At work, I've been asked to come up with a scheme for getting audio outside of the building into some flower-box mounted all-weather speakers.
There are, of course, catches. One of which is, we can't run wires. Well, yes, technically we could, but getting the wires through the walls of the building is fraught with peril; the least of which is water.
So, since the flower-boxes already have sealed power lines going into them, I thought, "why not wireless?" Get a weather-proof box, have the receiver, a 70v amplifier, and run to outdoor rated 70v speakers. Easy.
And it is, except how best to actually implement the wireless link?
My first thought was plug a wireless UHF mic-like transmitter pack into the output of the mixer, and put a receiver in each box. It has... liabilities.
Second thought: get an 802.11g-like system that takes analog audio in, converts it to wireless networking, and broadcast to net-radio appliances. Nice idea, I couldn't find anything that fit the bill.
Third thought: run a ¼watt FM transmitter in the 88-107MHz band from the roof down to small FM receivers in the boxes. Actually, it's a surprisingly affordable possibility, and it lets me cover all four initial receiver zones with one transmitter fairly easily.
My questions are,
1. is this the right way to go?
2. at ¼watt, am I likely to encounter any FCC-related restrictions?
3. was I just looking in the wrong place, and the wireless networking solution was really the way to go? If so, where should I be looking?
Leo Kerr
There are, of course, catches. One of which is, we can't run wires. Well, yes, technically we could, but getting the wires through the walls of the building is fraught with peril; the least of which is water.
So, since the flower-boxes already have sealed power lines going into them, I thought, "why not wireless?" Get a weather-proof box, have the receiver, a 70v amplifier, and run to outdoor rated 70v speakers. Easy.
And it is, except how best to actually implement the wireless link?
My first thought was plug a wireless UHF mic-like transmitter pack into the output of the mixer, and put a receiver in each box. It has... liabilities.
Second thought: get an 802.11g-like system that takes analog audio in, converts it to wireless networking, and broadcast to net-radio appliances. Nice idea, I couldn't find anything that fit the bill.
Third thought: run a ¼watt FM transmitter in the 88-107MHz band from the roof down to small FM receivers in the boxes. Actually, it's a surprisingly affordable possibility, and it lets me cover all four initial receiver zones with one transmitter fairly easily.
My questions are,
1. is this the right way to go?
2. at ¼watt, am I likely to encounter any FCC-related restrictions?
3. was I just looking in the wrong place, and the wireless networking solution was really the way to go? If so, where should I be looking?
Leo Kerr
