jjdurrant Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 Hey Guys, my EDM-LCD-CS-EP should arrive any day.. just curious, do I need to buy anything else, like a antenna? Does it included the 12V power supply?Also, I plan to run an outdoor speaker in case that matters. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ItsMeBobO Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 Its great to let walkers and house guest visitors who get out of their cars to hear. After a few years I settled on a boom box on the front porch tuned to my frequency. It has a volume control and verifies my transmitter is working. When I used an amplifier & speaker I also needed an outside volume control. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmoore60 Posted October 5, 2010 Share Posted October 5, 2010 As Bob suggested if using some type of speakers outdoors for walkers and standing guest it is not a bad idea to have those speakers fed from a device tuned to your radio. This is 2 fold. As Bob stated you are able to easily verify that your transmitter is working. Second and probably equally important. If you run speakers and the transmitter off of the computer then there is a slight time lag on the transmitted signal to the listeners radio. This will cause a little bit of an echo effect. Could be annoying for those visitors that sit in their car and listen, but yet have the window down.Chuck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjdurrant Posted October 5, 2010 Author Share Posted October 5, 2010 Ok.. Boombox it is.. do I need an external antenna with the EDM? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Roberson Posted October 5, 2010 Share Posted October 5, 2010 The EDM will come with a 'test' wire antenna. Some just use that. I have before and got over 150' each direction. I just had the wire tapped to the inside of the front window in our office.I have built the antenna in this post from PC. Lets just say I certainly could not see my house anymore before the station faded. I have since turned the EDM way down. : )It all depends on how far you need to broadcast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Simmons Posted October 5, 2010 Share Posted October 5, 2010 Here's the antenna I'm using this year. Since mounting it up high on the front of the house I've also turned down the power quite a bit. It cost 70 bucks but it's all the antenna I'll ever need.http://lightorama.mywowbb.com/forum81/22953.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjdurrant Posted October 5, 2010 Author Share Posted October 5, 2010 Ok.. I don't need to broadcast that far.. the room the transmitter is in has a direct shot to the street via a window. Total distance is maybe 30 feet.Will I need to turn the EDM down out of the box, or does it ship 10mW? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Simmons Posted October 5, 2010 Share Posted October 5, 2010 This is the slippery slope that so many people tried to warn you about - the way one thing just leads to another...It wasn't the range that made me take the plunge for the professional quality antenna - it was the need for improved sound quality. In 2008 I cobbled together a 1/4 wave rabbit-ear antenna. It sounded pretty good that first year and the range was impressive. Last year it didn't sound as good and the range was quite a bit less, but was still marginally okay. This year when I plugged in the transmitter in July it sounded terrible. When I climbed up to take a look at the antenna, it was as rusty as a 57 Chevvy sitting in a farm field. I expect the Ramsey antenna will be the last one I ever need to purchase. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjdurrant Posted October 5, 2010 Author Share Posted October 5, 2010 Ok.. I am going to test with the test antenna and see how it goes. I will proceed with the Ramsey TM100 if I run into trouble. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Surfing4Dough Posted October 5, 2010 Share Posted October 5, 2010 jjdurrant wrote: Ok.. Boombox it is.. do I need an external antenna with the EDM?I just use the test antenna as-is with mine. I taped it to a wall hanging vertically from the ceiling in the garage, and got excellent sound quality, and range of 1/4-1/2 mile. You could always cut the antenna to match the length that is recommended for your frequency (google it if needing to find the calculation). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjdurrant Posted October 6, 2010 Author Share Posted October 6, 2010 I got the transmitter today.. shipping time was about 2 1/2 weeks. Much to my surprise the IC chip was already installed. I simply had to solder the power connector at three spots which was easy.So now I see three RCAs..YellowRedWhiteI assume Yellow is antenna and redwhite audio?Also, would is the best way to hook this to my audio card or computer speakers?Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Roberson Posted October 6, 2010 Share Posted October 6, 2010 You probably need a 3.5 mm to RCA cable.I bought a "Y" cable that plugs to my sound card. My speakers and EDM both plug into it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjdurrant Posted October 6, 2010 Author Share Posted October 6, 2010 Ok. That's what I figured. Are you using both red and white RCAs? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Roberson Posted October 6, 2010 Share Posted October 6, 2010 jjdurrant wrote: Ok. That's what I figured. Are you using both red and white RCAs?Yes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjdurrant Posted October 6, 2010 Author Share Posted October 6, 2010 Thanks.. ordering from NewEgg now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taybrynn Posted October 6, 2010 Share Posted October 6, 2010 I used the wire taped to the wall on the inside of my office the first year and got plenty of range. Last year I used a simple rabbit ears dipole and adjust length to match my frequency and again had it in my office ... and it about doubled the range of clear listening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Surfing4Dough Posted October 7, 2010 Share Posted October 7, 2010 jjdurrant wrote: Ok. That's what I figured. Are you using both red and white RCAs?Yes, that way it is stereo. One is the left channel and one is the right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terrypowerz Posted October 7, 2010 Share Posted October 7, 2010 I can highly recommend one of these little jewels:http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102975It will not only help better match the impedance of the output from your sound card to the input of the EDM, it will also allow you to have an easy fine tuning adjustment so that you can set the audio level a but easier and make it less sensitive to inadvertent volume adjustments on the PC. (The EDM has a pretty high gain audio in stage)It is a MUST have if you are using one of the MP3 directors (maybe in the future)! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Posted October 7, 2010 Share Posted October 7, 2010 Here's a super-secret picture of my incredibly messy show computer with a bunch of home-brew boxes:You can recognize the EDM transmitter stacked on top. Underneath that, in the white box is a Pira32 RDS encoder, which has been replaced by the EDM-LCD-RDS. Under that is a 3-Watt stereo audio amplifier, that drives the outside speakers. The box on the left with the two controls is my home-brew version of the Radio Shack volume control Terry mentioned. One control adjusts the volume to the transmitter, and the other was an experiment that failed.The little box in the background lets me inject the audio from the amplifier onto the unused pairs in the network cable, where it rides along with the LOR network to controllers boxes near the front of the house, where the speakers are.Behind that is the USB-RS485B. The audio from the PC is split by a 'Y' adapter so I can drive local speakers next to the PC. I keep the audio level constant on the PC, about 85%, and adjust everything else with the individual level controls: A volume control on the PC speakers, and the level controls on the boxes above. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjdurrant Posted October 7, 2010 Author Share Posted October 7, 2010 ^^^^^^^Wow... impressive Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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