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Plugzee wants to help make your old speakers Bluetooth capable
A new Indiegogo campaign for a device called Plugzee was launched on March 3rd and has already doubled it’s goal. The device is a small square dongle that allows you to give your non-Bluetooth speaker system the ability to connect via Bluetooth to your more modern devices. Using the standard 3.5mm jack found on most devices, it acts as a converter allowing your older devices to stream wirelessly. Although it isn’t the first device to do this, it aims to be the best.
Using aptX technology the dongle allows you to stream CD quality songs to your speaker without disrupting quality. It has a built-in microphone with noise cancellation that can also be used for hands-free calling as well as Siri and Google Now. So if you have a car with an auxiliary input you can just plug this in for safer driving. Since it uses Bluetooth 4.0 the range is around 30 feet and the battery life will last about 18 hours of non-stop music streaming. If that’s accurate it will probably outlive the phone streaming to it. It charges via micro USB so until USB-C takes over the world, charging shouldn’t be too much of an issue.
If you’re looking for a way to breathe some new life into some of your older devices this seems like a good way to do it. The adapter will retail for $60 but if you pre-order there are some early bird specials that can still save you a couple bucks on the purchase. Since the goal was funded in a matter of days there are also some stretch goals that will be announced as the campaign moves forward, but they don’t know what they are yet. So the team behind Plugzee has asked for requests as to what they should add as a stretch goal. If all goes smoothly they intend to begin shipping in July of this year.