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I was going to recemmend the WetSounds WS420 EQ - they advertise the capability to link boats similiarly equipped. But after looking up the specs, it too uses cables from 1 boat to another.
Actually, when @Detonate first installed his WS420 years ago, that's what got us started on all this boat-linking stuff. We used that for a few years and worked well. But its nothing more than a convenient "aux-out" jack on the EQ. Same technique can be done easily without the WS420. In fact we do it without the WS420 now. Just simple cables off the line-out jacks of the amps.
For sure, products exist in the home environment for this. Airplay is one already mentioned. Also SONOS would do this quite well. But both are fairly pricey and neither are suitable for the boating environment. We're looking for something that is geared for 12v and reasonable budget. If its just the two of us, no big deal. The single cable works fine. The problem is when we get a small group.
For sure, products exist in the home environment for this. Airplay is one already mentioned. Also SONOS would do this quite well. But both are fairly pricey and neither are suitable for the boating environment. We're looking for something that is geared for 12v and reasonable budget. If its just the two of us, no big deal. The single cable works fine. The problem is when we get a small group.
Agreed very much...I just hope you guys that are smarter then me can figure this one out. It would be nice to sit on the sandbar or in a cove with 3+ boats screaming good tunes out.
Anything FM with more than a mile range is illegal in the US. 250 feet is closer to the legal limit.
Sterio is quite possible. EDM is the best I have found. http://www.edmdesign.com/
I think it is right up there with broadcast quality, probably close to pre HD analog quality. (Post HD, I hear some loss in quality of the analog reception)
But it still won't be as good as hard wired.
Really the key item is don't draw a complaint about interference with any commercial or government radio.
Stay clear of used frequencies, and make sure your transmitter is not generating any harmonics that could interfere with police/fire/FAA frequencies. Even what many consider to be second place to the EDM puts out a surprising bit of harmonics? And I now would make sure I had a low pass filter to strip out the harmonics if I were to be flexible with the legal power limits. Don't ask me why I happen to have a couple of those filters.
Don't worry guys, those "5-25 mile"specs @Detonate quoted were "ebay specs from china" and we all know how accurate those are I don't think we got it working past about 100 FEET and certainly nowhere near the 250 feet allowed. The bottom line was it was low bandwidth FM with low audio quality. We need something better than that.
Cables are easy to hook up and sound great, but it starts turning into a tripping octopus when we get 3 more boats cabled up. We haven't completely ruled out a WIRED solution if we can come up with some good cable management. We just think that something WIRELESS should be out there for not too much hacking. Bluetooth would be perfect if it supported broadcast audio streaming. Airplay or SONOS would do it, but then we'd need a $100-$300 minimum box PER BOAT plus AC inverters for everybody else (@Detonate and I already have onboard inverters, but many people don't)
I'm thinking maybe a Bluetooth atpx transceiver might be a good start. 90% of the time it's just me and one other boat. Then if I need to run a wire to another boat, it's not as big of a deal. Maybe if you get a pair as well, then we kinda just daisey chain along...
So this can both transmit and receive Bluetooth? How would they daisy chain together? Wire or blutooth? Please forgive me Detonate, my brain is hurting from thinking about this all day.
They make a Transmitter/Receiver and then also just a receiver...
So you can't transmit from one source to 2 receivers. But what you could do is transmit from boat 1 to 2, and then from boat 2 to 3.
In that scenario, boat 2 would have to have TWO transceivers. One receiving the signal, and then feed into his AUX IN, and then one transmitting hooked up to his AUX out.
Actually, I was involved in chasing down an issue between a fire department radio system, and a seasonal/temporary city operated FM transmitter. A low pass filter fixed the issue, and according to my power meter, the signal passing through the filter is about 25% less than the raw signal out of the transmitter, and that is with a transmitter that does have output filter stages already built in.
And I usually build spares on projects like that, so that they are ready if needed. I usually have one sitting in the path of the little 25mW Ramsey I have at the house, just to be sure.
I'm thinking maybe a Bluetooth atpx transceiver might be a good start. 90% of the time it's just me and one other boat. Then if I need to run a wire to another boat, it's not as big of a deal. Maybe if you get a pair as well, then we kinda just daisey chain along...
One caution, is that being digital, they usually have some encode/decode time delay, in part because they usually bundle a number of samples together into a frame, and sent them in a packet. And since a lot of these products get used in linking audio sources to the audio system, a little delay is rarely noticed. An all analog system like the FM transmitter at least avoids the delay..
You could probably nearly synchronize the delay, by having a pair of these between the source and all participating amplifiers.. So lead boat of 3 would have 3 transmitters and 1 receiver...
One caution, is that being digital, they usually have some encode/decode time delay, in part because they usually bundle a number of samples together into a frame, and sent them in a packet. And since a lot of these products get used in linking audio sources to the audio system, a little delay is rarely noticed. An all analog system like the FM transmitter at least avoids the delay..
