Hey guys reaching out to you to see if anyone can help me trouble shoot this problem. Alan has a set of blue tooth speakers installed. Running them Bluetooth works fine. I had to hard wire them for a video I'm shooting. I plugged in a 3.5mm plug into the jacks for incoming audio to the sound card from my computer then Audio out cable from the audio card to the audio input for the speakers. The speakers are now picking up all the electrical noise generated by the neck servos. Here is a video displaying the issue. Any ideas how to fix this issue?
Thanks in advance.
Link to video
Asked
— Edited
Is the cable shielded? If not, try that, it should at least help reduce the static and interference.
Reduce cable lengths.
Segregate cables (if they run close to the servos, can they be routed away from them?)
Ensure all grounds are good. If possible take them all back to the exact same point.
Others (Josh and Tony both spring to mind here) may know other things to check/try.
Do you have a Fryes in your area? (I normally would have recommended Radioshack, but alas, they are no more....).
Alan
As a side note; You would want to run AC-DC converters in a parallel circuit, not series. Some think if they run these converts in series it will give you more amp available. Not really so. One converter will supply all the amps to the load and only when that converter is topped out will the other converter start feeding the load. unless you build or buy a complicated load balancing device to feed through this should be avoided. You always want to try to balance loading in a power supply system.
Hope this helps.
The 3.5mm jacks may not be shielded. I purchased these very flat thin cables to get them thru the already crowded neck. I need two in the neck so getting shielded round cables might be impossible.
I'll start with the seperate power supply and if it's still noisy then I'll swap out the cables with shielded ones. Then go from there.
My onboard speakers are simply those double amplified speakers you can connect you iPhone or device to listen to music. It has 2 inch speakers which fit the holes on ALan. When they are powered off and back on they come on with a medium volume as default. I connected one digital port to the volume control so I can control the speaker volume with it. So when the internal speakers are turned all the way up, and the line in is increased with my computer volume control, the noise on the line is obvious.
So by leaving the amplified speakers at the medium default level when turned on and allowing the computer alone to control Volume no noise on the line could be heard. The little speakers are some how amplifying that noise when turned all the way up?!? So with out shielding etc, I've got it working.
EDIT
I forgot to mention that the reason you don't hear motor static when you use the Bluetooth connection is that the Bluetooth transmission is specifically designed to eliminate interference from most sources (It uses a combination of FM transmission, Spread Spectrum, and Digital packet data exchange). When enabled, it overwhelms most noise sources. When you plugged in a cable, you shut off the Bluetooth and introduced a way for the motor noise to become overwhelming since then all you had was a regular amplifier. There are ways to ameliorate the motor noise (some have been mentioned here) but what you did is apparently good enough. Good work!
No, if i turn down the internal speaker volume then I can't hear the noise. It only happens when i turn the volume up all the way. By keeping them midway and control the rest of the sound with the volume control on the computer.
@WB, makes since on the BT. I look forward to going back to that after the video gets shot.
is every thing still ok?