Hello All,
I wanted to know if I could produce audio from a pc to a talkabout 5500(walkie talkie) through a mic input? I don't have a lot of experience with electronic equipment such as potentiometer, but I'm trying to complete this project and this was the only idea I had. Will I need anymore equipment to do this? Any additional help or information would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Marcus
It all depends on what kind of microphone your Talkabout is expecting. If you could dig up the specs of the mic port or an official accessory microphone from a user manual, that would be helpful.
The output from a soundcard port is line level (nominally 1 volt peak to peak). Mic level is much lower, and if you tried to put line level into it you'd get a very distorted and oveloaded signal. Your idea of using a pot is good.
There may also be impedance matching problems as well (ie each port expects the attached device to have a certain impedance level ie resistance), and it's just about possible (but unlikely) your walkie talkie puts out a DC voltage for a powered mic.
That said, if you start with the pot on maximum resistance (ie minimum volume) and slowly bring it up, you're unlikely to break anything. When you've brought the pot up to the maximum undistorted level. mark it, remove it from the line, and measure the resistance. If you then add a resistor of that value or close to it, in series with the pot (ie one after the other), it will damp the maximum down to the appropriate level, and the pot will give you volume control over the whole useable range.
I think. I don't guarantee any of the above, your risk, etc. You might want to try the above experiment on another line level audio device, like a cassette deck (not a walkman - headphone ports are different) or CD player, rather than your computer.
Here's an interesting item, not quite what you were looking for but perhaps a solution?
dan k
That's a neat piece of sw. Basically it looks like a custom P2P VoIP that has headphone/mic jacks instead of a phone handset, and supports voice control. Sweet. That would be very cool w/ a mobile WiFi rig in a caravan of vehicles. Leader/scount runs the software and might be out of radio range, so they use wireless 'net (cellular broadband, etc) and the main group pack leader runs the reciever, and re-broadcasts to the rest of the group in range. There is probably some F/OSS setup to do the same kinda thing, or one easily made from existing projects. Still, the aio package looks good.
DrBunsen,
What do you mean by “what kind of microphone your Talkabout is expecting
Hello All,
I really appreciate the assistance you have all given me. I have the potentiometer its a 100k Ohm Audio-Taper Potentiometer from Radioshack (Part Number 271-1722). Does anyone know which prong is the ground and what the other two are? Any help would be greatly appreciated.