A Blue Tooth Setup

Left most is the end of a meeting between (moving left to right) Marc Rauer and Jiashi Duan. Jiashi (known as Josh by those who deal with him) has been on this website before in conjunction with this website's conversion of LP to digital. Josh works for a computer hardware and software supplier, Apex computer, distributing everything imaginable that involves intel/windows PCs including what we have here: Marc Rauer, who has known Josh since the 1990's, buying some new speakers to use when substitute leading. These speakers are different and you can see the packaging as well as the speakers themselves in this montage. Notice the roundness and curviture of both which make each speaker look like a tumbler. But, these are not just speakers. They are a show in themselves as you will see below

Anyway, these speakers do look a lot like glasses, don't they? Even more surprising, you can feel the water within. Upend either speaker and you can see water accumulate at the bottom of the glass. What type of speakers contain water? Well, these! They emulate the Bellagio fountains in Las Vegas (pictures of which we include in this montage). Both the fountains and these speakers have colored lights and both pump the water lower and higher depending on the volume.

Another interesting aspect is that the speakers are blue tooth applicable. Blue tooth related products are marked by a kind of large blue B type letter although this character has some norse heritage. It's not always easy to connect blue tooth devices since there are definite server/client issues to resolve as developed by the original bluetooth developers. And, by the way, the term Server/Client as we are told, is network talk for how devices deal with each other: In this case one device orders and the other follows commands. The rest of these pictures show Marc in the process of setting up one of his tablets/laptops to wirelessly communicate with the speakers. We asked him to document by screenshot his setup and the last of the pictures show the final result as the speakers erupt in water and light to Haim Moshe's Rak Elohim. Unfortunately, a still picture can't capture the movement so we will provide a location below to see a video of this assuming your web browser is HTML 5 compliant.

Although you may already be using Blue Tooth, you may have a question about the technology. If you do, you are at the wrong website. click here to be linked to the Blue Tooth special interest group's web site (displayed in this montage) which controls the world of blue tooth. We can however tell you that Blue Tooth is the result of an attempt, started in 1989, to do wireless networking. A group of scientists started to experiment with very high frequency radio waves. The drawback to a networking solution should have become obvious very quickly, ultra high radio waves have limited reach as opposed to regular radio which is why WIFI uses the later. But, this close range connectivity has turned out to be perfect for the smart phone connected society that we have become in recent years.

By the way, if your computer doesn't support Blue Tooth, you can still be connected as long as your operating system supports this type of communication. One of these pictures shows a Blue tooth dangle which provides for blue tooth communication using a USB port.

Now that these speakers are working, the next plan is to try them out at an Israeli dance session. Sharon's Tuesday class was to be the guinea pig. But, unfortunately, there is a snag. Her computer is running Vista and Vista has limited connectivity as far as Blue Tooth is concerned. Luckily, the speakers come with an auxiliary cable for wired connection where wireless is not possible. This montage shows Sharon being set up with these new speakers.

Although there were few photos taken of the dancing as the photographer concentrated on the equipment, here is a montage trying to connect the speakers with the dancers. Again, only a bit of a trace of lighting can really be seen as the water flow is lost due to the speed of the camera setting.

Even though wireless operations failed when the previous montage pictures were taken on Dec 9, 2014, Marc Rauer was aware that he would have another try at this. Marc subbed for Sharon on Jan 6th, 2015 armed with all sorts of equipment, including some of Sharon's. This montage shows the speakers and computer equipment in operation on that night. For most of the night the speakers resided some 25 ft away from the computer controlling them. This was within Bluetooth's own recommendation of a 30 ft limit. So, in this montage we can see the speakers being stationed on their own separate table and the computers (Marc's and Sharon's) controlling the music - although only Marc's controlled the bluetooth speakers - at the front of the dance floor.

Below is a video (available to viewers using an HTML 5 - or - above- compliant browser) of the speakers playing a portion of Rak Elohim. This is a fast paced tune and the speakers react accordingly