# Multimedia coffee table...



## Drzero328 (Apr 5, 2012)

Hello,
I'm new to this forum, stumbled upon it doing research on a project I'm trying to puzzle out : P

What I had in mind was modding a coffee table to have usb hubs on all 4 sides, so that people can charge their phones, attach external memory, etc. There would ideally be a pc inside the table running some sport of remote desktop application that I could control via a modern tablet, which I already have. The goal is to stream media to my xbox, ps3 etc. wirelessly. Now, the biggest thing I'm trying to figure out is the speakers... My original idea was just to mount car speakers on the walls of the table, the more I look into that though the more uncertain I am that that would be the best option, is there a better way to do this? Is it possible to set up an actual car stereo to these speakers and mount it in the table also? I like the idea of that because it would give me an easily accessible cd drive, and I like bluetooth radios to stream music from phones. would I be able to also play sound from the computer through these speakers and have oi sound decent if I did the radio thing?

Sorry about the poor grammar... Just switched to an android phone and boy do I miss my iphone lol, haven't got the hang of this yet.
If anyone had questions just ask and thanks in advance for any help anyone us able to provide!


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## Mussels (Apr 5, 2012)

USB hubs often dont charge modern smartphones. especially apple products, as they require far more power than a standard USB port provides (needs 2.1A, vs the 0.5A most hubs provide)


wireless media streaming sucks pretty bad, you're going to need wifi N 300Mb, as well as one hell of a CPU to do the live encoding (my hex core gets some really high usage numbers just streaming one HD file to my PS3).


why not just get a standard USB port media player, and skip the extras? it seems like a fancy setup that would only work in specific situations, and thus not get used at all.


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## scaminatrix (Apr 6, 2012)

Mussles is a guru in this area, I'd take his advice and grab a USB Media Player and build some mains plugs into the table to charge phones etc. from. 
As for audio - if you want to go the car amp and speaker route; I'd mount some 6x9" car speakers on the sides of the table, but I'd mount them with the cones facing inwards so I could cover the outside of the table so you can't see the magnet or spill anything over it.

I had a table like this a few years ago:






The top lifts up, you could easy mount a car amp on the underside of the lifty-bit and power points on the inside of the legs. A crazy table like this might make for a nice canvas to start on. Possibilities are endless when you start off with a decent table and good tools


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