I’ve never been able to realize a truly satisfying mobile music experience. Been through literally dozens of car, walkman, boombox, etc. systems over the years – some retail, mostly DIY, others kludged combinations. Despite the arguably diverse application scope here, one drawback always ruined it: Battery Capacity. To me, mobile means mobile. I’m not interested if it needs plugged in to keep playing loudly for more than a few hours.
I have this little Sony portable speaker and an Apple Nano I use for camping. It sounds good, but is as expected, limited by battery capacity. I was in a hurry ordering replacement batteries for one of the UPS units a few weeks ago and of course ordered the wrong ones. With the help of an inexpensive 5-12V transformer, I decided to press these 8-aHr units into service on a solution to my mobile sound quandary, rather than pay the 15% re-stocking fee. You can barely see the battery in it’s custom carry case in the protoype setup pictured below. It’s been playing continuously for 4 days now. The Nano thinks it’s plugged in:
This morning it’s down to 12.3 volts, from a 12.7v start. That’s about .1 volt loss/day, playing softly. I’m springing for one of those new high-end DAC digital players that’s been showing up on the market lately for what I’ll refer to as the WEMMS – Way Extreme Mobile Music System. Finished pics coming after testing and touching up complete…