Episode: 2599
Title: HPR2599: Fitting a 3.5mm adapter to a bluetooth receiver.
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2599/hpr2599.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 06:21:53

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This is HBR episode 2005-199 entitled Fitting a 3.5mm adapter to a Bluetooth receiver.
It is hosted by Ken Fallon and in about 8 minutes long, and Karim and exquisite flag.
The summary is, Ken cobbles together a Bluetooth adapter for any 3.5mm headphone.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
At 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15, that's HBR15.
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Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and you're listening to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Today I want to talk about the quandary that I'm going through with my podcast listening.
Before the ideal podcast, for me at least, was Langer's style in ear earbuds, not squashy
interior but sitting in your earlobe, that was around a Langer that you hung around your neck
and off that you clipped onto a sunset clip and that clipped onto your shirt.
It was perfect, free standing. You could pop one out without too much difficulty.
You didn't suffer from the heat that you get with over the ear microphones.
You didn't have the awkwardness of plugging the earphone interior in ear ones.
And it was very convenient for working outside, but also on the train.
You could quickly pop out an earbud and then pop it back in again when the announcements were
over from the conductors. They also had the advantage that you didn't lose them because
they were around your neck the whole time. There was nowhere for this thing to go.
And when you took it off, you took it off, wrapped the headphones around, the
sunset clip and then that was that. Unfortunately, the world conspired against me
insofar as Philip stopped making those Langer's. Each pair lasted me about two months and then
they would invariably break. There was some flaw in them and then they just stopped making them
and went to making just a long lead. So I lost the ability there to have a
dangle around my neck and support it. So now I was relying totally on the clip part of the
sunset clip mechanism to hold on my ears. There was also this disadvantage that when the ear,
one earbud fell out, then the alternative way it fell down and then pulled out the other ear as a
result. So not very handy. And the other thing that happened was of course that the sunset clips
are now becoming so rare. The newer models don't support Rockbox. They've got less memory,
basically a cheaper device and they're not as great mobile devices and the older ones that do
support Rockbox are coming in with a price tag of around 150 euros. And the whole point of using
a small MP3 player or out player or music player was that you didn't run the risk of losing a lot
of money with these devices if you were outside working with a garden or you put it somewhere
and it accidentally gets smashed or you lost it on the train or whatever. So I always had a limit,
you know, around 50, 100 dollars, that's 100 euros. That's that's the most time I want to spend
definitely if I spend 200 or 150 and something I don't want to be going out into the garden with
this thing. I need to have some sort of protection on it. So that was the argument against using
a mobile phone as well. Now as as ever the world has conspired against me and I am no longer
able to to get what I actually want. So what we're left with then is that the world has actually
moved on a little bit and that Android devices, you can now get a mobile phone for 60 euros outright,
go down to the shop and you can buy a device for 40 to 60 euros. That's a mobile phone and if you
bought it and never put a SIM card in it you could use this thing as like the original iPod
things as a media player just. And quite a lot of what another thing that's happened is that
Bluetooth headphones are becoming a lot cheaper. Down in the action which is a sort of wholesale
type shop here in the Netherlands. They had a set of headphones speakers for under $15
with Bluetooth and they're the in-ear squash you want. And the Hayman which is a retail outlet
relatively respectable one has a set for 25 euros. I'm using dollars and euros interchangeably
just to kind of give you an idea of of what the price are. The cheaper ones they they you know
five ten dollar ones are terrible. The audio quality is terrible. It's fine for for podcasts but the
music quality is terrible. The 25 euro ones are actually fine. The music is fine. The only thing is
I don't like the in-ear squashy things that gives you this when you're putting in putting them in
or the wires touch you have this scratch thing in your really just find it irritating. So what I
actually wanted was the choice of headphone to use while having the portability of having
using a Bluetooth device. So I could have the small mobile phone in my pocket and then use
a Bluetooth adapter to get myself music. So at the price of 25 euros and my new found
soldering skills I thought to myself hey what about what if I take off that adapter there
cut off the headphones and then just put on a female 3.5 millimeter
headphone jack on it and let's see how that works out. Well it worked out grand actually one
thing that so basically all it did was cut the two wires strip them got a an adapter female adapter
which I had in my bits and pieces box and basically sold them together. The only thing you'll find
is that on a lot of these headphones they use insulating varnish or lacquer around the two wires
for call saving and size. So you'll have like a green wire and a gray or uncolored one
and it doesn't take solder very well. So what you got to do you can use nail varnish remover to
remove it but the best thing that you can do is just scrape it lightly with a bit of sandpaper
but the wires themselves are so thin that you run the risk of completely you know making the
bulb as you do it. So what I did was just mechanically twisted them around the wires that I had
on the receiving side you know in the female jack there's a photo of this in the show notes
it is ugly it is ugly I'll give you that and just applied lots and lots of soldier to it and
it was fine. So then I just connected them up using this the headsets that I have here on the audio
actually perfect. It didn't degradation at all in the process so I can use my
traditional Phillips over the ear headphones which I actually like for as an over the ear headphones
and then I also have the option of using any or ones whatever earbuds that I want to use
at a particular time with this thing. So it gives me a lot of a lot more options.
So yeah it's a it's pretty cool it's not the best lifehark in the world but it works for me
some people might ask but Ken could you not go and get a set of Bluetooth headphones speakers
but yes but that doesn't give me the flexibility I want I want to be able to kind of use these
headphones and then just change them and then not have to worry about connecting up my phone to
another Bluetooth receiver and stuff so that was it a little bit of a lifehack there don't know if
it's of any interest anybody but no doubt if you tune in tomorrow there'll be another exciting
episode here on Hacker Public Radio.
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