Belkin FM Transmitter

[davidmc36]

I wonder what power these things actually output.


Belkin : TuneCast® 3 FM Transmitter

[KF5DCI]

I had the TuneCast original and even at only 1 foot away it sucked!

[davidmc36]

Originally Posted by pyrofallout

I had the TuneCast original and even at only 1 foot away it sucked!

They pretty much all suck. I have tried a few different ones and even in my basement where you couldn't get an FM radio station if your life depended on it you can't get good signal sitting right beside it. I was more curious why. Are they such low power that they can't even overcome background radiation? Like milliwatts, microwatts or what?

[mike_s104]

not sure whatr you're trying to do, but would something like this work with some modifications?

FM Direct Adapter (Wired Relay)

[davidmc36]

Originally Posted by mike_s104

not sure whatr you're trying to do, but would something like this work with some modifications?

FM Direct Adapter (Wired Relay)

No that's not it actually. OK I'll 'fess up. I have tried many different solutions to be able to listen to my scanners wirelessly while moving about my house, like late at night or early in the morning when the missus is in bed and I don't want to wake her. The closest thing is the Bluetooth headphones that have absolutely perfectly clear audio, not even a hint of static, but the range is just not there. I stumbled across some FM transmitters that are rated at 250mw. I suspect much higher than one could legally use for such a purpose. I saw one other one that was adjustable output with a nice LCD screen and would even show SWR on the screen and said it would withstand up to 30:1 mismatch to allow you to attenuate the output. That would allow you to tweak it until you got good coverage inside the house but not stray too far and cause anybody any interference. My house is separated enough from the neighbors that I should be able to set it up like that. Sadly it appears they are no longer being produced from what I have been able to find out. I have a set of the 900mhz headphones also and they pretty much suck too. Decent range around the house but all kinds of "whoosh-whoosh" and "pfffffffffft" sounds even when you are fairly close to the transmitter. It just depends on what direction you are facing and if the antenna is aligned with or 90 degrees to the signal. Just wish there was a good solution that was not so far outside the bounds of law that one might get caught coloring outside the lines. Anyway the thing was that I was trying to get a feel for what the power of the things like the Belkin are so I could have an idea what power might get me some results without flooding the neighbourhood with scanner audio on their radio dials.

[mike_s104]

Originally Posted by davidmc36

No that's not it actually. OK I'll 'fess up. I have tried many different solutions to be able to listen to my scanners wirelessly while moving about my house, like late at night or early in the morning when the missus is in bed and I don't want to wake her. The closest thing is the Bluetooth headphones that have absolutely perfectly clear audio, not even a hint of static, but the range is just not there. I stumbled across some FM transmitters that are rated at 250mw. I suspect much higher than one could legally use for such a purpose. I saw one other one that was adjustable output with a nice LCD screen and would even show SWR on the screen and said it would withstand up to 30:1 mismatch to allow you to attenuate the output. That would allow you to tweak it until you got good coverage inside the house but not stray too far and cause anybody any interference. My house is separated enough from the neighbors that I should be able to set it up like that. Sadly it appears they are no longer being produced from what I have been able to find out. I have a set of the 900mhz headphones also and they pretty much suck too. Decent range around the house but all kinds of "whoosh-whoosh" and "pfffffffffft" sounds even when you are fairly close to the transmitter. It just depends on what direction you are facing and if the antenna is aligned with or 90 degrees to the signal. Just wish there was a good solution that was not so far outside the bounds of law that one might get caught coloring outside the lines. Anyway the thing was that I was trying to get a feel for what the power of the things like the Belkin are so I could have an idea what power might get me some results without flooding the neighbourhood with scanner audio on their radio dials.

A while back I was looking for the a solution to do the same thing. The best solution is a laptop running ProScan to connect to the desktop running ProScan server for my 996T (and now 396XT). So, no matter where I am in the house, I have the abality to listen to 3 digital scanners at the same time.

[davidmc36]

Originally Posted by mike_s104

A while back I was looking for the a solution to do the same thing. The best solution is a laptop running ProScan to connect to the desktop running ProScan server for my 996T (and now 396XT). So, no matter where I am in the house, I have the abality to listen to 3 digital scanners at the same time.

I thought of something similar but it doesn't help much really. If I am just messing around the house early in the morning or whatever, making coffee, letting the dog out, tinkering in the garage I would have to drag the laptop all around with me. Too bad there isn't a PDA app for Pro-Scan, that would work. I may just have to break down and get one of the long range Bluetooth gadgets, they are not really cheap though (funny how one will spend nearly a grand on a scanner but be too cheap to shell out 150 beans for good mobile audio). That would give me the clarity of FHSS which would be ideal. Any regular RF stuff just hisses and swooshes, even with an overpowered/illegal transmitter I bet it would still not be great.

Back to the original question for a minute: Does anybody know what kind of wattage/milliwattage/microwattage those typical tranmitters put out?

[57Bill]

My 900 mhz wireless speakers did the trick for me (until the transmitter broke). Put a little external antenna that helped the signal on my property. More directional than desired, though.

[poltergeisty]

Those FM transmitter do suxx.


Some ideas and what I have done.

I have sent audio into a 900 MHZ cordless phone through the phone jack and having the handset mic output run into the prologic in the living room.

I also had a couple Sennheiser EW500's that worked well too. Sennheiser EW500 Full Kit, UHF Wireless Mic System - eBay (item 200339967738 end time May-14-09 16:36:17 PDT)

Anyone use this?

Amazon.com: Jabra Bluetooth Music Adaptor: Electronics

I do take my laptop upstairs when making coffee though for Internet radio streams, etc.
Far as Proscan goes...
http://www.radioreference.com/forums...rough-ssh.html

[poltergeisty]

Originally Posted by davidmc36

Too bad there isn't a PDA app for Pro-Scan, that would work...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N800 Believe there is work being done in VMware for this old unit. Which means, hopefully you could run Windows based apps in this device - I think...

Have one of these babies that I picked up at a second hand store. I have inquired about it in the computer thread section. Still have to get my ass on that project. Once I do, then I won't have to carry the laptop with me. I have a firmware to flash this thing so that it will work with non-toughbook computers - hopefully.
Actually thought of using it with Flighsimulator to port the FMC on it. Cool thing is its a touch screen!

[blackacid]

Originally Posted by davidmc36

I thought of something similar but it doesn't help much really. If I am just messing around the house early in the morning or whatever, making coffee, letting the dog out, tinkering in the garage I would have to drag the laptop all around with me. Too bad there isn't a PDA app for Pro-Scan, that would work. I may just have to break down and get one of the long range Bluetooth gadgets, they are not really cheap though (funny how one will spend nearly a grand on a scanner but be too cheap to shell out 150 beans for good mobile audio). That would give me the clarity of FHSS which would be ideal. Any regular RF stuff just hisses and swooshes, even with an overpowered/illegal transmitter I bet it would still not be great.

Back to the original question for a minute: Does anybody know what kind of wattage/milliwattage/microwattage those typical tranmitters put out?

If I'm not mistaken these are measured in nanowatts usually.
0.01 microwatts = 10 nanowatt.
I think this is the legal limit for power on these?
Title 47 CFR Part 15 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The belkin tunecast 3 I looked up on the fcc id search showed that it was around 10 nanowatts.
Also the belkin I have wouldn't work too well for a scanner anyways as it has an auto off on it after so many seconds of silence.

I may be wrong on the power output so don't hold me to it.

As for alternatives... if you have a pda with windows mobile on it you could grab a lil program called gsplayer. It allows one to stream shoutcast servers on a pda. Setup a shoutcast server and stream away to the pda. Or setup several servers for each scanner and choose the one you want to listen to.

I see someone else already said a cordless phone. Just make sure to kill the mic of the handset you carry around so all of the nosey neighbors don't hear everything going on in the house.

[davidmc36]

No wonder they suck so bad, nanowatts. I guess the shoutcast and the PDA may be the best option. I just seemed to get stalled with all the set-up of streams. It's not like two clicks to start like Pro-Scan.

Lots of other great ideas there to play with though.

Bob is working on updating Pro-Scan so you can just listen with Media Player and the like but says hw won't be ready for testing until the 3Q.

Thanks for all the info lads.

[davidmc36]

Still up against a wall here yet. Nothing there except maybe shoutcast to the PDA will get me something I can listen to with headphones/earbuds, the mic thing is way to pricey, and can you actually listen through a earphone while walking around? If I can get the streaming going my Axim will do everything that the Nokia will, at least what I need. The whole idea is something that only I can hear when the missus is sleeping. When everybody is awake I just blast the 40 watts per channel Rotel that's on my desk, you can hear it outside for heavens sake.

[poltergeisty]

Originally Posted by davidmc36

...the mic thing is way to pricey, and can you actually listen through a earphone while walking around?

Yeah it is. What I did was have the digital transmit over that unit and listen to it through my IC-R3 ( mine was 600 MHz) Now why use another scanner? Because the digital had to be connected to the outside antenna.

You can build FM transmitters. They have kits. Ramsey comes to mind.

Originally Posted by blackacid

I see someone else already said a cordless phone. Just make sure to kill the mic of the handset you carry around so all of the nosey neighbors don't hear everything going on in the house.

I used a 900 MHz DSS phone. Actually, still use the damn thing. The original battery has been in the phone sense 98 I believe!

Another point to that is the phone to scanner connection is also a mic connection...

[blackacid]

On the pda I had before I could walk around the house and stream audio just fine. I think I even used it for voip a few times. Just plug your headphones in and put it in your pocket. As long as you have a wifi signal you should be good to go.

If shoutcast is outta your range perhaps you could go with normal ole windows media. Grab a copy of windows media encoder.

Steps...
1. Select a new session and click broadcast a live event. Click next.
2. Select your audio device. Click next.
3. Select pull from the encoder. Click next.
4. Set your port to whatever you want. I assume you are on a router so make note of the url for internet connections which should be the local ip of your computer. Ex: http://192.168.1.100:8080 Click next.
5. In the audio drop down box select fm quality. 37 Kbps should be select. Click finish.

After clicking finish the first time it will warn you that anyone can connect and you can limit by ip if you wish. Click do not show this window again and click ok.

Click start encoding on the top.

On your pda... open up windows media mobile.
Depending on the version you have... somewhere in the library will be the open url. Put the url that you made a note of and hit ok. Ex: http://192.168.1.100:8080

If the http:// doesn't connect replace http:// with mms:// so it would look like mms://192.168.1.100:8080

I use the mms:// link to connect from all the other computers in the house. It has been a long time since I used windows mobile so I don't know which link will work for it.

Sometimes windows media encoder will die out the first time someone connects. Says something about unable to keep up. If you hit start encoding again and try to connect again it'll connect just fine. Once you hit encode the second time you can keep connecting all day long fine. I dunno if its a problem for everyone or just on this computer.

[poltergeisty]

Forgot about this thing. Mini Recorder Control - RadioShack.com

Before this I made my own..

The phone jack connection has to be a converter to a connect the RJ14 to a four pin handset jack. The phone recorder uses a four pin handset, so that has to be connected to the phone's line input which is RJ14.The handset line can be used in the phone, but the connection isn't very tight.
I don't use this setup, but on occasion I might for some project.

http://usera.ImageCave.com/Poltergeist/phone tx.jpg

http://usera.ImageCave.com/Poltergeist/phone tx 2.jpg

[davidmc36]

Originally Posted by poltergeisty

Forgot about this thing. Mini Recorder Control - RadioShack.com

Before this I made my own..

The phone jack connection has to be a converter to a connect the RJ14 to a four pin handset jack. The phone recorder uses a four pin handset, so that has to be connected to the phone's line input which is RJ14.The handset line can be used in the phone, but the connection isn't very tight.
I don't use this setup, but on occasion I might for some project.

http://usera.ImageCave.com/Poltergeist/phone tx.jpg

http://usera.ImageCave.com/Poltergeist/phone tx 2.jpg

So with that I should be able to plug into the scanner, remove cordless phone from phone line, plug that unit in instead and listen with the cordess phone handset and the earpiece. Perfect for mono and cheap too. I guess I could get away with one scanner until Bob gets the Pro-Scan thing done.

[smason]

Originally Posted by davidmc36

If I can get the streaming going my Axim will do everything that the Nokia will, at least what I need. The whole idea is something that only I can hear when the missus is sleeping. .

I use my Axim X51v and Win500 to listen to my GRE 600 late at night. Great solution!

[poltergeisty]

Originally Posted by davidmc36

So with that I should be able to plug into the scanner, remove cordless phone from phone line, plug that unit in instead and listen with the cordess phone handset and the earpiece. Perfect for mono and cheap too. I guess I could get away with one scanner until Bob gets the Pro-Scan thing done.

Yes, exactly as you described it. Pretty simple.

You mention multiple audio listening. I had an idea several years ago about multiplexing several audio feeds together in time or subcode and having some kind of hardware decode that in an output that is streamed according to the arrival of each audio transmission.
Basically, the hardware would have an audio embedded recorder to record the various feeds and then released as one output stream. So there would be a delay, but could have more than one scanner attached. Basically like a trunked system, but for scanner audio listing.
I'm sure there is something like this already. Just dont know of anything...yet

Originally Posted by smason

I use my Axim X51v and Win500 to listen to my GRE 600 late at night. Great solution!

Win500: PSR-500, PSR-600, PRO-106, PRO-197 Scanner Software for Data Management, Monitoring, and Control

Client is free too!

Radio Control Software - The RadioReference Wiki

[davidmc36]

Originally Posted by poltergeisty

Win500: PSR-500, PSR-600, PRO-106, PRO-197 Scanner Software for Data Management, Monitoring, and Control

Client is free too!

Radio Control Software - The RadioReference Wiki

Mmmmmmmmmm....he says while thoughtfully rubbing his bearded chin....maybe another bit of motivation to make me change the plan to get a 996XT. I thought I had it all decided but am debating it now. Since I was planning on putting the XT in the car and moving the T inside for the Pro-Scan feed.....but I already have the internal GPS thing in the T......and who needs a Location Based Scanner for a base..... and the PSR 600 is much cheaper.....and I have been dying to try one anyway.......and here is this Pocket PC app. Although Bob is adding support to Pro-Scan so one can listen with like just Media Player on a PDA, that way I could just not buy another scanner at all and keep the 296 for the feed....but I would like something that decodes Digital a bit better.........Aaaaaaaaaaah!....I think my head will explode.

Thanks for all the info anyway lads, I have made some nice additions to my "Walking Wealth of Worthless Information" nick-name that a workmate gave me, that one and "The Elaborator", never can just give a yes or no answer.