Automatic pausing ... because I'm lazy

August 4, 2005 8:49 AM

Are there such things as automatic-pause headphones?

I would like a method for pausing music depending on the state of my headphones. I want to put on a pair of headphones and start iTunes/MusicMatch/WMP and play music. When I take the headphones off my ears (and put them around my neck or on the desk or whatever), it would be neat if the music paused automagically. Does this exist? I could even settle for having to manually pull the headphone jack out of the computer to make it pause.

If this doesn't exist, could it be accomplished?

I have coping techniques for quickly pausing music on my computer, like the FoxyTunes plugin for Firefox, but one would think this would have been invented by now.

posted by clearlynuts to computers & internet (17 comments total)

The iPod pauses when the headphones are unplugged.
posted by keswick at 8:55 AM on August 4, 2005

The problem is that headphones only receive sound, they don't have the ability to send information to the player. The headphones would have no way of telling the player that the headphones were removed from the ears.

I love the idea though.
posted by null terminated at 9:04 AM on August 4, 2005

Sounds like a neat idea. You should patent it.
posted by caddis at 11:40 AM on August 4, 2005

The iPod functionality has to do with detecting a closed circuit through the headphones, which only happens when something's plugged into the jack (and connects the two contacts inside). Headphones come out of jack = circuit opens = iPod pauses.

If you could combine that functionality with a switch in the headphones that you could trigger, either manually or through some automagical sensor that would somehow know your 'phones aren't around your ears, then you've got it.

But really, it's much easier to just hit pause on your player.
posted by chrominance at 11:53 AM on August 4, 2005

Well, I don't think anything like this exists, but it could be done by creating an electrical circuit through your head, or maybe a heat sensor.
posted by delmoi at 12:01 PM on August 4, 2005

The problem is that headphones only receive sound, they don't have the ability to send information to the player.

I thought I had an old (Kenwood?) portable CD player where it had some buttons on the headset cord so you could play, pause, etc. No batteries in the headphones. Maybe the memory is part of my wishful thinking.

Sounds like a neat idea. You should patent it.

I'd be happy if someone just stole the idea and gave me free auto-pausing headphones for life.
posted by clearlynuts at 12:50 PM on August 4, 2005

actually if you create headphones with a usb interface, you don't really need an additional audio plug... just have sound and remote control go through USB. of course, this will only work with computers.
posted by ori at 1:05 PM on August 4, 2005

clearynuts: I could be mistaken, but that's what I understand.

See also here.
posted by null terminated at 1:06 PM on August 4, 2005

pretend the previous post proceeds this one:

The problem is that headphones only receive sound, they don't have the ability to send information to the player.

I thought I had an old (Kenwood?) portable CD player where it had some buttons on the headset cord so you could play, pause, etc. No batteries in the headphones. Maybe the memory is part of my wishful thinking.

No, the iPod can have a remote control attached to the headphones as well. This requires non-standard wiring between the headphones and the player, and it requires that they both be designed to interface with one another.

The way I see it is:


(--) ---- headphones
|
|
|
|
|
|----> -- headphones jack
|
U ---- USB jack


I don't know how you'd design the headphones to detect if they are "on the ears". Maybe a small microphone on one phone that can detect if soundwaves are hitting it from the other phone, indicating that there is nothing (i.e. a head) buffering sound between the two.

the USB adapter would plug into a computer, and you can write a driver rather easily that controls whatever audio player is currently active.

Someone should build this!
posted by ori at 1:06 PM on August 4, 2005

How about something in the armature connecting the two earphones that broke a circuit if there wasn't something of head-width holding the phones apart?
posted by COBRA! at 1:36 PM on August 4, 2005

I don't know how you'd design the headphones to detect if they are "on the ears". Maybe a small microphone on one phone that can detect if soundwaves are hitting it from the other phone, indicating that there is nothing (i.e. a head) buffering sound between the two.

Why make it more complicated than it needs to be? You just need capacitance sensors on the earpads, or even plain old mechanical switches that get pressed when the headphone's on your noggin.
posted by kindall at 1:39 PM on August 4, 2005

ori, I think you're on the right track with the USB thing. It didn't even occur to me that there are USB headphones (there are according to Google).

Maybe you can run a low-level current through the headphones. When they're on your head, the circuit is closed. When they aren't, it's open. Write the driver to pause the software? You can get low-power from USB. Is that safe for use with head?

There's always the head-width thing that COBRA! mentions. Maybe a measurement of the tension in the arm? that's probably applying power near the head again, but hell, they have wireless headphones that have enough power to receive stereo in them.
posted by clearlynuts at 1:50 PM on August 4, 2005

Along with the head-sense idea: I seem to remember seeing flex sensors based on the amount of light passed through a length of optical fiber. The more the fiber bent the less light transmitted. Not sure about how sensitive the light receiver would have to be or if the effect would be dramatic enough. I'm sure however that there would be enough power for it coming off of a usb port.
posted by darksquirrel at 2:44 PM on August 4, 2005

They did make headphones with controls built onto them. It was an option for my old magnavox portable CD player. It uses the same wires you hook your "regular" headphones to. I'm not sure of the electronics behind it, but the CD player could be easily confused into doing random things if you would connect/disconnect the headphones repeatedly.
posted by shepd at 3:27 PM on August 4, 2005

Are you on a Mac? Do you have a cell phone too? Do you have a phone with Bluetooth and a computer w/ BT or a BT adapter? If so look at Salling Clicker. (Some mobile phones - like the Sony Ericsson S710 - have similar software built in for Windows and there (should)'s equivilants for Windows as well.) Apart from the other cool stuff it does, it'll pause/lock your computer when your phone moves out of range of your computer. A friend used this to great effect on his Mac.

Alternatively, bluetooth headphones? BT 2.0 + EDR is fast enough to do audio now (fyi: link goes to an iPod product, there might be a generic PC version but I've not looked).

If bluetooth is completely out, then I might recommend QuickSilver on the Mac if you've got one, or possibly AppRocket on Windows. With QS on my Mac I hit F16 to pause iTunes. Not quite sensing you leave but damned near easy enough.
posted by mrg at 5:49 PM on August 4, 2005

You could make some headphones that would be capable of this without too much effort (for an iPod). You'd just have a pressure switch that had the current from the iPod's outs running through it. Take 'em off your ears, and the iPod would sense the broken circuit and stop.
The real problem isn't the headphones, it's having an audio device that would recognize the circuit as important (which is unlikely in analogue devices, though you could do it).
It's a shame that there's not a MeFi product works, where we could just have our machine shop whip up these sorts of things.
That's the next pony I'm asking Matt for.
posted by klangklangston at 1:28 AM on August 5, 2005

While we're at it, why not build in a couple of EEG electrodes that detect vertex waves and sleep spindles and automatically pause the music until you wake up again.
posted by ikkyu2 at 4:38 AM on August 6, 2005