Earbuds with electrostatic discharge protection
AssigneeApple Inc.
InventorsStanley Rabu, Ida Lo, Victor Tiscareno, Craig Lim, Ramachandran Chundru, Robert Steinfeld, Kurt Stiehl
Life of this patent
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Abstract
To avoid undesirable electrostatic discharge events while maintaining low leakage currents, earbuds may be provided with controlled electrostatic discharge paths. The discharge paths may include discrete components such as resistors or more distributed resistive components such as resistive elastomers. A resistive elastomer may be incorporated into an interior portion of an earbud between an earbud housing structure and a ground path. A resistive elastomer may also be used in forming an ear bud tip.
Claims22
Earbud headphones, comprising:
- at least one earbud having a metal earbud housing structure;
- an audio connector;
- at least one speaker driver;
- a cable having a positive signal line and a ground line, wherein the cable conveys audio signals for the at least one speaker driver from the audio connector to the at least one earbud;
- and
- an electrostatic discharge path that has an associated resistance through which electrostatic charge on the metal earbud housing structure is discharged into the ground line, wherein at least a portion of the electrostatic discharge path is interposed between the at least one speaker driver and the metal earbud housing structure.
Earbud headphones, comprising:
- an audio plug;
- a cable connected to the audio plug that contains signal lines and a ground line;
- and
- a pair of earbuds, each earbud containing a speaker driver, a conductive earbud housing member in which the speaker driver is mounted, and a resistive material interposed between the earbud housing member and the ground line that serves as an electrostatic discharge path to the ground line, wherein at least a portion of the resistive material is interposed between the earbud housing member and the speaker driver.
An earbud for a pair of earbud headphones having a cable with a ground path, comprising:
- at least one speaker;
- an elastomeric earbud member that is adapted to fit into an ear canal of a user;
- a conductive earbud housing structure to which the elastomeric earbud member is connected;
- and
- an electrostatic discharge path between the conductive earbud housing structure and the ground path having a resistance of between 300 kΩ and 40 MΩ, wherein at least a portion of the electrostatic discharge path is positioned between a portion of the conductive earbud housing structure and a portion of the at least one speaker.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.