At 08:43 PM 2/6/03 -0600, Josh Koffman wrote: >I recently aquired a Heavy Armor (www.armorbyotter.com) case for my PDA. >It is a waterproof, crushproof, airtight case that still allows use of >the PDA. It's really fantastic, it's even large enough for me to leave >my compact flash 802.11 card in the unit, so I can use wireless while >still environmentally protected. Sweet. However, there is one downside. >When I wish to listen to some MP3s, I have to take the unit out of the >case. So, I was trying to think of a way to get stereo audio out of the >case without completely compromising the integrity of the case. Here are >a few of my ideas: Have a look at how they get audio from something like a MP3 player into an automotive cassette player. Its a cassette shell with a spring loaded tape head that touches the tape head in the cassette player. Audio quality is surprisingly good and is stereo. My thought was to remove the head from one of those adapters and cut a hole through the case that just fits the head. The head itself is a solid block of metal and epoxy and is quite waterproof. You should be able to seal it to the case quite easily. The head is driven directly from the headphone out of your MP3 player - just use the cable that came with the adapter. The receive end is a bit more complex but not too bad. I'd start with an old portable Walkman type cassette player and gut it for the playback electronics and tape head. Some of those units (the better ones) are actually fairly quiet and should work OK. The nice thing about this is that most of the bits and pieces already exist - all you have to do is arrange them to work for you. dwayne -- Dwayne Reid Trinity Electronics Systems Ltd Edmonton, AB, CANADA (780) 489-3199 voice (780) 487-6397 fax Celebrating 18 years of Engineering Innovation (1984 - 2002) .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .- `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' Do NOT send unsolicited commercial email to this email address. This message neither grants consent to receive unsolicited commercial email nor is intended to solicit commercial email. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.