SparkFun Forums

[TopPot14]

Hello people! Trying to connect 2, old speakers, wirelessly in my surround stereo. Buy a tx and 2 rx's. Connect tx to source audio and connect the rx to each respective speaker, just across the room on the back wall. Whoops? Must plug power into both rx. with a wire running down the wall. Now, technically, does this mean that I now have a wireless system running not a, no wire, system. Of course I thought I was buying a, no wire, system. I was confused with the term, wireless, thinking it meant, no wires.
Please help me now. Can we make a, no wire, audio rx system. No problem with the tx, because it doesn't need to be, no wire. eg. your tiny solar panel connected to your tiny lithium battery? Could the ambient light in the room, trickle charge the battery, which in turn would power the rx. Do we now have to patent the term, NO WIRE? Kind of has a ring to it.
Yours truly, TopPot14

[stevech]

battery recharged via ambient light: no.
speaker needs watts of sound. If audio goes from transmitter to receiver wirelessly, an amp is needed and that plugs in near the speaker. Unless the speaker has a built-in amp and plugs into wall.

No free lunch!

[TopPot14]

OK! Thx! Now what? I am not a programmer. I'm the idea guy. My solar calculator runs fine with ambient light. What I mean by ambient light is, sunlight splaying into my studio, plus, electric lights in the room. won't that light power the battery that will in turn power the speaker. After all the rx already has a battery that is charged from wall circuit power. And that power from the wall is stepped down, to trickle charge the rx's battery. Are u saying that your mini solar panel would not be equal to the, stepped down wall wart. eg. what kind of light powers your mini solar panel. Duh, only solar? There is some solar in my room everyday. Not direct sunlight. Electric lights over head certainly power my calculator.
Remember, my tx is plugged into the wall. My sound is plugged into the tx. It sends audio to my 2 rear speakers that each have an rx, that is hooked into the speaker with a very short patch cable. each rx is plugged into the wall for power. That is my problem, The wires, charging the rx, running down the wall. I would like to look at those 2 speakers and nothing else. Wireless means, fewer wires, not no wires. I like most consumers r struggling with their learning curves. How do we get those speakers powered with no wires? I suspect that with all of your resources(electronic parts,programmers,this forum) this problem can b solved. Possibly a no wire project? There must b one going already. Have I not found them here? Am I guilty of poor research. Hope not.

[stevech]

run the wires inside the drywall, of course.

Solar powered calculator takes less than a tiny fraction of a watt. Speakers take many watts.

[TopPot14]

Well, wired speakers r not an option here. I know I'm drifting a lil off topic, because I'm actually discussing, no wire connections. Wired at the tx is fine. It's just those 2 speakers across the room that need a no wire solution to the rx's. I'm snooping up this sight to try and solve this problem. Looking for someone to help solve it. Someone with some real knowledge as to what all of these groovy lil parts(shields etc.) do. If we can solve this problem, we'd have to patent the results.

[cgull]

Have you looked into solar panels to get an idea how much energy per square foot they generate in full sun vs. ambient light? Also what size speaker are you talking about? I assume you're looking for a very small speaker.

Having an idea is the first step. Now you need to define the parameters for how long you want the speaker to be playing in a day on average and how loud you want it to play. Then you can calculate the energy you would need to power the speaker, multiply it by the number of hours per day you want to run it to come up with a rough idea of the size of battery you will need. Don't forget to add an overhead to the battery b/c they don't like to be drained all the way. Then you need to size your solar panel based on what you find when you research how much energy a particular solar panel generates in ambient light.

[lyndon]

Say your speaker needs 10 watts of power to run. You want to get that wirelessly from ambient light, so that means you need at least (10 watts x some efficiency factor) of light available to power it from whatever amount of square footage you have available. You could extract the 10W from a high efficiency (30% efficient) 30W LED lightbulb, but you would have to completely cover the bulb in solar cells. Your speakers would get power, but now the room's dark.

So now what? Well you could cover an entire wall with solar cells to collect the ambient light that falls on the wall, but if you're going to that extent, it's probably easier to just run a power cord to the speaker.

Lasers have extremely high power density, so you could conceivably laser power the speaker. And, as a bonus, the laser could also carry the audio signal! However, a 10W laser will slice your head off if you cross the beam, so that's probably not feasible. Not to mention that by this point, the solution cost is likely well into the 5 figures. Those better be really nice speakers you're using!

This works with a calculator because, as was said earlier, a calculator uses orders of magnitude less power than even a tiny speaker. A calculator can run for years off a tiny watch battery. A speaker would be dead in a second.