Headphones Magnetic Clip

When wearing headphones I find that repeated pulling on the wires tends to irritate the ears. An extreme example is wearing in-ear headphones on a motorbike with the wire underneath the jacket. There are plenty of headphone designs that hook around the neck with a clip on the back, but I think the design can be improved with a neodymium magnet clip instead and by using the wires directly instead of a string. Pros: - The clip is easy to operate even with gloves. it snaps shut in proximity. - A strong accidental or deliberate pull will open the clip without ripping the wires. - Clip strength can be customized by adding or removing an additional magnet in the centre. - The joint is free to rotate which should avoids some twisting of the wires. Cons: - Less durable then a sting especially with very thin wires.

Any existing set of headphones can be modified as those above, however I hope that this will be a standard selling point for quality retail headphones and I hope the first one to pick up the idea makes a million (well maybe a hip of $). To make the prototype I used (4mm x 1.5cm) heat-shrink and a neodymium sphere magnets 5mm for each side of the clip. The wire simply does a U-turn inside the heat-shrink and I wrapped some scrap wire around the U-turn to give it bulk so that it does no slip out. Two spheres here make a fairle weak clip to te one above. Make sure the magnets are properly aligned before sealing the heat-shrink. Make sure you leave about 25cm from the clip to the headphone on each end, this should be enough wire to turn your head freely.

The magnets can be bough on e-bay (bulk is $50 for 1000 pieces)