Profoto Acute Speaker

A friend of mine, who's also a photographer, offered me a couple of broken Profoto Acute strobe packs a few months ago on the condition I do something cool with them. The packs were beyond repair ¹ so all the (formerly) working parts would need to be removed, leaving a lot of space for, well, anything. While brainstorming the idea of turning them into a pair of speakers came up and was an obvious fit.

The first task was removing all the electronics. A strobe pack is basically just a box of giant capacitors with some support electronics. The Acute packs have some very clicky dials and switches which I harvested for future use². After about two pins (of 13) on the first dial (of three) I gave up and finally ordered a simple desoldering iron, which I should have done years ago.

The ports for the heads are quite deep, so I replaced them with custom 3D printed covers which match the dimensions. The electronics for the project are pretty simple: a little Bluetooth amp board, battery charger, and a couple voltage regulators. I wired the power and LED into the circuit to they're functional, simply controlling whether the amp board is powered.

The whole project was done with as many components I already had in drawers as possible to help avoid scope creep, otherwise it would still be sitting on my workbench. That being said, I do have a second pack to play with, and I'd like to increase the scope for round two.

I would be nice to incorporate as many of the dials and switches as possible. Using the power control for volume is an obvious choice. The modeling lamp controls and power distribution I'm not sure, E.Q. maybe? In either case I'll need to design a custom PCB for them and find a more full-featured amp.

In the meantime here's a video demonstrating the remarkable audio quality: