The idea of the STRØM 1.0 speaker first came to life in December 2021, when DDC was looking for participants to the next round of open source hardware demonstrators projects.

Over the course of this Open!Next demonstrator project - running throughout the first half of 2022 - we managed to create a working prototype. A prototype capable of both Bluetooth and Wifi playback, and with a very capable sound.

Working on prototype

Some of the main obsticles we needed to validate, as part of this demonstrator, were to ensure that it is in fact possible - with open source tech - to create a small form factor speaker with large sound. Meaning that we needed a way to EQ the speakers drivers digitally and at the same time being able to continuously palyback audio with this EQ in place.

With a hardware platform based on the ESP32 we found that there was enough resources to handle this, so we started tuning the drivers in an early test cabinet. Resulting in a working, but rather crude looking, speaker.

This promted the need for a more polished cabinet. As we also needed to validate that it was in fact possible to realise the designed cabinet in sufficient form and finish.

The resulting cabinet can be observed below.

Next steps

With this prototype we have proven that this type of speaker is possible and that it even sounds pretty well. So a great outcome of the demonstrator project.

Following this prototyping phase are a betatesting phase wich will by further validate the functionality of the product as well as providing invaluable feedback from real world tests in the wild.

During the wall of 2022 we will be preparing this beta testing phase.