i was wondering if there was anyway possible to take a car stereo system and inbed it into lets say a wall and hook it up to speakers and everything but run it off of the electrical outlet in the house? what would i need to rig up so that i could avoid the whole car battery set up which would need a constant charging that would build up hydrogen gas and pose as a potential fire hazzard? if any of that made sense, i appreciate your help.
You are likely a troll, but I'll answer anyway- yeah, just hook it up to a
12v power supply from Radio Shack or wherever. Be aware most power supplies are 'dirty', so it will sound pretty staticy. Also be aware the sound from most car stereos is designed around small spaces and small speakers, so in a normal size room, it is likely to sound pretty crappy. Make sure the ohm rating of the speakers you use is appropriate.All in all, cheaper and easier to buy a good boom box.
aem sends...
Use an old PC supply. They are cheap and have plenty of power to drive a car stereo, even a big one.
If you are doing this to get stations you can't get on your AC radios, I"m told it won't work. I'm told car radios get such good reception because of the car itself, maybe because it forms a ground plane around the base of the antenna.
If that is true, how well do the radios in Saturns work? They have all plastic bodies.
A 13.8v base station power supply such as you would use for powering a mobile CB radio indoors, is all that's needed. You can also safely use a 12v battery, by using a sealed gel-type, such as is found as the backup supply in alarm panels and emergency lighting. I'm not sure that the groundplane argument holds up. On vehicles where the antenna is wing mounted, the groundplane is very lop-sided. Also, vehicle antennas tend to be electrically short for the frequencies concerned, and don't contain anything in the way of loading coils to address this, so end up being pretty inefficient things.
Arfa
Many have head amps these days. Mine - I have a DAB radio - two, one for VHF band III and one for VHF Band II & AM.
This is a good idea, and not hard to do. Car radios have an edge over most table-top radios since they always incorporate RF amplifiers to boost weak-signal conditions, and pack a lot of power for the small size they take up. And very cheap, if picked up at a yard sale.
What you needis to understand which terminals on the radio itself are for
+/- 12 volts, Right +/- speaker and Left+/- speaker leads. Low voltage so not a fire hazzard. Sound will be as good as you'd want if you've found a reasonable radio and good speakers.The ground-plane theory sounds reasonable until one realizes that the antenna length and car's metal chassis size are nowhere near the right dimensions needed for resembling an AM ground plane.
Realize that the antenna is a relatively tuned device, which makes it more difficult to connect it ot a standard FM antenna. Other than that possible problem (which may not affect your installation at all) then Arfa's suggestion of a CB adapter is a good one.
Not always as safe as you'd like. I've had a car radio set the dashboard on fire when the alternator was screwed up and spiking higher than the noise-suppression coil could cope with.
In a pinch, I've been able to arc weld steel using a 12 volt car battery for power.
CWM
I live in Baltimore and there have been both AM and FM stations in WAshington which came in fine in my car, on two different radios of the same style, and on my friend's car radio.
But badly if at all in the house. Over the years I've tried 10 or more table radios and 2 stereo tuners, some pretty expensive. One AM radio station WRC never came in at all in the house, and WAMU and WCSP will come in somehwat on some radios and won't at all on others (and price doesn't seem to matter. Some of the cheapest work the best)
I wanted to take one of the car radios and build a cabinet for it, to hold it and the battery, and a small charger, but a friend who has worked in electronics said it wouldn't work as well in the house. Do you all think it would?
If you are inclined to email me for some reason, remove NOPSAM :-)
It will depend on the type of building you are in - car aerials are usually in the open. ;-)
But as said before - no need for a battery and charger unless you suffer from power cuts. You can buy mains power units designed for this purpose from RS etc.
Is a rooftop antenna out of the question?
What I'd do is lug a car battery into your livingroom, hook up the car radio and see if it works. Probably take less time than all the typing you've already done.
Bear in mind that most car stereos are designed to drive 4-ohm car speakers not 8-ohm home speakers... for long-term life of the car unit you may want to use the line-out function if it has one into your home amp.
Dave
You need a better antenna, not a different radio. Can you mount a whip on the house? Radio Shack used to sell a suitable model.
A solid state amp won't come to any harm driving a higher impedance speaker than the minimum recommended. You'll just get less power. Bridged output car amps ain't at the leading edge of Hi-Fi though, so even a budget home one will probably sound better.
When I mend the things on the workshop bench, I just hang in any piece of wire that comes to hand, and get perfectly good stereo results on FM, and good reception on AM, so I don't see why you shouldn't get good results with a decent antenna outside. At the end of the day, apart from the ones with built in amps, as Dave pointed out, car antennas are just an electrically short metal rod at worst, and a crude untuned helical wound on fibreglass at best. Just one thing though. If you went for a genuine car antenna, and needed to extend the cable over the length that it's supplied with, you need to use a genuine ready made up extension for the job. Extending with any old coax that comes to hand, for some reason, just doesn't work, as I found out a few years back ...
Arfa
Would a simple aerial tuning unit enable someone to use a car radio with a long wire aerial or any aerial that happens to be on the roof or in the loft?
Rudge
I did install a folded dipole in the attic and connect a radio to that. The only AM station I really wanted to get has changed frequencies and is now so weak I can't get it in the car either. It changed formats too so I don't even want it now.
Both stations I really want are PBS or C-Span, in other words, talk, so sound quality isn't important as long as it is clear.
The house is a wood frame townhouse. Which of the following would weaken the signal?
The roof is plywood covered by "tarpaper" which looks and feels like black paper, covered by asphalt shingles.
There are electric wires to ceiling lights in 5 places, most of which are off most of the time, and certainly could be if it helped reception.
Sheetrock walls, covering wood frame with fiberglass insulation, with T-111 (a wood product) on the outside of the first floor, bricks on the outside of the second floor. The radio stations are south of me, and the south side of my house has a medium sized aluminum framed window which is made up of 3 smaller aluminmum framed pieces of glass and 3 storm windows, and one vinyl bug-screen, with aluminum frame. Barely any electric wires in the south facing wall, and all can be off.
Holding up the second floor are probably two steel I-beams, the width of the house, spaced at thirds from the front of the house to the back.
Holding up the first floor are also two steel I-beams, but I don't expect to get good reception in the basement.
So how much worse is an aerial in the house than outside?
I can do that, but I liked the idea of portable so that I could use it in the bedroom, office, and kitchen. I spend a lot of time in each place. I could run an extension to each place -- I wish I had done this when I ran phone anc vcr lines. I don't have quite the energy now I used to.
Talk about using a sledgehammer to crack nut. What an unnecessary lot of work. And almost certainly inferior to a domestic hi fi.... Just get a decent hi-fi tuner and a good external aerial (maybe some kind of amplifier would be useful if the reception is no good). Your signal depends to a large extent on the quality of the aerial so don't skimp on it.
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