Take something like a good pair of Sennheiser cans, add an Arduino, with WiFi and MP3 shield, and a cellphone battery for power, and you have perfect streaming audio that follows you around, secure (WPA?) and without FM interference or IR line-of-sight issues. Use a second unit as a base station (Encoding to MP3 or preferably FLAC for greater quality) and you have a complete system that can operate no matter what the input, and the second unit can operate as a charging unit, along with extra security, like the two devices talking to each other over a standard wired serial link (As part of the charging cable) and choosing a WiFi network name and key randomly on-the-fly.
Problems that would need to be solved:
- Bandwidth between WiFi and MP3 decoder - There's an "Ethernet MP3 player" being worked on at the moment on this board, this would simply be swapping the wired Ethernet for WiFi. Could SPI be used for both sides? It might increase available bandwidth.
- Power usage - How much would this setup drain the battery, and how long would it last? Probably assuming a 1500mAh battery
- Miniaturization - How small can this be made? The smaller the better, especially if it's going to be strapped on someone's head.
Any thoughts?