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AssigneeNorcon Electronics Inc.
InventorsNorman Schlaff, Mario Maltese
Estimating the term…
There is disclosed a compact battery-powered, self-contained talk-through unit for passing voice communications through a partition. Typically, the unit is installed in a window partition separating an attendant from the public. Facing the outside of the unit area a microphone and a speaker. Facing the inside, a speaker is mounted within the unit and a microphone is contained at the end of a gooseneck connector. In the quiescent condition, speech from the outside is level-compressed and heard on the inside; speech on the inside, e.g., between two attendants, is not amplified and heard on the outside. It is only when an attendant talks within approximately 2 inches of the gooseneck microphone that the outside-to-inside amplification is turned off and the inside-to-outside amplification is turned on. In this way, the attendant has complete, hands-free control of voice communications; there is no competition between talkers and there is no acoustic feedback.
A self-contained, talk-through unit comprising a housing adapted for mounting on a partition, a first speaker and a first microphone contained in said housing and facing in a first direction, a second speaker and a second microphone contained in said housing and facing in an opposite direction, said housing including connecting means extending in said opposite direction with said second microphone being mounted at the end thereof at least several inches away from said second speaker, first amplifying means contained in said housing for amplifying a signal at said first microphone and for driving said second speaker, said first amplifying means including level-compression means for reducing variations in the output level of said second speaker in the presence of voice level variations in the vicinity of said first microphone, second amplifying means contained in said housing for amplifying a signal at said second microphone and for driving said first speaker, control means contained in said housing for normally enabling said first amplifying means and disabling said second amplifying means, sensing means contained in said housing responsive to the signal at said second microphone exceeding a pre-set threshold level for disabling said first amplifying means and for enabling said second amplifying means, means for holding said second amplifying means enabled and for holding said first amplifying means disabled for a fraction of a second ranging from 250 to 500 milliseconds even after the signal at said second microphone drops below said pre-set threshold level, said fraction of a second being proportional to the signal level at said second microphone during the operation of said sensing means, and battery means contained in said housing for powering said first and second amplifying means, said control means and said sensing means.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.