The intent of the project was always to spend as little money as possible. As such, many of the parts have been scammed out of friends' stockpiles of old car parts and assorted electronics junk.

Key scammed parts include:

• The Chinese boat amp at the heart of the project - This is normally a $5 piece of junk from Amazon or eBay, but I managed to get one of these for free from a friend who was cleaning out his storage unit. That's what started this whole mess.
• The low-profile, fanless PC ATX PSU that powers everything was pulled from a pile of junk destined for electronics recycling at my office.
• All wiring comes from junkyard cars with expensive-looking aftermarket stereo installs, and was free (the you-pull-it junkyard I use doesn't bother charging for a meter of speaker wire if you're already there for more expensive parts).
• The speakers come from friends who do expensive-looking aftermarket stereo installs, and were free. And they sound like it.
• The plastic Skil toolbox which houses the unit was on Canadian Tire sale and was originally bought for a different project. Let's say it was free.
• The Bluetooth speaker was on post-Christmas close-out sale at Best Buy for $5 and represents the only real money I've spent. Bonus: it has line-in, preserving the original implementation of the unit.
  • It also has a USB-rechargeable battery, the recharge port for which is hard wired into the PC ATX PSU. The battery is still there, but obviously the speaker is no longer fully cordless.
• The first-gen Airport Express that used to power this was scrapped because the power supply had failed. After a little creative wiring, it ran off the PC ATX PSU just fine. It's remarkable that I haven't burned my house down yet.
• I have two free Atmel microcontrollers that came in bags of leftover electronics parts from friends cleaning out their apartments; an atmega328p and an atmega168. Since I don't have any sockets or a programmer to use with them, these might be fairly limited in their applications.
• I paid actual money for solder and butt connectors. But I didn't like doing it.