Note: if you're looking for a headset you can buy, I ended up buying this Logitech headset and have been reasonably happy with it.
So I'm not what you would call a DIY type guy, unless it comes to completely random stuff that is a total waste of my time. This is your warning.
I was trying to use Skype to talk to a colleague across the country today, and I was not happy with the sound quality. More importantly, I was concerned about the "cool factor" of my otherwise quite tolerable colleague who knows about this blog, because he said that it sounded as if "the Daleks were attacking", which must be some reference to the battle of Hastings or something gay.
At first, my expectations were not high. I had the only-ever-used-as-microphones iPod headphones nearby, and I was using the laptop's built in microphone. This microphone is really close to a fan, and a particularly noisy hard drive. Not a good experience. However, I didn't have a real headset around the apartment, so I thought about how I would improvise a suitable alternative.
I needed to have the ability to get the sound into my Mac. I can't find my only microphone, and it's XLR and 1/4" anyway, so I'd have to dig out my first-rev mbox and wire that up just to get audio in. I'll put up with a little whirring and chunking (and more importantly, my colleague will put up with a little whirring and chunking) to avoid that hassle.
What I did have were the following:
- An Apple iSight camera, which includes a microphone in the housing, and connects directly to the Mac using FireWire. This means I have a digital microphone. That's extra cool.
- A full set of mounts for the camera, including one adhesive mount intended for the back of one of the Apple Cinema Displays, which I had never used because who wants a big tape spot on the back of their $2k monitor? It has a long "boom" and a wide adhesive base, just about the size of the back of one of the ear cups on
- An old pair of Grado SR-80s.
- Lots of adhesive tape.
- Plenty of large newsprint, colored pens, and clay for important visualisation and prototyping.
And, of course, a digital camera to document the process, and no shame in putting pictures of myself with washed-and-not-brushed hat-head on the Intardweeb.
Let's begin, shall we?
I needed to understand the basic form of a headset, so I drew a preliminary sketch.
It looked as if the general basis included ear pieces and a mouth piece, and something connecting them together. It also looked as if I could use biyalis if I didn't mind a little onion in my ear. The next step was obviously to build a clay prototype, to see how all the pieces would fit together. Not quite giving up on the biyali model, I sculpted a very realistic vision of what would turn out to be the final product. They do the same thing with cars. Can you believe this took me only three minutes? I am a genius. Pininfarina, feel free to email me when you need help.
It was time to translate the prototype into an actual design, using the elements available to me. I carefully kept everything to scale, observing important things like perspective, shading, and a very respected time-tested technique called "churrascaria", which is, "use light and dark while eating something greasy", in my case, cold Pizza.
This accounted for all the parts, as prior planning prevents piss-poor performance. I learned that in the army. I also learned how to kill people without making a sound, in the dead of night, using only a dead vampire bat and an overripe mango. It's a real hit at parties, but overripe mangoes and vampire bats are not part of this bill of materials, so don't get distracted.
As you can see, the "boom" of the monitor mount will help the iSight clear several inches from the base, placing it nicely near the front of my face. The front of one's face is often where one can find one's mouth, which is convenient, given how they've made all those headsets with that configuration.
The great thing about using an iSight is that it's first-and-foremost a camera, which means that, based on my design, while I'm talking into the side of the iSight, the camera is pointed at other unexpected and unpredictable things, like anything that didn't get washed out by my neti pot.
Now we come to the output side of the equation. As it would be difficult to attach the monitor mount to my earphones, such as the before-mentioned iPod earphones-of-pain-and-bad-sound, I elected to use an old pair of Grado SR-80s. They're several years old and well-broken in, but they're kind of in the lonely middle in terms of usefulness. I have a pair of SR-125s for listening to music (such as that included in Katamari Damacy), and the SR-80s require too much power for most portable unamplified devices such as iPods or Mini Disc players. They have spent a lot of time just sitting around the apartment, unloved. Until destiny called. Via Skype.
It is important at any stage in the creation of complicated technical artifacts that one frequently checks one's own work. I laid out the headphone, monitor mount, iSight, and FireWire cable to make sure that this would actually work.
It's a thing of beauty, isn't it? Measure twice and don't have to cut anything at all.
All I needed to do was attach the round monitor mount to the outside of the ear cup, so I peeled back the adhesive from the base to make permanent the union of headphone and nostril-inspecting digital microphone.
I'm of course a kidder, (no relation) and that was just a joke. Ha ha. Take a moment to back away from your monitor and let your sides recover for a brief intermezzo.
Better?
OK.
For this, a hopefully temporary measure, I decided to use good old fashioned adhesive tape, invented in Scotland, which is why they were beaten back to the north by the english, who used rivets, leather and buckles, and little metal rings to hold their weapons and armor together. Also, the english wore pants, shrewdly avoiding the distraction of "Friday Flip-Up Day" during battle.
In case the adhesive tape (here decorated with the tartan of the clan "Mc3m", whose descendents have settled in the Minnesota area and taken up mining, dropping the "Mc" from their name as they came through Ellis Island.) was insufficient to hold the boom onto the headphones, I was prepared to learn from the scots' miserable mistake and back things up with a binder clip, of the "Big Honkin'" variety, judging that a C-clamp would require just a bit too much skull modification.
I didn't have any double-sided "scotch" tape, so I had to improvise, making little rolls of the tape. Now, this is a very important thing to know should you desire to follow in my footsteps with this fantastic construction: the sticky side of these rolls needs to be on the outside. I would not have known this had I not spent countless recesses, lunches, and afternoons in various teachers' classrooms, making tape rolls under their watchful eyes in preparations to hang battle standards throughout the school, invigorating students to attack, maim, and even kill our nemesiseseses at other schools. Not yet having learned about the bat-and-mango trick, I am ashamed to this day that I was unable to participate.
This is what the monitor mount looked like, with iSight attached, ready for final assembly.
All that remained was to stick the sticky bit to the place where the sticky bit needed to go.
It's a thing of beauty, as if G-d ordained that these two things would come together to make something greater than the sum of its parts. They don't call me reeses for nothing.
I hired a very famous celebrity to model the headset while I took pictures, but apparently Russell Crowe really likes other men's wives, so he spent some time in the living room talking to Kat while I had to make do with a tripod and the delayed-shutter-release feature.
As you can see, everything came together absolutely perfectly, due primarily to the exhaustively reflective methodology I employed in its conception.
Here is another view, from the front, of the happy user.
It's important to do a post-mortem of all projects, even if they are considered resounding successes. In that vein, I definitely had a few lessons-learned during the execution of this endeavor:
- Comb my hair before taking photos I'll be putting onto the Intardweeb. Or wear a cap. Or a kippa.
- Shave every once in a while.
- Wear a shirt that doesn't moire when photographed by a digital camera.
- Wear a shirt that doesn't make you look like a complete slob. It's like I picked the absolute most casual shirt out of my wardrobe and wore it, just for these pictures.
- Perhaps spend a little more time on the "drawing bits" and "making bits out of clay" parts, so that they look vaguely realistic, rather than some recon-deconstructionist exhibit.
- If your "in use" photos do not reveal the hand perched just out of frame to catch the inevitably-falling camera before it hits the ground, perhaps "sticky tape" is not the best solution for conjoining the pieces.
Those minor lessons aside, I saved a great deal of money in comparison to actually buying a headset. Based on current retail prices, I could buy an acceptable headset for Skype for about $60. Instead, I built my own for only $95 + $149 + a few cents for tape, newsprint, and ink = $244.
Disclaimer:
I am a trained professional technical person, with a long history of experience doing technical things with technical...things. If, due to your incompetence, ineptitude, and inferiority, you follow these directions and fail to have the same result, any results you do have, up to and including dying, killing everyone around you, or supergluing your iSight to your ear, I am in no way liable. I would like pictures, though.
I am also bound to disclose I am not affiliated with Skype, Grado, 3m, Apple, or Scotland, in any way. And I have never killed anyone using the combination of a vampire bat and an overripe mango. Or any type of mango.
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