@Taiko Audio ........I know you're extremely busy but I am betting that members here are eagerly awaiting some news on the multitude of new Taiko products in the pipeline
After an internal discussion we have decided to not share details on more upcoming products right now, the reason not being one of secrecy, but a more practical one which is the load these reveals put on our support team. Right now answering questions on the upcoming BPS and new interfaces already create a considerable load to which we don't want to add more, especially as the imminent shipping of the routers will undoubtedly create an additional load already.
In stead I'll share some more details on the current evolvement of the BPS:
A practical challenge with using battery power is when/how to recharge the battery cells combined with the amount of energy storage of the battery pack.
Some simple maths:
An Extreme uses between 60 and 80 watts of power depending on the amount of processing it has to perform and which expansions are installed, the amount of internal storage etc. So we should calculate using the upper limit being 80 watts.
If we want 20 hours of "off the grid" playback capability we will consume 1600 watts, that leaves 4 hours of charging which means we will need to draw 400 watts / hour in our charging window, add 10% for efficiency losses, meaning 440 watts an hour. If we want to charge using a Linear Power Supply that would involve somewhat of a hefty (physically large) supply. One could argue if it's out of the listening window anyway, we could use a SMPS, which can be more compact. But... it's a SMPS. We have developed technology to disconnect it from the mains when it doesn't need to charge, but all of this does not make it a cheap solution and actually not that compact as if it needs to be fan less it will actually require some heatsinking at those charging powers. Naturally we could turn this into a 16 hour listening / 8 hour charging window, that lowers the amount of battery cells needed, and reduces charging requirements, but all together the space savings are not "huge".
How could we implement this solution in a single chassis Extreme? By machining a new bottom plate which mounts on top of the motherboard, with integrated heat pipes, which effectively turns the entire chassis into a CPU cooler. This in turns frees up most of the internal space (except the PCIe expansion card area) for the battery pack and charging solution. Mission accomplished? Well yes with a catch, this solution involves a complete rebuild of the Extreme and it will end up weighing around 70Kg.
The second option is an additional enclosure, that was our initial design which we finished over a year ago and was displayed at Munich 2022. This chassis can be a bit smaller then the Extreme itself, about 420*420 in stead of 483*455 with around the same height. We subsequently created a new design entailing dual 420*420 cases. Each weighing in at around 35Kg. We were never able to actually release this solution due to the parts shortage situation which was a huge problem back then, things are steadily improving in that area luckily and we have received notification of the battery cells we ordered ages ago are now in Germany and will arrive here in the next few days!
While waiting for all this, we have developed a "mini" BPS. This design uses 6 battery cells in stead of the 40 cells the "large" BPS uses. This 'mini" BPS sports a fully programmable firmware with an integrated a charging solution (it still requires a DC input though). We initially designed this to power external devices like the router and switch. It could power an Extreme for 2-3 hours so did not even consider that as an option before. However what we have running now is an Extreme powered by 2 of these which are in turn charged by an adjusted Linear Power supply. As a BPS can deliver up to 2000A instantaneously it covers the peaks involved with booting up the Extreme greatly reducing the requirements on the Linear Power Supply which only needs to supply a relatively low constant current. It is very promising so far solving both the space and weight "issues" and being considerable more affordable (as the other 2 options virtually double the Extreme's retail). We are currently working on finetuning the firmware for seamless operation of this setup, and on the Linear Power supply which naturally now still affects SQ to a degree, but not like in a fully linear powered Extreme as it's function is now reduced to being a battery charger.
Running out of time for today, but I'll try to write something on the interface developments in the next few days.
