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!
Uh.
Don’t know exactly how small those are, might have to 3D print some new earlobes.
But where to find tiny speakers with good sound? Maybe mobile phone speakers?
What is the maximum weight you can put on your ears?
Depends on whether you want to rip your ear piercing :)
Actually, the maximum for any jewellery worn in ear piercings is approx. 4.5 grams (jeweller’s rule of thumb). Anything above that becomes uncomfortable after a short time at best…
Why not just call the hearings?
What about listening to what is happening around you?
Ahh yes, white noise right at your ear when you’re trying to have a conversation. Perfect
Look at laptop and tablet speakers especially older laptops. I’ve some in a drawer that have the little box and baffle that makes darned good sound for it’s size. This project hints at the cellphone disc type which sound tinny compared to some of these “speakerettes” in e-trash. Some are the size of a thumb drive or long and thin sometimes shaped to fit what little space is left but still sound good, kinda artsy shapes.
A string of identical ones could make a decent sound at a distance. I’ve thought of this for portable e-musical instruments. Say flute shaped and held like some toy out there but not one crappy speaker at the end.
Hey, Matt Frequencies here. The speakers in these are 8ohm 5W rectangular 30x10mm – 2 per Earray, total of 4 in the set. They aren’t amazing, but they do have decent bass reproduction for their size, comparable to a decent laptop speaker.
I drive them from the Pam8302a in parallel to bring the impedance down to 4ohm (the maximum the poor little amp can drive) and I ended up using a slightly better set of earbuds as a donor as I noticed severe clipping issues on the output with the initial buds.
Tested output is ~95dba, and obviously NO you don’t want them that loud that close to your ear, but that’s why I made a pendant that has all 4 speakers in a single unit. Pair both Earrays and pendant to a single source and they play with no noticeable phasing – same chips on each helps I guess?
As to “why” – well, because I could, and because I’m a DJ, so the idea of DJing off my ears amused the hell out of me. When would you use them in practice? Probably never, but the novelty is fun. Why run DOOM on a pregnancy tester, after all?