Wrap-It-Up Box
(If you don't know what a Wrap It Up Box is, here's the skit: Chappelle's Show on Comedy Central
A while ago, my brother asked me to build him a Wrap It Up Box from the Chappelle's Show skit for a Best Man's Speech he had to give at his buddy's wedding. Seemed like a simple enough project and a quick search showed that it had already been done a few times. I was going to follow along with this one, Spikenzie Labs Wrap It Up Box, but looking over the process, I figured I could do it a lot cheaper and easier.
Originally, I was going to still make an Arduino the heart of it and have a single button control the lights and sound. After playing around with a few different pieces, I didn't feel like that method was worth it in terms of cost and reliability when the same effect could be done with cheap, off-the-shelf parts that seemed pretty foolproof. Finding the MP3 player decoder board for $7 clinched it for me.
Here's the Bill of Materials:
- Baltic birch 4mm plywood (for the box)
- Scrap wood (for the inner corners and for spacing the electronics on the inside)
- MP3 Decoder and Amplifier board (I bought this SMAKN one at Amazon but the same board is sold under different brand names elsewhere.)
- 4 ohm / 3 Watt speaker (I used one I already had but these would probably do: 3W Speakers)
- Battery powered LED flashing Christmas lights
- USB battery pack (I had an old one I wanted an excuse to replace)
- Toggle switch
- USB cable with switch
Assembly was pretty straight-forward. I estimated dimensions from the sketch and then scaled it down a little bit to be easier to conceal (and not give away the joke too early). Holes were drilled in the front to let the sound out.
More info on the MP3 board and a datasheet here: MP3 board
