What is the easiest, cheapest low-fi method to distribute internet radio throughout the home. My home is your typical 4 floor long and narrow building. The transmitter will be located on the third floor.
I was thinking of using a baby monitor (which we could also use to monitor our baby), a child’s 49 Mhz walkie talkie or building a low power am-xmitter available at the hobby shops.
I’m primarilly interested in monophonic sound as I usually listen to talk or information stations and I’ll be listening while doing the endless chore of mopping, and dusting.
Additional question. Regarding the home built am transmitter (X-mitter). The US has a clause that allows the use of a home built device less than 50mw. Does Taiwan have the same clause? I assume so, since these kits are available in the educational electronic stores.
RF is “radio frequency”. Most of the popular networking protocols out there use part of the radio spectrum (CBs, electronic toys, baby monitors, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cell phones, etc.).
What I have done is set up a wireless network accessable through out my house - reception is good on all floors except the fourth where I will install in the near future a wireless bridge. In my office I have set up a mp3 server (could easily be internet radio as well) which streams music to all the clients (laptops) throughout my house. Maybe you could try something similar.
Ideally I would like to purchase a number of SLIMP3 devices for installation through out the house. Not an entirely cheap solution though.
I love the idea of the wireless networking, but my wife may think me strange carying around the mop bucket and the lap top.
Seriously… I will eventually use the wireless networking idea for our first floor or second floors as those are the floors I’ll use for our business.
I’m really happy that the wireless node is fast enough to serve audio, thanks for that tip. Please share any tips and problems you’ve had especially with live audio.
I’ve tested wireless headphone in the store and read reviews in consumer magazines. They don’t really function well too far away from the transmitter.
I’m not looking for hi-fi. Just something I can place down on the floor, such as a baby monitor or cheap wireless mike or something that I can clip to my belt like transistor radio or walkie talkie. (Or how about those old carrier current intercoms you could pick up at Radio Shack in the states. Do they sell them in Taiwan?)
If anyone has these devices about the house, could you give them a test. I don’t have anyone of these devices yet and, since I’ve been married my electronic experimentation budget has been greatly curtailed…
Cheap, practical and readilly available has to be my motto…
Thanks for the help
See if you can find a FM transmitter which, ahem, happens to work in the radio band. Used to build one myself long time ago and ran a pirate station in my neighbourhood (well, for testing at least).
Then you just need a normal tuner to pick up the signal …
Thanks for all your help… I liked Rascal’s idea best. I used to build low power transmitters in the states for fun. I’m not sure of the legalities though. In the USA you absolutely can build transmitters around fifty milli watts. What about Taiwan?
Chodofu… your idea is great but you didn’t get the key point… as the Big Bopper of the 1950’s says, “I ain’t got no money honey…” I
I simply use iTunes on the Mac which can access my MP3 library over the wireless 802.11g network I have set up. You could do the same thing with a PC. Will be even easier when the iTunes Windows version comes out later this year. 802.11g is 57Mbps, I think, way enough to serve CD-quality music over the air.
A second, hobbist method would be to research how to hard-wire a house/business with FireWire (IEEE 1394). I’d guess you’d need FireWire/iLink (Sony’s brand name) aware devices. But in the future, FireWire will probably be the way to network a house with multimedia data, since wireless is not enough for HDTV data. A FireWire network could serve all data needs, from tranmitting TV, audio, home security and computer data … but this is a point of interest. I would stick to 802.11g at the moment. Make sure you set that up, because 802.11b is much slower and 802.11g is reverse compatilb with 802.11b networks. I use the Apple AirPort Extreme base station.
