On this recent Memorial Day weekend I finally closed the loop on my outdoor wireless music system. The goal was to lie in my hammock, sit in my chair, or hang out in the BBQ area and select and hear music from a virtually unlimited selection in the backyard.
I settled into my chair, held the remote in my hand, selected the inaugural tune, pressed the button and . . . it worked!
So here's what actually transpired.
I selected a song from my library using the Creative Labs Soundblaster Wireless remote. When I pressed the button, the remote communicated via RF (radio frequency) to a Creative base station in the laundry room. The base station then communicated via WiFi (802.11) down to the server PC in my office and began streaming the that song via WiFi back to the base station.
The base station then fed those signals out via plain old RCA/composite cable to a Sony receiver in the laundry room (a good eBay find). The receiver did its amplification and then ran the signals out through quite a bit of black zip cord to the garage and out a small hole at the bottom of the wall, along the dirt all the way to the back fence, where it was connected to a slighly new (eBay again) pair of Rockustics speakers.
The Rockustics turn those signals into vibrating air which hit my ear drum, interpreted by my brain which then moved my facial muscles, generating a smile, and there you go.
The sweet sound of success.
Next tweaks include moving the Creative base station to the other side of the laundry room wall and running wire back the laundry room receiver. I am getting only 50 feet of reception with the remote and removing one wall should give me a good signal boost. Also, I will run an in-line volume control for all that black zip cord so I can control the backyard volume independently from the rest of the system (which powers the kitchen audio).
In the near future I'll post about the on-going saga between my iTunes installation and my Creative Labs Music Organizer software, a name I find increasingly ironic.
Total cost of the system was as follows:
Great info, thanks a lot!!! I wish I will have such a writing skills.
Posted by: PODO | May 19, 2007 at 10:34 AM
Any updates to this setup? My current older Sony receiver is powering our HD TV in the family room, and although I have a speaker switch box, I can't play two different sources at once. I want to be able to play music outdoors while the kids are inside watching re-runs of Seinfeld. I bought a pair of outdoor speakers, but I am looking for the least complicated way of delivering the signal outdoors, and WiFi seems promising. Any thoughts? Thanks.
Posted by: Fred | May 16, 2008 at 05:04 AM