surface where the screw holes on the speakers line up.

The speakers should come with panel clips that will help to securely clamp the speakers to the thin surface of the cooler. Use the clips as a template to cut out rectangular notches large enough so that the hole in the clip lines up with the marks you made on the cooler.

Now you can fit the speakers and secure with the screws provided. The Clarion speakers I purchased have a sticky, waterproof seal on the back, but you could put caulk around the edges for additional water protection if necessary.

Now we turn to the guts of the stereo and the power supply. It’s very important that everything inside the cooler be secured, especially the battery which is very heavy. If the cooler tips over in the water, a loose battery would break the latch and rip everything out of the cooler, and even if the cooler stayed closed it would probably damage the other contents – don’t take a chance on this. I thought about a variety of ways to secure the battery, then came up with the idea of strapping it to the wall of the cooler using a ratchet. This way, it will be tight but can also be removed easily for recharging or replacement. Ratchet tie downs usually come in two pieces with hooks, so we’ll need to modify it into a single loop.

Cut the strap completely off the ratchet, cut off the hook from the other strap, and cut it down to a length that can wrap around the battery and still leave 10 or 12 inches.

Now we have to fix the strap to the ratchet, I used my wifes machine to sew it together, but you could probably use a strong glue or staples if you don’t have a machine.

Cut two narrow slots in the side of the cooler, one above the other, and use a hacksaw blade or something similar to push the strap from the top to the bottom, making sure that the ratchet will be facing the right way up.

Pull it through the bottom slot with pliers, this is much easier than I thought it would be. Apply duct tape around the edges of the slots so that the thin wall of the cooler doesn’t tear.

Now position the battery and strap it in. If you’ve positioned the slots correctly, you shouldn’t have to worry about overtightening. This battery is going nowhere!

That’s the hard part done, now all we need to do it screw down the amplifier into the bottom of your cooler, or onto the side if you have a smaller cooler, and we’re pretty much done. Attach the amplifier switch to the side of the cooler using screws or strong tape and use plastic ties to tidy up the various cables.

The finished cooler. Maybe if I was doing it again I would get a different colored cooler or speaker covers to stand out a little, but its innocuous look belies the power that is inside. With the 400W Jensen and Clarions, the volume easily went so high as to be uncomfortable to the ears! I also found that the system had plenty of bass. It probably would be effective to use a 4-channel amp and add in a bridged sub-woofer, but something about the cavity of the cooler itself seems to generate a strong low end kick. It’s very noticable when closed vs. open.

The cooler is great for floating the river and outdoor parties, and although I’ve never had the battery run out on me yet I figure it has at least 8 hours of continuous play before needing a recharge – enough for a really long float! My only complaint about it is that the sound is very directional. If I were doing it again I’d maybe put one speaker on each side of the cooler, or perhaps even on the lid.

Finally and I hope I don’t even have to say this, but don’t put ice or liquids in the cooler! I’ll occassionally keep items that need to be kept dry in there, but the insides are not liquid-friendly so keep your drinks in a different cooler.

I hope you enjoyed this post, comments and questions are welcome!

[Edit: Please post comments and questions in the Stereo Cooler Forum, thanks!]

Keith