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Comment by rpgmaker | Hacker News Reader

I think it needs to die and be replaced by a standard wireless audio technology of some sort, more efficient than bluetooth. I honestly don't know how people can go about their daily commutes with cables dangling from their ears. To me, that is very uncomfortable. Bluetooth has served me well over the years but I think we need something better and way more energy efficient.

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And I honestly can't figure out how people can tolerate connection flakiness, quality issues, and battery drain for a set of headphones. I have tried many BT audio solutions and this is not wanna-be-audiophile pickiness, but the experience is universally substandard as far as I can tell.

Watching a video on my mac, and listening over bluetooth, the audio lags the video by at least 0.5 second, it's unwatchable if there's any sort of dialogue.

That hasn't been my experience at all.

I respect your opinion, but I don't ever want to recharge my headphones or change batteries.

Given that AM radios can be powered by the radio waves, I'll bet small headphones can be powered by small solar cells.

I believe you are talking about crystal radios, where the max volume is a whisper and the sound quality is like a tin can. Above that, it requires a wire stretched several meters to operate, which doesn't scream portable.

They'll be in your ears, so volume isn't the problem. And the sun will likely provide more energy than AM radio unless you're next to the transmitter, even for small solar cells.

If they're in my ears, how do they have sufficient cell surface area and incidence angle? Do I have antennae sticking out the sides of my head like a 1950s movie alien?

20 mW average maximum available power supply for headphones. Add some for the circuitry and radio, I bet you can manage at 500mW.

1368 W/m^2 solar energy on earth on average, or 0.137 W/mm^2 = 137 mW/mm^2. Let's assume 15% solar cell efficiency, so you'll get 20 mW/mm^2 out.

500mW / 20 mW/mm^2 = 25 mm^2. That's how large cells it be exposed to the sun.

Cover both the headphones and cables, and you'll be able to charge any batteries enough to survive the night.

You started out talking about wireless headphones. What cables?

Between your earbuds.

That sounds like solar roadways.

Bluetooth sucks at pairing. A lot of the time I have to try multiple times and it takes me or minute or so to pair. Whereas with headphones connecting takes like two seconds. I want to like Bluetooth but it's not making it easy.

The Plantronics Bluetooth stereo headset I have never fails to connect to my devices on startup. It will connect to two or three at first power up, announcing them as it does so. It has the reverse problem, I then want to signal which device should take priority over the limited bandwidth/processing on the device for audio quality. But I mention it because not all Bluetooth headphones pair to only one device at a time --though all the rest of mine share that limitation. And if USB-C is also an option, pairing fixes could be as easy as the iPad Pro's Pencil pairing: just plug it in and unplug when you want...

I use BT most of the time with a Philips bluetooth audio connector for my stereo. That works most of the time without problem. As long as you use one connection, it works. When I want to use another device to connect to the stereo, that's a problem. Then I suddenly have to reset the connector. And again when I want to go back.

with bluetooth you have a 'choice' between shitty lossy codec and proprietary patent encumbered one.

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