Shades

[Anonymous]

Hi All,
A while back I mentioned I had been trying IR heaphones on my GQ clone PI and mentioned how well they worked. Well, the testing was done across several days all of which were quite cloudy. During that period they worked just fine.
Well, guess what? On a very sunny day, the headphones may not work as expected, which I am sure a few of you found out already.
Now, there is a solution that makes the headphones work the vast majority of the time, and that is to mount a shade above the top half of the headphone earpieces. A very wide brim had would do also, providing it did shade the headphones. However, having some type of shading device mounted on the headphones themselves seems to work better.
Now, the trick is to find something light weight, cheap, quick and simple to mount and use to shade the earpieces on the headphones. Since the transmitter is normally quite low with respect to the sun, the shading can be quite extreme. This should give people something to think about.
Reg

 

[Anonymous]

Yeah Reg, I wondered about excess light when I read your original post. I fiddled with home brew light beam communications years ago and found that clouds, beach sand, water and even dark IR reflective soils put out a host of frequencies but the worst part was that the high light levels could cause reciever clipping at the best and total saturation at the worst. A RF tx/rx setup for a video camera works well and doesn't cause or suffer from noise problems.
Rob.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Robby,
Actually, the IR headphones worked exceptonally well during initial testing and the exception occurred when they were tried in the very bright sunlight.
Now, I was able to put together a really crude visor for each side and once installed the headphones worked very well again even in the direct sunlight. I was somewhat limited on the extremes I could move my head and still have the headphones work reliably, but overall, they still are my choice. So, it is simply a matter of the right combinaton of headphone visors and transmitter position.
I am sure there will be certan conditions where some problems will exist but right now, I am going to use them on my next extended outing. However, I will have my regular headphones with me also.
Reg