Comments on: Hack a walkie talkie for music

By: James

James — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:17:27 +0000

Please do not use FRS, “CB”, GMRS, MURS or any other service for transmitting music. Try instead to use a Part 15 frequency (USA FCC rules) so you do not interfere with others that are properly using the frequencies.

By: stewart

stewart — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 22:08:00 +0000

Are the majority of the above postees roughly at about the same mentality, ease of amusement, etc. As beavis and butthead? Not the eletist and a**holes ofcourse. I enjoyed their remarks and attitudes way more than any hack content or lack thereof. Honorable mention though to the person with the balls to come out of left field with the “jesus h f**king christ” vernacular. That woke me up. Nice segway. Can’t even remember, nor will I waste another second checking, which side of the fence he was arguing.
My greatgrandparents hitched up draft equine and plowed a field or they didn’t have food. Dug a deep hole or they got real thirsty. When that horse was to feeble to survive the next winter they had steaks. Which they had to eat a ton real fast before it wrotted in the tator cellar. Want them steaks cooked? start chopping wood. God they could have used some prozac. They sure in the hell wouldn’t have ruined a walkie talkie so it had less functions.

Sheeesh is right

By: Hitek146

Hitek146 — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 11:40:50 +0000

@icebrain:

Unless you really just want to build your own circuit, you could use a stereo video modulator. You could take apart the unit, examine the inductors and/or resistors around the CH3/4 switch, and modify the passives on the CH4 side to move the carrier frequency up 15MHz or more to put you up in the FM radio band. This, of course, would also be against FCC regulations… =D

By: David Moisan

David Moisan — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 19:21:33 +0000

Not to mention the audio is going to blow and blow hard because those radios are deliberately limited in bandwidth with small FM deviation.

By: kyle007

kyle007 — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 22:43:55 +0000

um I was browsing instuctables and almost every hack is on thier site too??? er vice versa.. mybe its a “safe” post for h.a.d. if the post worked on another site….

eh who and I fooling I must be crazy…right?

By: Stephen

Stephen — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:22:24 +0000

Also being a “ham” i like radio projects. But this just bites. Besides being illegal, spamming an otherwise useful radio band. As for FM radio transmitters, go by a ready to go radio on a 9v battery. In agreement with the ham from canada, there are a lot of interesting things to experiment on the bands, and above. I also agree with the general postings here, hackaday is really starting to bite as well, like the video of the High voltage wire workers. That was on cable tv last year. in HD & stereo even.

By: andre

andre — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:16:39 +0000

Actually I’ve looked into something similar, using a broken wireless USB mouse as a short range data transmitter. Connect its transmit PCB to the circuit under test/temp sensor/etc and monitor the data on the PC.

-A

By: strider_mt2k

strider_mt2k — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 13:34:29 +0000

more spam to top the lameness, super.

yep this is a cool “dicking around” project, but not worthy of hackaday.

(and I’m the guy that posted a loop of string/finger retention hack for the game boy micro, so that’s saying something)

Here’s a story for ya though.

When i got my first FRS radios I wondered about their range so I set up this experiment:

I set up a morse code training application on my Palm OS handheld to send my amateur radio call sign and the word “test” every few minutes and repeat automatically.
I then set the voice-activated-transmit on one frs radio and simply set the handheld next to the radio.

Every time the handheld started beeping the VOX circuit picked it up and started transmitting.

that left me free to drive around in my car to see how far the thing was getting out.

I’ve also used FRS for DTMF remote control, which is definitly against the rules but works great!

By: zorkon

zorkon — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 08:27:14 +0000

this was a waste of time, i had hope from the title that it ment the bringing togther of a walkie talkie and an mp3 player in some way…. as it is now i had to shove a shuffle into a big walkie talkie shell with a smaller walkie talkie ineards inside the shell as well (two walkies were hurt doing this…) i would love a more elegant solution, the reason is i have to use a walkie at work… they will not alow music… i get bored easly and have a mono ear piece from radio shack… my bosses are dense lol

By: freyyr890

freyyr890 — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 06:33:44 +0000

Wow. DUMB IDEA.

The Family Radio Service and GMRS are reserved for communication. Not for an extender for your stereo. In fact the quality is likely to suck, as the bandwidth is so narrow.

If you really want to get into radio, don’t ruin it for the guy down the street trying to talk to his kids while they’re out hiking in the woods out back by spamming the channel. And even when communicating over FRS, use good voice procedure – breaker when you suspect a frequency is use, CQ when calling all listening to a channel, and close off your transmissions with ‘over.’

If you want to play around with radio, get a HAM license. It’s cheap (the test only costs $20 here in Canada) and you have access to a HUGE amount of the spectrum. You can use morse code, set up a packet radio network across the country, try out amateur TV, or just chat with somebody across the world in the wonderful hobby of DXing. In Canada, with the full license you can use up to 2.5kW of power (and you don’t even need morse anymore!)

By: Nubie

Nubie — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 03:12:01 +0000

This looks pretty cool; do your own DIY transmitter.

http://anarchy.translocal.jp/radio/micro/howtosimplestTX.html

(my plan is to use it to broadcast the TV signal to personal FM receivers, like my Super cool Sony that lasts a real 80 hours on one AA battery.)

By: Chartreuse

Chartreuse — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 03:08:11 +0000

What would be more impressive is building a low-power transmitter that would be subject to part 15 FCC rules. The second reason that this is illegal is that it it goes against fcc regulations which prohibit audio-transmission except for brief(1-3 second) alerts to get the persons attention. Not to mention the fact that you have are using a modified radio. Also the only reason it’s in a bottle is to get it entered in their Bottle contest on instructables. (Not that it has a change).

Sorry for the rant and that it may sound complainish, but I don’t think this is quality hackaday material.

By: Nubie

Nubie — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 03:00:12 +0000

@ icebrain

http://www.volunteerlabrat.com/default.html?goto=fmtrans.html

This seems to be an interesting project (one transistor, mono sound.)

I did google – diy fm transmitter – and found 7 interesting hits on the first page.

By: dan

dan — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 01:01:34 +0000

ethanv2, you seem to have forgotten that the whole purpose of the internet is to remind people how much better quality the internet was 2 years ago.

By: EthanV2

EthanV2 — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:34:18 +0000

Jesus fucking Christ, all you people do it bitch. If you don’t like a hack, just ignore it. No one wants hear your opinion, so keep it to your self.