Monday, November 11, 2013

poor lad's quick and dirty hack on wireless headphones that uses bluetooth

Since a long time ago, I really wanted to be liberated from my desk. Liberated, free from the shackles that "wired" me down to the computer table.

the wired headphones is such an inconvenience on my desk. I have 1 phablet, 1 laptop, 2 desktop that require some attention. Most of the time. I would plug in(and out) my headphones into the ones that needed my attention. My smarty-pants friend suggested getting one headphones for each of my toys. How cost effective.

Since all my toys came with bluetooth, My plan was to stream audio via bluetooth from the computer that needed my attention at the mouse click. A quick round up in Sim Lim Square, to my horror, wireless headphones come at a price range of S$79 to S$199. The lower end model use Infra-Red, the higher end model uses 2.4Ghz bandwidth (not necessary bluetooth). I am tempted to get the cheapest wireless headphones, but a few questions kept me ponder. I wonder how much data can be carry over the Infra-Red spectrum in this application? Can I achieve a minimum of 44.1KHz audio quality over the spectrum? Do I need to be in the LOS (Line Of Sight) of the Infra-Red? What happens if I move away from the transmitting end of the Infra Red (e.g go behind the base), will I suffer from signal loss? Nothing much can be gleam from the box, nor the shop keeper offer some help. The bugger is only interested to shove the most expensive model down my throat. Hey, Do I look like a rich kid do you?!

Being the cheapskate, I could have deconstruct the wireless headphones to smaller components. I would need a wireless receiver, and a headphone. The wireless receiver, it can be a bluetooth receiver with audio output. This category of product is very popular and widely available on Internet. A quick lookup on the popular website, the price ranges from U$ 6.20 to U$12.98. Being the sucker that can't wait, I paid S$30 for the  Wireless Bluetooth audio receiver Stereo HiFi A2DP Stereo Audio Dongle Adapter Connector 3.5mm Receiver at Sim Lim Square. Initially I saw one of the products was pasted with a S$18 price tag. Happily I went to the cashier. To my dismay at the cashier, the shop keeper quoted me S$36 and insisted that there was a mistake in pasting the price sticker. tough luck.

I got my S$12 headphones from cash coverters, the friendly surplus shop that is native to Singapore. 

To setup a bluetooth device is a no brainer. First turn on the bluetooth device. On windows 7, select the blue tooth icon, then scan and select the intended bluetooth device. Follow the onscreen instructions to complete installation.

Next, "combine" the bluetooth device and headphone. This is the tricky part, because it requires some hand skills and design skills to make it look BEAUTIFUL.
 
Nonetheless, the nett effect of saving money (S$199-$30-$12=S$157) is indispensable. saved S$157=> like a BOSS !















1 comment:

leela said...

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