Ultra-Low Power Radio Transceiver Enables Truly Wireless Earbuds 110
First time accepted submitter irl_4795 writes At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona NXP Semiconductors will demonstrate Near Field Magnetic Induction technology in a truly wireless earbud including wireless audio streaming from ear to ear. From the article: "The wireless technology being used to enable truly wireless earbuds is based on Near Field Magnetic Induction (NFMI). NFMI features important properties such as ultra-low power consumption and the ability to create a very reliable network in and around the human body, with both high-quality audio and data streaming supported over small distances. An additional integration advantage is also that it requires few external components. NFMI is a short range technology and as such also creates a private network, making it is much less susceptible to interference than 2.4 GHz transceivers.
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A lot of people? Is this a "who has a TV, anyway" kind of question meant to sound superior or a serious question?
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They only cause hearing damage at high volume levels. A lot of earbuds have good bass reproduction. It's true, though, that they aren't sanitary and that they can irritate the ear and cause earwax buildup/blockage (the reason I don't use them).
Re:WTF (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, you don't seem like the original poster, but I think you answered my question.
Earbuds:
1. Fit in a pocket
2. Are more than adequate for most pop music produced in the last 75 years.
3. Are more than adequate for most mobile listening environments.
4. Are more than adequate for podcasts.
5. Can passively cancel ambient noise without looking like Princess Leia.
6. Might, depending on personal preference, be more comfortable.
7. More amenable to wearing during physical activity.
8. Starting cost is around $1.
But yes, they completely suck for all purposes.
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I shouldn't need to expand upon point 6, but you seem to need it:
6. Might, depending on personal preference, be more comfortable. Or, might not.
I hope that was helpful. This message brought to you by the letter "A".
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Didn't you mean "Wednesday was when Willy Waterloo was wetly washing Warren Wiggins who WAS washing Waldo Woo while wildebeests wandered widely"?
rgb
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It's a direct rip from Dr. Seuss's "The ABC Book", so I'm not authorized to change it :)
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5. Can passively cancel ambient noise without looking like Princess Leia.
Aaaand, that's where you lost my attention.
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But I had three more points! Oh, drat.
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This is where image support would make this place so awesome:
http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/dZqAEV0... [ytimg.com]
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not sanitary
They are as sanitary as the wearer. If yours are filthy, perhaps you should pay more attention to your personal hygiene.
crappy sound
Mine sound better than most people's studio style headsets.
fall out of ear
There is a reason they come with multiple sized tips.
no bass
Again, mine have more bass than most people's studio style headsets.
no soundstage
Running out of excuses? You're repeating yourself. This is exactly the same thing as your whine about sound quality and/or lack of bass. Yet again, my earbuds sound better than most people's studio style headsets
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Earbuds, and their users could be terrorists! There is probably encryption over RF and indicates the true enemy; (privacy), might be hard at work here. They need to contact the NSA for top level review before marketing this product to have a back door installed. Might be a better idea to go back to the '70's "Boombox" and propeller based fly by wire aircraft too.
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I've heard that earbuds are also responsible for global warming.
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Yes! Global warming is directly responsible for eco terrorists!
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How about every female bus rider who doesn't want to be spoken to and doesn't want to mess up their hair...
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Male bus riders on the other hand love being spoken to and messing up their hair.
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People who don't care about music quality. Or those of us that need a set that packs up easily in the work bag and does not take up space.
I have listened to $300 earbuds and they suck compared to even a $40.00 set of real cans, It's why the junky "beats" headphones became popular, a lot of people tried them and said "wow these are amazing" compared to earbuds.
One advantage of earbuds is that they do not do any real noise isolation so you can hear when a bus is about to squish you. Good headphones will ke
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I've auditioned some pretty amazing earbuds. Admittedly, they don't stand up to something like Sony Professional headphones, but there are some good ones, superior to numerous trashy and even mid-range headphones.
With proper fit (referring generally to tip size) earbuds will give a LOT of acoustic isolation, enough to make them really dangerous if walking or jogging in any kind of traffic. I've never gotten headphones to isolate as close to 100% as properly fit, well-designed earbuds.
Of course, earbuds have
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I've auditioned some pretty amazing earbuds.
As opposed to "tried"?
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"Auditioned" implies he also had sex with the candidates.
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No, "auditioned". You can "try" a pair of earbuds by sticking them in your ear. You "Audition" earbuds by ensuring they fit properly, then using them to listen to several pieces of music you are familiar with, and generating a (personal, subjective) rating for them.
It's the difference between sitting in a car and going for a test-drive.
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This is how audiophiles talk. If you have one as a friend, it is best for everyone if you simply never talk about music.
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Maybe you think so. But my remarks were pretty straightforward. Especially compared to true audiophile nonsense, the kind where the listener thinks he can hear the purported acoustic qualities of Monster Cable.
I said that fit is important for isolation. I said that headphones sound more open. I said that some earbuds are decent.
Is that pretentious? Or is it that I used the word "audition" --- which is the right word, but whatever?
Re: WTF (Score:2)
I "try" a new bread by ingesting a loaf of it. It doesn't get any more intimate than that!
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Ah, but you "audition" a brand new loaf of bread by tenderly squeezing it, then smelling its subtle aromas, then becoming physically intimate with it.
Sam
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It's the difference between sitting in a car and going for a test-drive.
Don't you mean going for an "audition" in the car?
You really don't see why this sounds pretentious? Probably everyone here has test-driven a car. Even a crappy car costs more than the most expensive headphones. Headphones - little speakers that go on your head. You test them. They can only do one thing, so when you say you tested them, it is unambiguous. "Audition" is some marketer's invention, and your use of it can sound either pretentious or it can make you sound gullible. It's definitely not the appropr
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I do. Are you one of those mongoloids who'd wear studio style headphones to the gym?
The wireless is even better -- finding a set of bluetooth headphones that are a) comfortable b) water proof/resistant is a monumental challenge. Something like this negates the need for a bulky(ish) battery, decreasing the weight -- thus making them more comfortable and smaller.
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I have a pair of the Plantronics Backbeat Go 2. For a $70 bluetooth set, they are more than adequate. I have used them daily for nearly a year with no major problems.
Battery life is approximately 4-5 hours for phone conversations; slightly less with louder and/or bass-heavy music. Recharge time is slower than I'd like (about 0.5x discharge time), but they're not bulky, are fully flexible (no hard parts between the buds), and very comfortable in my ears. I wear them around my neck constantly so there's no
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i had a pair of those as well, the sound was good, battery good, water proof status - excellent. But man, they were uncomfortable. I tried all 3 of the included ear buds, and they'd either fall out on a whim, or make my ears so sore I couldn't wear them again for a week. Finally gave up on them and went back to my non-water proof Motorola 'Buds' (with predictable, shorted out results.)
Gave the plantronics to my sister, who has no such issues with the fit; so perhaps I was just unlucky.
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Me. I love earbuds. I even love the old fashioned kind that sit outside the ear canal. I've found some that have remarkable sound and they're a little expensive but man are they good.
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Beep beep.
Re:Health risks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Care to show any credible studies that show this to be a problem?
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Care to show any credible studies that show this to be a problem?
By "this" I assume we are both referring to near-field RF radiation. According to credible sources, there is insufficient evidence currently to state that it either is or is not a problem, but one consensus of experts agree that mobile phone radiation is worthy of further exploration as a possible risk:
"The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a global authority on cancer, recently concluded that radiation from mobile phones is a ‘possible’ head cancer risk. However, scientific op
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Yet another form of near-field radiation being transmitted across the brain.
Not to seem paranoid.
I'm afraid you failed.
This isn't really the right website to start talking about 'harmful' rf radiation without any sort of proof.
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Or you're being paid by the annoying-headphone-wire-lobby to keep sales from dropping. Or the deleterious health effects caused by headphone wires are still being suppressed for their huge impending class action suit. Wow, this is easy...
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Stick to the physics: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c... [yourlogicalfallacyis.com]
If you have a specific concern, tell us.
Otherwise I think the radio stations that have been pumping out megawatts for over a century kinda trump a couple of milliwatts over less than half a meter.
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I think the radio stations that have been pumping out megawatts for over a century kinda trump a couple of milliwatts over less than half a meter.
To play devil's advocate, not saying either is harmful, but your comparison is flawed.
Familiar with the inverse square law? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"The density of flux lines is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source because the surface area of a sphere increases with the square of the radius. Thus the strength of the field is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source."
Regarding an electromagnetic field, its strength is affected linearly by s
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It's still orders of magnitude, both in received power and amount of time the big transmitters have been around for.
And yes frequency plays a part too, but this article doesn't specify any frequency so even if some frequencies were bad, you can't say this one is bad.
Plus this one is induction not RF so it's different again.
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I had to take a bus a few weeks ago because of the weather and there are a whole lot of mutants out there. A couple of them even looked like they could have been Slashdot readers.
RF radiation and high-fructose corn syrup are as good an explanation as any.
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So unless proof that something is specifically harmful is supplied, everything is assumed perfectly safe?
In the face of decades of evidence of perfect safety, yes.
Re:Health risks? (Score:5, Insightful)
No. There have been plenty of studies on the effects of non-ionizing radiation on health [wikipedia.org], and none of the realistic, unbiased ones have yielded any evidence of harm, so it remains a purely theoretical possibility. Furthermore, radiation power densities are going down (TFA is a shining example).
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From your own quote:
Long-term exposure to high-levels of microwaves [...]
So don't picnic every Sunday in front of any radars and you'll be fine.
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This isn't really the right website to start talking about 'harmful' rf radiation without any sort of proof.
Proof exists only in mathematics. Science relies on evidence.
The limited evidence so far produced has left experts divided:
http://www.eea.europa.eu/highl... [europa.eu]
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... [arstechnica.com]
"One reason scientists disagree is because the mechanisms by which the radiations from mobile phones could cause cancer are not yet understood. However, waiting for that knowledge could take decades: the biological mechanisms connecting tobacco smoke and cancer are still not fully understood, some 60 years after the first
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The experts are absolutely NOT divided, and your own post illustrates the case nicely.
When health studies were done on Smoking and Cancer, the adverse relationship quickly became evident.
But studies of the relationship between RF Exposure and Cancer has consistently gone the other way.
In spite of hundreds of detailed tests over many decades, no adverse relationship has ever been detected.
There have been once-off results, but each time they were independently re-tested, the effect vanished.
There is now a vas
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"Ultra low power" but also ultra short distances.
I agree with you that power lines are a non-issue, but those would create a less powerful field on your brain than a tiny transmitter inside your ear/skull. See inverse square law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I could not conclude these earbuds are harmful, but since the health effects of mobile phones continue to be researched by experts, I wouldn't dismiss the possibility. I guess bluetooth is probably much stronger though.
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Oh, and sorry 'bout ur mum.
In the future (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll have to bend down and look for my earbud 'cause the cable's gone....
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That's sort of what I was thinking. My spouse keeps having to replace her earbuds, so we get cheaper and cheaper ones all the time, because the new kitten likes to destroy the wires. I was thinking 'bluetooth earbuds' but the problem there is that she can't even keep track of the TV remote, and bluetooth earbuds are even smaller.
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Doesn't this pave the way to implanted headphones?
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Not actually batteryless (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently it uses 1.5mW at 1V.
You can get batteryless radios. Crystal radios (which don't necessarily contain a crystal) get all their power from the radio signal, and they're scarily simple. During the second world war foxhole radios were built out of a razor blade, a pencil, some wire and a set of headphones (instructions: http://www.bizarrelabs.com/fox... [bizarrelabs.com]) Prisoner of war radios used coal
AFAIK, however, the much lower energy VHF signals for FM isn't capable of running an FM decoder, and probably not an earpiece either.
I wonder if a modern crystal earpiece could usefully pick up low-power AM transmissions from a cellphone in your pocket without spamming everyone around you with radio waves?
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For what it's worth a FM Crystal set on VHF is most definitely possible.
(do a search on "FM Crystal Radio", there are many articles).
And of course a Crystal Set can pick up AM signals from a cell phone. It's trivially easy.
The trick of course is the Inverse Square of distance Law. When you are close, the signals are so much stronger.
And in the near-field the relationship is Inverse Cubed which makes it even easier.
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Why is your cell phone sending AM signals?
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Because if the Cell Phone didn't "Leak" it wouldn't work at all.
This "leaking" as you call it, is the Cell phone actually transmitting useful Radio Energy.
And in the case of a GSM phone signal, the RF envelope is heavily Amplitude Modulated.
The problem is that cheap electronic junk has poor "Radio Immunity" causing it to act as a radio receiver when it should not.
That's the way that GSM phines operate (Score:2)
Because that's the way that GSM phones operate.
In order to achieve Full Duplex operation, it receives for half the time, then transmissions for half the time.
These transmit data bursts result in a deeply Amplitude modulated RF envelope.
This is why you hear Brrrp, Brrrp when you put your GSM phone near a pair of cheap loudspeakers.
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I totally didn't know that! That's awesome!
Here's one I found with four components: http://solomonsmusic.net/FM_Cr... [solomonsmusic.net]
I am curious how that tiny antenna can produce enough energy to drive even a crystal earpiece. Most crystal radios need huge antennae, don't they? And from the writeup it looks like the FM decoding more or less happens by accident as a side effect of signal interference.
If this really works, I reckon it should be possible to build a miniaturised FM crystal set into a pair of headphones.
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I've wondered about the legality of crystal radios in the past. People who live near transmitters or overhead power lines have tried to harvest some of that power in the past, and been threatened with various forms of legal redress. Theft, interference, all sorts of stuff.
On the other hand crystal radios are apparently fine. Installing a big metal fence that blocks your neighbour's mobile phone and FM radio reception is fine (as long as it doesn't spoil the view). The neighbours also knew when I was playing
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I'd be really curious to find out for sure where that TV antenna based energy harvesting circuit is actually harvesting the energy from. Power levels that low can be created through static charge, or even the difference between two ground points a few meters away from each other (e.g. if the antenna is on the roof and the clock is on your workbench).
Have you tried putting it inside a large faraday cage and seeing if the energy levels remain the same?
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Gonna lose it in no-time (Score:2)
I'm happy that this exists, but since my earphones fall out relatively often (ie more than never) I think this might be doomed just because it's not OK to easily lose your very expensive electronic device. Wire to carry signal might be old fashioned, but it also has a job as a tether.
meanwhile, you're listening to my music (Score:2)
Power source? (Score:1)
These may be ultra low power but they still require a power source either wireless or need to be charged. Aside of the power needed to transmit stereo audio data surely the power of moving the tiny speaker diaphragms is significant enough. Especially if you like some music loud or bass heavy.
I would be a fan of the ear bud type design although it's hard enough to get ones these days that sound well. The ones available in the mid 1990s seemed better to me.
Wireless charging would concern me a little if beamed
I'm patenting completely wireless.... (Score:1)
earplug eye microphone projectors.... No wait! :(
NSA has them allready
Not entirely new... (Score:2)
This kind of tech has existed for a while; it's primarily used in surveillance gear, so that the earphones being worn by someone working in the field can't be seen. The downside of the current state-of-the-art, however, is that the wearer needs to have the induction coil under their clothing, around their neck. I'm really curious how this would work in stereo, personally, as all the solutions I've seen are only mono by requirement; there's no easy way to partition the field into two segments, to separate
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Step 1. Stream audio to left earbud with Bluetooth.
Step 2. Stream audio from left to right earbud with this technology.
Step 3. Mass production.
Step 4. Market.
Step 5. Sell
Step 6. Profit.
I don't know why they just make a new sub protocol under Bluetooth that supports two single channel audio connections. This may be because I don't know much about the details of Bluetooth
From ear to ear? (Score:2)
including wireless audio streaming from ear to ear
So I can hear what my left ear sounds like with my right ear?
That might get confusing...
The future of this technology? (Score:2)
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