When you think of a Bluetooth speaker, you’re probably picturing a roughly lunchbox-sized device that pumps out some decent volume for annoying fellow beachgoers, hikers, or public transport users. [Matt Frequencies] has developed something in an altogether different form factor—tiny Bluetooth speakers you can dangle from your earlobes! They’re called Earrays, and they’re awesome.
The build started with [Matt] harvesting circuit boards from a pair of off-the-shelf Bluetooth earbuds. These are tiny, and perfect for picking up a digital audio stream from a smartphone or other device, but they don’t have the grunt to drive powerful speakers. Thus, [Matt] hooked them up to a small Adafruit PAM8302A amplifier board, enabling them to drive some larger speaker drivers that you can actually hear from a distance. These were then installed in little 3D printed housings that are like a tiny version of the speaker arrays you might see hanging from the rigging at a major dance festival. Throw on a little earring hook, and you’ve got a pair of wearable Bluetooth speakers that are both functional, fashionable, and very audible!
[Matt] has continued to develop the project, even designing a matching pendant and a charging base to make them practical to use beyond a proof-of concept. Despite the weight of the included electronics, they’re perfectly wearable, as demonstrated by [DJ Kaizo Trap] modelling the hardware in the images seen here.
We’ve seen plenty of great LED earrings over the years, but very few jewelry projects in the audio space thus far. Perhaps that will change in future—if you pursue such goals, let us know!
While it’s an interesting project, does anybody actually want to be around someone wearing these? Ever?
The advantage of ear buds are the privacy. I don’t have to hear your music, I can hear mine.
The disadvantage of these are that everyone has to hear your music. And, from any distance, it’ll just be a tinny mess.
Maybe, just maybe, if you could synchronize a larger set of these and multiple people were wearing them. Not quite sure it would cover a dance floor with a dozen pairs though
Even at 5.3 though sounding good the lag will ensure arrhythmia on the dance floor. Better to go FM but who has FM nowadays in wearable gear? The phone mfrs dumped FM with it’s necessary app. It was we gotta know what you’re listening to, t 0oo streaming only where somebody gets to harvest the crop.
This all because no headphone cord no FM antenna. AM got left out because of onboard digital noise long ago.
Could≠should
You could get up to all sorts of mischief if you could get your source to pair with someone else’s earrings! Like making them “speak” naughty things!
Don’t know exactly how small those are, might have to 3D print some new earlobes.