Patent Application
20140205108
This is an original U.S. patent application.
The invention relates to portable wireless audio systems. More specifically, the invention relates to wireless headphone systems with integrated earpiece storage provisions.
Portable audio playback systems have developed from fragile, low-fidelity devices and heavy, power-hungry systems that are only nominally portable; through small, monophonic transistor radios with crude earplug headsets; to Walkman®-style devices to reproduce (and often to record) sounds on various media. Presently, tiny, power-efficient digital recorders and players can store weeks' worth of audio and video, and can play continuously for dozens of hours.
To deliver reproduced sound to a listener, portable audio systems often rely on headsets or headphones, which are themselves objects of active development and refinement. Many conflicting requirements affect the design of headsets. It is difficult to provide excellent sound quality, durability, convenience of use, ease of storage, long playback duration, affordability and other desirable characteristics in a single product. Thus, headset designs represent a compromise among competing goals. In this environment, products that target unexplored areas of the design space may find commercial acceptance and may be of significant value in the field.
A wireless audio headset in a pendant-necklace form includes a power supply, a wireless receiver and audio processing circuitry in a pendant module. The module has two flexible cables extending therefrom to in-ear audio drivers (speakers, “earbuds”). The cables may be joined together by a clasp, subparts of which are attached to each of the cables, so that the pendant may be suspended from the user's neck by the cables. The pendant includes one or more storage compartments or receptacles to hold the in-ear audio drivers when the device is not in use. Other configurations and variations are also described and claimed.
Embodiments of the invention are illustrated by way of example and not by way of limitation in the figures of the accompanying drawings in which like references indicate similar elements. It should be noted that references to “an” or “one” embodiment in this disclosure are not necessarily to the same embodiment, and such references mean “at least one.”
Embodiments of the invention are wireless headsets configured to be worn as necklaces, with storage for earphones built into a necklace pendant so that the embodiment can be worn as an ordinary necklace when not in use as an audio playback monitor.
An embodiment may also include a display 526, which may be as simple as an indicator LED to show that the unit is powered on, or as sophisticated as a two-dimensional graphical display to show system state, to provide a richer user interface, or to display abstract designs and patterns. For example, an embodiment with a graphical display may show sound volume and frequency by means of pulsing or gyrating colors and brightness.
Some embodiments may include a wired input 527, such as a 3.5 mm stereo jack, to accept audio signals provided by a cable; and/or an output jack 528 such as a 3.5 mm stereo jack, to send an audio signal to another unit. Thus, one user of an embodiment may connect her pendant to another user's so that both can listen to the same audio program.
The pendant portion of the embodiment includes physical storage compartments 529, which are suitable for accepting and securing the earphones of the embodiment when not in use.
Flexible, supple wires or cables 530 and 540 connect the pendant to earphones 570 and 580. These wires carry the audio signals from audio amplifier 524, but they also support the pendant as a necklace. Each wire extends to a locking, turnaround clasp structure 550, 560, and then returns to its corresponding earphone (note the “U” turn of wire 530 indicated at 535). The clasp halves 550, 560 may be identical or complementary. In this Figure, a hook and loop clasp is shown, but pairs of mating hooks, twist-lock barrels, or magnetic clasps may also be used. Each clasp half should lock or hold or prevent the wire from sliding freely through it, so that the length of the pendant-suspending wire and the wire from the clasp half to the earphone do not change inadvertently. However, to adjust the lengths of the two portions of the wire, it is preferable that the lock mechanism be easily defeated and then re-engaged once the wires are adjusted to suit the user.
The pendant portion of an embodiment forms a centralized mass that helps hold the unit in place about the wearer's neck, and helps keep the ends of the headphone wires at their respective clasps from moving about. (Motion and tugging on the headphone wires can pull the earphones out of the user's ears, which is annoying and inconvenient.) The clasp must be strong enough to resist the tension force of the pendant's mass acting through the suspension wires.
The features and characteristics of the present invention have been described largely by reference to specific examples and in terms of particular configurations of components. However, those of skill in the art will recognize that self-storing wireless audio headsets can also be arranged differently than herein described. Such alternate arrangements and variations are understood to be captured according to the following claims.
