How to stop a signal going through a wire?
Asked by
inunsure (
423
)
December 29th, 2011
I’m not sure if this is at all possible but I want to stop a signal going from one end a wire to the other without cutting it. Is there anything that could do this?
Just imagine stopping music from your ipod to the earphones without cutting the wire or of course taking it out or turning the sound off.
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10 Answers
Use a switch or a variable resistor
You could inject noise into the line by sending a random signal that covers up the actual signal. You could also try to ground the line. This is when you attach another wire directly to the wire carrying the signal, but ground the other end so that all of the electricity in the line travels into whatever you are using as a ground.
@halabihazem That would be the same as turning the sound off.
Yeah I just realized he/she doesn’t want to cut the wire. I honestly don’t get what’s the point. Can you clarify more?
I’d like to do a magic trick were I cut and restore a pair of earphones but didn’t know if it was possible to stop the music to add to the effect.
@inunsure It’s for a magic trick? Oh, for that you can pull a whole bunch of tricks. The first is to actually edit the sound file so that there is nothing playing, and then time your act so that it seems like the music is playing but the earphones are broken.
The second idea is you use this trick: when you put the “broken” earphones in, you could put plug it into the wrong spot. Many laptops, like the one that I am using, have two identical sockets, one for earphones and one for a microphone, right next to each other. You could plug it into the wrong one and nobody will notice. When they are “fixed”, you could plug it into the right socket, and people won’t notice that they are not the same.
I think adding the silence thing to the audio track is not the proper way to go. If you’re using “earphones”, then the person wearing them will realize that there is a mismatch (even if slight) between the time you connect them and the time music plays. I suggest hiding a bluetooth keyboard somewhere in your clothes and pressing the play button right when you connect the wires. I know it’s an overkill, but it WILL work :)
I wonder if there is a way to make it so that the music only plays through the earphones and not the built-in speakers on the laptop (assuming that you are using a laptop). Maybe you could go and make it so that the laptop does not use the speakers. On my laptop, I can go to the control panel and go to where it tells me to manage audio devices (your laptop may be different, but you should be able to find it). I can then click on the speakers and click to disable them.
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