The DVD/TV/Radio that comes with the R-Pod 172 is attached to the underside of the upper kitchen cabinets and has two worthless internal speakers that were top of the line in about 1930.  They actually work fine as long as you’re standing near the speakers and the A/C is not running.  And the water isn’t running.  And the wind isn’t blowing.  And I didn’t have bean burritos for lunch.

The big problem for us is that we watch videos (Southpark, mostly) before going to sleep.  We sleep in the bunks and the first trip in the pod required use of the A/C all night long.  It was very hard to hear the videos.

As the primary geek in the family, my first mod was to find a way to get better speakers to allow us to fall quietly to sleep to the clear sounds of Cartman’s insults.  This actually isn’t all that difficult.  But you have to void the warranty.  Oh my.  How awful.

The breadth of work is summarized as follows:

1. Take the top off the box.
2. Cut the speaker wires
3. Attach a line level converter to the wires coming from the printed circuit board
4. Connect the level line converter RCA jacks to a bluetooth transmitter
5. Sync the transmitter up with a bluetooth speaker
6. Power on and kick back.

The following pictures provide a little more detail.

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