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Shufflephones 2.0
Photo_Designer writes "After hacking my first pair of headphones to accept an iPod Shuffle, I just couldn't keep my hands off my other set of headphones and hacked an iPod shuffle adapter inside them, too. This version also includes an all-new expansion jack which allows sharing your music on the go, plugging your Shuffle into a stereo with a patch cable (without removing it from the phones), and also allows the headphones to be used as regular phones with the shuffle removed or turned off."
Has got round to putting the buttons on the outside. Surely you don't want to remove your headphones whenever a song you don't feel like comes on. Now do this mod with a Zen Micro and I'm interested.
I can't help but laugh at how funny people would look wearing headphones tethered to each other's ears. Is this a new trend? Love will bind us together, and also our headphones?
Apart from bashing me in the side of the head, and making it essentially impossible to interact with the volume or track selection without taking them off, are there other bad points I'm missing in this?
A worthwhile retail product. Although I'd prefer one that has the shuffle buttons on the outer case of the headphones. Of course, that means that someone next to you could sneak up behind you and change tracks! (would be nice if the new jack was line-level; better for stereo connections)
I saw "Apple" and "..phone.." and thought the iPhone had been announced at last, with a silly name...
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
.. this hack is neither stylish nor functional, you can't really be a Mac user.. shame on your iPod!
I find the lack of a radio in these products very annoying and one of the reasons i have not bothered to buy one. The Creative Zen 5 gig on the other hand looks like the baby i'll go for. There a link to it;s spec here
Thats looks pretty useless...no easy access to controls and the comfort of a plastic stick to your ear blocking the headphones.. Looks like a great time waster though.. Next up, he will mod a Mac mini into his beard, which will then monitor the bacteria accumulation in it and send an email when it's time to take a shower..
I know I'm only a girl, and therefore stereotypically bad with tools, but isn't a ground down screwdriver called an awl?
I have hacked my girlfriend to accept me hacking all her stuff to accept iPod Shuffle.
No need to demolish perfectly useful equipment for small parts (3.5mm stereo jack) any more my friend...
Just buy a few from Digi-Key and be set for life!
The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
Interesting solution, but not very neat. Not having the cable for the player seems great. It would be more interesting to see factory-made headphones with included flash mp3 player. That would make a more fancy solution. However, I'm not sure that would really happen - most people who use headphones are rather nittpicky about the quality of them...
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
Because, if you had RTFA, you would have seen that the guy actually used a iPod Shuffle for his hack (it is also written in the blurb).
So in this specific case, it is not a generic MP3 player...
They may not have a direct line out connection, but a line-out connection can be provided through the Dock interface. The docks distributed with the 3rd-generation iPods (when they first came out) included line out connections.
Supposedly one could determine which three lines from a dock connection provide the line out signal & run them into a headphone jack.
It's a funny idea, but don't expect anywhere near decent audio quality.
I bet his ears hurt after few hours of listening, that ipod stuck between the cushion must feel awful.
He should use something like this instead
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
I think the biggest disappointment of all would be the actual sound quality. these look like decent headphones, but the iPod Shuffle seems to be block almost half of the speakers for one of the ears. this personally will distort the audio and unbalance one of the ears.
HD Trailers
How exactly do old-ass headphones give you "street cred".
Not to mention this whole "hack" is so non-Apple. There is no "style" to it, and it's cumbersome. Not to mention that the Shuffle in one of the ear cups probably affects the sound quality a bit.
I'm also a little tired of the "hack" moniker being thrown around so readily. Soldering a couple of wires together is not a "hack" in most cases, it's just... well... soldering.
Take the shuffle apart, integrate its electronics into the headphones, and port the controls and I/O to the outside, keeping the same layout so that the headphones have a "hint of shuffle" to them (maybe even paint the headphones a nice eggshell white). THAT would be closer to a hack, IMO.
-This sig intentionally left blank
This is a pretty cool hack, but I'm getting more and more pissed about this iPod Shuffle. About a year ago, I bought a Creative MuVo. I figured, hey, it's about a quarter of the price, works easily with linux, and can double as a flash drive. Suddenly, everyone has an iPod or some other non-flash-based player, and I look like an idiot. What the fuck did apple do to have such control over the mp3 player market? I mean, being rather satisfied with my current player, I can't imagine what the shuffle does better, as the only thing I want on mine is ogg support, which the shuffle does not have either. Why does apple, traditionally the company of great expense an zealous fanboys, suddenly have such mass market appeal, compared to its competitors? Why do people act like Apple was the first people to make mp3 players?
Why does this piss you off?
Don't call me a cowboy, and don't tell me to slow down!
Only a fellow geek could convince himself that street cred was something you could achieve with a soldering iron, a pair of headphones, and an ipod. :-)
Listen UP Mother Boards
You've been a cold Solder JOINT
cover your EARS, try not to HEAR
this is one you can't SKIRT
I got an iron with your NAME
An I'm not talkin 'bout your SHIRT
You could always get a pair glasses that's an mp3 player.
Do not eat iPod Shuffle
I thought we were about to see a new mobile that had no screen and would pick the next person to phone at random.
This mod is WEAK!
I expected to see some complicated mod that provided controls for the iPod in the headphones.
This guy simply soldered a headphone jack into his expensive headphones and stuffed his iPod shuffle inside the headphones, which restricts access to the controls.
WEAK.
- Think for yourself, question authority.-
If this doesn't make the case that Timothy ought to be the spokesperson for abortion rights, then nothing will!
Maybe next time he'll post a cool hack of putting a big-ass wing on the back of a 15 year old Honda.
I remember when Slashdot used to be this site that had News for Nerds and Stuff that mattered. Now it's "Pay for a subscription. Read some crap". Bleh.
Or did anyone else get that familiar "goatse shudder" when you reached the frame that said "preparing to insert the Shuffle"? Just wondering. ;P
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
iPod shuffle is a piece of crap, and the people who have it are all idiots. I mean, the darn thing doesn't even let you choose the album to play. One must be a real bumbling bee to buy sumthing like that:-)
Where do you source the headphones from? Finding a decent pair of headphones in this neck of the woods (I.e. Suffolk, the UK) is a task in itself - I very nearly bought a _very_ nice pair of Bayer DT-109's for "only" £139.99. They would outlive me, but.....I don't want to spend £139.99 on a pair of fsckin' headphones!
Would the next logical progression of this would be to find a random bluetooth headset; wire it into a decent headset; and then have a converter that would plug nicely over the iPod to send out the signal. That _would_ own!
My UID is prime. Is yours?
I have found that people seem content with simply reposting stories that appear on hackaday.com. I understand that that is the essence of slashdot (i.e. finding interesting stories and aggregating them in one relevant place), but almost EVERY story from hackaday makes it to the front page of slashdot.
Perhaps people can just start checking two sites every day?
One thing that I am surprised about, is that not one manufacturer of these devices have come up with the obvious, and made MP3 headphones.
Insanely stupid of them not to.
Ya, this would be perfect if you could somehow hold the controls in your hand, like a remote control for the headphones. That might be hard to do wirelessly, but with a wire it might just work. Then you could switch tracks easily AND adjust the volume without having to take off your headphones!
...is a "bodge".
See http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/bodge.html
I already do that though with my Bluetooth headphones and my Pocket PC in my pocket.
When I'm at the gym I leave the Pocket PC in my jacket and just wander around the equipment with my 'phones on.
If you don't mind earbud-type phones such as the ones that come with the iPod, check out boxwave.com - BoxWave primarily focuses on PDA accessories for travelers, and their main products are their mini* series of retracting cables. They sell earbud phones with retracting cables, so that you can have the thing fully retracted in a tiny little package when in your laptop bag.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
You're right, why does the shuffle come with any controls other than "volume" and "play?"
Why didn't this guy just buy a $2 miniplug "Y" splitter from Radio Shack, and stuff his Shuffle inside those big 'phones? Instead of spending a few hours over a couple of days and sacrificing a little radio he could have stuffed in the other side of the 'phones, with a second $2 "Y" splitter?
--
make install -not war
I hacked my IPod shuffle into my pants. (It's called a pocket)
Dude, Get out more!
Is this a new trend?
Only until Bluetooth becomes more popular. Then you'll have a hack for your iPod that broadcasts the audio via BT and anyone with a BT headset can listen in.
iPod shuffle: $99 (Besy Buy). MURA SP-503 headphones: $1 (Goodwill) Lice and earmites from ratty old headphones that God-know-who wore before you, priceless.
How come nobody's invented headphones with speakers which face outward?
Like what you're listening to? Want other people to hear it as well? Push a button and go from "personal" mode to "speakerphone" mode.
You'd need some sort of baffle, obviously, to protect your ears from amplified music, but it wouldn't have to be *THAT* loud...
Certainly not as loud as those Gh3tt0 B0yZ in their thud-rumbling six-fours ("Mah music's so loud I gots-ta lean outside mah car just to listens to it!")
I'm not sure what you mean by "doesn't let you choose an album to play". You don't have to put it in shuffle mode. You can set up a playlist in iTunes and forward or back to whatever songs you want.
I actually also own a 10-gig old school 'pod - but I use the shuffle around the house or when I'm exersizing, where I want something small and sturdy that I can set and forget. It fills a need that I had - for a small portable device for exersizing. Buying a product that does exactly what I need it to do does not make me an idiot.
I have blog like everyone else
Back in my day A hack was technical accomplishment of upmost geekdom -- that could not be easily reproduced without the possibility of electronic destruction of thousands of dollars and the possibility of bodily injury.
Nowdays all these apple fanboys can tie a piece of string to some streamlined apple hardware....and it is considered a hack of remarkable accomplishments.
95% of the "iHacks" would have been laughed off of the internet 3 or 4 years ago when people were really hacking stuff.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
"Would you date someone cheap?"
...
Yes! That would be a positive character trait, unless it was annoyingly, distractingly cheap. Picnics in the park are usually at least as tasty as Fine Dining, the imaginary change is good for paying down a hypothetical mortgage
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Apple and Cingular have merged to produce the new Shufflephone. When set on shuffle I found myself reconnecting with old friends I forgot were in my phonebook.
Here are some more modding (and disassembly instructions) for different portable music players and accessories.
Why would you want to listen to the headphones if a patchcable is hooked up to a stereo system? Why don't you just hook up the patch cable directly to the ipod shuffle, and listen to this music through the stereo speakers? This is dumb imo, just coasting on this whole ifag apple circlejerk that has been a year old now.