TaoTronics TT-BA01 Wireless Portable Bluetooth Stereo Music Transmitter

Mini JamBox

TaoTronics TT-BA01

Problem number 1: My cockpit speakers are blown out from over partying by various guests on board.
Problem number 2: When working on the boat I am frequently out of range of the cockpit speakers. Either I turn them way up (when they were not blown out) and annoy my neighbors or I don't have music on the bow or under the boat when working on it.

Solution 1: Purchase a Mini Jambox Bluetooth speaker. This permits me to play music from my laptops - either saved music (from, for example iTunes) or web music from Spotify or Pandora. Setting aside for the moment that sometimes getting the right set of speakers attached to the right music source I can play music from my PC onto the JamBox and carry it around Reboot.

Related problem: All of this is well and good. However, there is one limitation. I can not play audio from Reboot's built in audio system on my Bluetooth speakers. Reboot's audio system is actually a hybrid. It is an XM music player and also the source of XM marine weather for the multifunction display. When I am under the XM satellite it would be nice to be able to stream the XM audio to the Bluetooth speaker system. The obvious solution was to Bluetooth enable Reboot's audio system.

Solution to related problem: A Bluetooth transmitter. Although Bluetooth audio can be bidirectional (for example when the Mini JamBox is hooked up to Skype I can talk to the other party through the speakers) what was required here was the ability to transmit audio from the sound system to the speakers. I did some research and selected a TaoTronics TT-BA01 Wireless Portable Bluetooth Stereo Music Transmitter. I purchased it on Amazon - total cost about $36. Once you have paired this unit with your speakers you plug in the audio jack to any audio output and voila!

A nice addition to the boat.

Fair winds and following seas :)