Taranis - speaker buzz

Hardware help and support for the FrSky Taranis
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Rob Thomson
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Taranis - speaker buzz

Post by Rob Thomson »

So.. An easy fix.
uploadfromtaptalk1376855545088.jpg
Some aluminium foil, wrapper in tape to insulate electrically.

Then... Taped over the speaker.

Buzz? What buzz!

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Flaps 30
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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by Flaps 30 »

Is the foil being used to stop Cosmic rays from hitting a sensitive part of the radio? Or possibly the electrical field created by lightning discharges (around 100/per second) that give rise to a 'buzz' at about 100Hz?
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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by Rob Thomson »

Loo. Then cosmic rays :)

I tried it as a random fix - and it worked!

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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by jhsa »

good that worked.. My random fixes normally include a hammer.. ;)
Very rare I had good results :mrgreen:
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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by Rob Thomson »

Well... works for me.

No guarantee it will work for anyone else!!
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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by jhsa »

yeah, but you didn't try the hammer.. :)

try it, you'd be surprised.. :mrgreen:
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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by Flaps 30 »

Don't forget the WD40... You can use it on pots. switches and anything else that moves. Make sure that you thoroughly soak the suspect component and the surrounding areas. :)
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Re: Sv: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by dvogonen »

After destroying a couple of coal track pots with WD-40 I am very careful. If the pots are of low quality WD-40 may dissolve the glue that holds the coal in place .
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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by G550Ted »

Then just duct tape them back where they belong! :mrgreen: If that doesn't work, see jhsa's recommendation for a hammer. As a last resort there is always Super Glue. :lol:

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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by rperkins »

way to go. good fix.
so the interference is probably rf induced as opposed to power supply induced ?
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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by Rob Thomson »

Well. I think a large portion of it is.

The foil sorts this out. It is much reduced, but not 100% gone. I suspect the final bit will probably need a low pass filter.

But to be honest.. Not sure I am bothered. I barely notice the remainder!

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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by Kilrah »

Yes it is RF induced, was never said otherwise :)
Moving the antenna around changes the level of the sound. Actually the way I put it I barely have any noise without any mod :)

When I scoped the sound path on the proto I could see that the interference was coming from the output - so it would match Rob's fix. IMO the speaker's coil which is right next to the antenna picks up the RF energy and sends it back to the amp, it gets through the feedback loop and gets amplified.
I doubt any kind of filter would help, as what we want to get rid of is right where the sound we DO want also is - so filtering out the RF-induced noise would kill the audio quality at the same time.
Shielding is the best approach if it works.
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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by Rob Thomson »

Is there any value in grounding the shield?

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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by jhsa »

so, now that we know how to fix it, someone tell frsky please ;) :D
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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by Kilrah »

Yes of course, a shield should always be grounded.

Let's maybe test a bit more? For now we only have one person reporting success...
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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by Rob Thomson »

Agreed. :-)
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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by rperkins »

I know some computer speakers and center channel home theater speakers were marketed as 'shielded' . This was because the magnets in the speakers distorted the images on tube type displays. I wonder if the speakers themselves were shielded, or was just the enclosure shielded. It would be great if a 'shielded' speaker was available that could replace the existing speaker.

As far as grounding or not grounding, it could go either way. My guess is ungrounded. But i'm cheating because you have already said it works :). For 5 years i worked in a screen room, aka faraday cage. It had 2 levels of isolation. One was grounded and one wasnt. That was a long time ago
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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by Rob Thomson »

Simple way to test the affect.

Wrap the antenna in foil.

You should reduce the hiss :)

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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by G550Ted »

That may be very hazardous to the radio's RF section! I don't think I'll test that.

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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by Rob Thomson »

Fair point!

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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by Flaps 30 »

Doing a quick test by covering the antenna with your fingers for a few seconds won't harm the RF section and it will prove if that is the problem.

If the test proves positive, then I would have thought that a small (100pF - 1000pF) across the speaker terminals on the main board would do the job. Or you could try a small ferrite bead on each wire near the main board.
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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by Rob Thomson »

Anyone else care to test?
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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by ShowMaster »

While on the topic of speaker and audio,
Is there anything we can do to improve the audio quality?
The megasound board and the sky board have such a great sound and level over the Taranis.
I'm not trying to bash the audio but instead discuss improvement options. After all, this is an open forum to discuss technical issues or improvements on many different radios.
Many questions and posable improvements would be addressed by forum users if we were able to look at schematics and parts used for the Taranis. This isn't possible at this time so everything must be reversed engineered or left stock.

I saw an early on a post saying the speaker supplied is not what the beta testers had. It was changed during final production. It it posable that simply changing the stock one for another will improve the audio? Will it in some way damage bye audio amp if its the wrong impedance?
Is the audio out of the earphone jack better than the speaker audio, something I'll explore first.
Is the audio IC limited in power and audio response compared to the mega or sky IC?
Maybe Kilrah or other beta testers could comment as a purely technical discussion so we keep this from becoming a negative counter productive discussion.
My point is that it could be posable to build up a small footprint audio amp and tap into the audio without doing any internal damage. This board could feed the stock or upgraded speaker.
This would be the easiest option since Frsky needs to focus on the stick upgrades and not everyone will require any audio upgrades.
At the same time maybe better audio and RF filtering could be added to this add on board.

So for positive discussion only please,
Ideas on weather a new speaker or circuit upgrade would improve the audio quality.
I like me Taranis and the price and just would like to improve the audio.
SM
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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by rperkins »

Use a lower impedence speaker- till ya blow the power amp
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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by Kilrah »

The audio is perfectly good from the audio jack, and it's the same signal that goes to the speaker, so the only thing... is the speaker.
The one supplied with sky9x is like 3x the size, no wonder it has more punch/better response.
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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by Spoogy »

rperkins wrote:I know some computer speakers and center channel home theater speakers were marketed as 'shielded' . This was because the magnets in the speakers distorted the images on tube type displays. I wonder if the speakers themselves were shielded, or was just the enclosure shielded. It would be great if a 'shielded' speaker was available that could replace the existing speaker.

As far as grounding or not grounding, it could go either way. My guess is ungrounded. But i'm cheating because you have already said it works :). For 5 years i worked in a screen room, aka faraday cage. It had 2 levels of isolation. One was grounded and one wasnt. That was a long time ago
I opened one that kind of speaker years ago. There was a metal 'cup' over the magnetic of the speaker and one wire soldered from that cup to speaker itself if I recall correctly.
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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by SkyNorth »

The speaker with SKY9x, was designed for voice output , and I rolled off the audio output above 8khz, to help minimize
Hiss and digital system noise
You can buy it from Mouser for under $3.
Mouser # 665-AS03608MR-5-R - Frequency range 500 - 4000hz , 91db at 0.1W - 1khz - 36mm Dia.

-Brent
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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by Kilrah »

Thanks for the info.

The speaker in the Taranis was very likely chosen mainly so that it would fit in the existing case moulding - which was originally intended for a piezo of some sort many years go, and is about 20mm at most.
But as said the production one is frankly quite good, especially compared to the previous ones in the protos.
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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by Rob Thomson »

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Re: Taranis - speaker buzz - fixed

Post by jhsa »

I have a 20 or 25 mm speaker in one of my radios and has a very good sound..
I had to replace one of them cos I blew it up... But my radios are loooouuud ;)
To fly I use the volume setting at about 3 or so and the others already complain ;) :)


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