wireless home speakers

liven

anyone have a set of these they like?

I am looking for something to hook up to my home system and pump music through the house.

something that will not conflict with my wifi network

Price is only somewhat of a factor, can't speak thousands. But I have a reasonable budget.

Big plus would be an indoor/outdoor model or example of each.

Techexamers RULE!!!!

JDMurray

I've always been interested in the use of X10 communications to transmit audio through the electrical wires in your house. I keep waiting for X10 data transmission products to become more common, but with 802.11 wireless so popular, X10 seems not to be happening.

I found this add for X10 wireless speakers, but it's a 2.4GHz system and not an X10 powerline protocol system. It may be what you are looking for. And it will interfere with 802.11b/g wireless networks, but not 802.11a/n.

Ahriakin

Definitely go for units that use standard networking, not FM receivers as it'll cut your frequency range too much. For a single room the Squeezebox is a very good option, otherwise yup go with WiFi speakers.

RTmarc

Unfortunately I've never seen any that were worth mentioning; especially if you are wanting good quality sound.

JDMurray

RTmarc wrote:

Unfortunately I've never seen any that were worth mentioning; especially if you are wanting good quality sound.

Agreed, but for party and ambient music wireless is fine. No worse than 160Kbps MP3 files.

tiersten

JDMurray wrote:

I've always been interested in the use of X10 communications to transmit audio through the electrical wires in your house. I keep waiting for X10 data transmission products to become more common, but with 802.11 wireless so popular, X10 seems not to be happening.

Specifically X10 or any form of powerline comms? X10 is 60/50 bps and will never support it. X10 is slow enough already for the basic commands to turn on/off a switch. Some of the Homeplug devices could do it but you'd need to convert to and from ethernet.

JDMurray

tiersten wrote:

JDMurray wrote:

I've always been interested in the use of X10 communications to transmit audio through the electrical wires in your house. I keep waiting for X10 data transmission products to become more common, but with 802.11 wireless so popular, X10 seems not to be happening.

Specifically X10 or any form of powerline comms? X10 is 60/50 bps and will never support it. X10 is slow enough already for the basic commands to turn on/off a switch. Some of the Homeplug devices could do it but you'd need to convert to and from ethernet.

Have about the protocol they are using to transmit broadband over power lines? Might that be suitable for house wiring too? I only want 2Mbps data speeds at my electrical outlets. The converters are probably too expensive, or too EMI-noisy, for residential use.

tiersten

JDMurray wrote:

Have about the protocol they are using to transmit broadband over power lines? Might that be suitable for house wiring too? I only want 2Mbps data speeds at my electrical outlets. The converters are probably too expensive, or too EMI-noisy, for residential use.

You just need HomePlug and you can buy the adapters from Netgear, D-Link and a bunch of others. The initial standard was 11mbps then it went to 85mbps and now its 200mbps.

Mains plug on one end and an ethernet socket on the other. In theory they're encrypted so your neighbour can't see your traffic. You'll have signal issues if your house is on multiple phases or you've got devices with big chunky motors like aircon or washing machines.

JDMurray

tiersten wrote:

You'll have signal issues if your house is on multiple phases or you've got devices with big chunky motors like aircon or washing machines.

Actually, you'll have issues if anyone on your lines has noisy electrical motors. I once serviced a restaurant where the POS computers would mysteriously die a few months after they were installed. Replacing the motherboard was the only way to repair them. We suspected the refrigerator compressors at the restaurant, but they had had them for years working with the POS units. Adding a UPS with line filtering to each POS fixed the problem. We found out from the restaurant a year later that new electrical equipment installed in a nearby auto dealership was polluting the electrical lines and had been zapping computers all over the neighborhood.

The possible backflow of EMI on to the electrical grid from old or defective electrical devices makes me want to install a big line filter at my breaker box, or at least an EMI monitor. Before installing any HomePlug units, I need to find a device that monitors voltage, current, and line noise and reports the data via USB like a UPS and the Kill-A-Watt boxes do.

RTmarc

EMI would definitely be something I would worry about especially if you are passing sensitive information.