iphone remote control or play/pause button

So I have been doing some investigating into exactly how the iphone's microphone and play/pause button on the stock headphones work. Now I really like having this physical button on the headphones, since I don't have to mess around with the device screen when I am doing work outside. However I don't really love the stock headphones.

So what's my logic? There are existing adapters on the market. Why not just buy one?

I have three reasons:

1. price
   
2. durability
3. design
   

I did try the Sure adapter, and I think that it would have worked very well, but I could not see paying $29 or $39 for it. Just too pricy and the length of cable is just odd once the headphones are attached. I also read that the 45-degree angle connector fails under strain.

I also priced out the Ultimate Ears earphone sets with microphone, and though I love the product, I can't spend $150 on some new set.

There is a Monster cable adapter, but it's gotten some bad reviews for durability. Though I do like that the microphone is separate.

I put all my gadgets through some rough stuff and they need to hold up. That's why I always had pretty rugged protective cases on my ipods for the past 7 years, and now have the otterbox case for the iphone. I bought the yaesu vx-6 radios for their durability and reliability.

So I want a set of phones and a little remote that can hold up to abuse. Not ones that are cheap and can be easily replaced, but ones that won't fail when I am 20 miles from the nearest road on horseback and would really like the thing to work.

This may seem a little demanding and some folks might say that I need something other than the iphone, but that's okay. Once there is an android phone like the Casio G'Zone or a rugged version of the garmin phone is made, I'll consider it. Anyhow, I digress.

My idea is to build a rugged play/pause control that will adapt to the iphone and allow me to use whatever headphones I like. I may also want to allow for a seperate high quality microphone that can be either placed on a lapel somehow combined with the headphones (like a boom mic). I might even want to use a decent PTT headset for FRS radios and use the PTT button for the control.

Alternately perhaps I could make use of a wired headset that I already have from another phone and give myself a play/pause button that works with that. There are many alternatives for play.

The 4 conductor cable for the iphone has been documented in a few places I found helpful:

• Pinouts.ru has a good diagram that checks out with my testing.
• Lyle of GeekSpeak disected his Monster adapter

I also tested a few other 4 conductor 3.5 mm devices that I have around to see how they fared.

The Yaesu CT-91 microphone adapter gave me a split to a 3.5 mm and a 2.5 mm 2 conductor female connections. Based on the wiring diagram from the manual, I gather that it may have totally different pinouts than the iphone, but it was enough for me to have sound output on a Yaesu MH-12a28 speaker/microphone. I didn't check if the mic worked, but some quick action with the PTT button did intermittently act like the play/pause button. This adapter also allowed me to get sound output from a normal 2.5mm cellphone headset, but

I also have a 4 conductor A/V cable from my sony camcorder. I used to use it for video output on my 5th gen ipod. The pinouts are also documented at pinouts.ru and it closely resembles the iphone's configuration with the ground on ring 2. Since my case is bulky, I had to use an adapter to get the equally bulky right angle connector to mate with the iphone, but once I did that, I could use the RCA connector to output sound to my stereo.

Some chance work plugging in the connectors for left and right audio showed me that the momentary connection of the signal line to the grounded sheild on the RCA connector would also give me play/pause functions.

I think that I am going to order a few parts and try to build a general purpose adapter that's not too bulky. Here are the parts for the plan:

• 1m 3-conductor cable
• one 4-conductor male 3.5mm connector for the iphone
  
• one 3-conductor female 3.5mm connector for the headphones and standalone mic
  
• one 3-conductor female 2.5mm connector for a standard monoural cell headset
  
• one decent sized momentary toggle button (10 to 15 mm diameter)
• heat shrink tubing
• liquid electrical tape
• epoxy
• high quality solder and flux
  

I don't think that I'll need compensating resistors or anything, but I might allow for that after some testing. The idea would be to keep this as simple as possible for the first build.

I'll try to post something when I have a working test subject.

Ride to Veerkamp's cabin and the top of Two Peaks

I went up to Tells Creek for a ride on Sunday with Gary McFall, Stuart and Brit Porter. I had ridden the Porter's horse Jake in the same area the day before, but I was able to ride my own horse Annie this day.

We rode out from the equestrian campground to Veerkamp's cabin along a very beautiful route. Stuart brought Doug the Sunday paper special pony express delivery. We were greeted warmly and we tied our horses up on the hitching post. Annie squealed at Jake and pulled back once before I retied her and she moved behind a tree a bit. She had some very exciting mare
behavior for all three geldings on the ride during most of the day,
but nothing too bad, especially in comparison with Kelsey the prior
day.

Any way we had some cold drinks (water and soda) with Doug Veerkamp,
the caretakers and Doug's wife and talked about trails and general
stuff. Doug told us about a new trail that the caretaker, Tom, had cut
this season and which they had just returned from riding with their
mules. Beautiful mules out in the bright green pasture. After that we
worked our way up towards Perl Lake and around to find the new trail.
We found the trail that we missed last year when Gary and Stuart took
us bushwhacking, Gary put up some new ducks and marked it better so we
could find it next time.

The new trail took us across the backside of Two Peaks and around to
the top of the second peak. The views were amazing and we had about a
300 degree unobstructed vista to the west. It was very windy and a bit
cold up there as well. I snapped some pictures with my iphone, but none really do justice to the view.

This trail was only one way out to the peak, so we turned back around
and completed our Veerkamp loop returning to camp through that amazing
terrain of woods and granite.

My boots stayed on wonderfully until the last mile. Somehow I managed
to lose the right front just a little way from camp. I don't think
that I have lost a front renegade before, so I am not really sure how
it failed. I had replaced the bottom velcro on all of them and they
seemed to be holding quite nicely for that rough ride. I retraced my
tracks but could not find it. Stuart is leading a camp-out for DHA
there next weekend and said he'll keep an eye out for it when they
ride that trail. At least that was one of the boots that had lost
nearly all of it's traction and was not something new. Hopefully he
can find it, since it does have a few miles left on it.

Annie looks good this morning after her ride and has just a small
amount of filling in her legs. She seems much happier with me now that
we rode and is not as spooky as she had been the past few days. I
think that I'll pull her out for a bath this afternoon and get the
trail dirt off.

National Map

I had no idea that the US government had spent so much time making a great web based map viewing tool. I just stumbled upon the site while trying to locate downloadable topo maps.

http://geodata.gov/

Picture of new car

Here's a picture of the new car.

New Car

I finally decided that my 1996 Volvo 850 was getting a little long in the tooth, and that I needed a more fuel efficient car. Last Friday I bought a 2008 Kia Rio from Dorothy at Folsom Lake Kia under the Costco member discount program.

All in all it's a great little car. I'll have to post some pictures when I get a chance.

The jury is still out on exactly how much better the mileage is than the Volvo. The EPA site says 33 MPG combined on the Rio and I was getting 23 regularly with the Volvo. The payoff on gas alone is a long time, but I think it will all be a was in the end.

It is gratifying to have a new car though.

Modified AutoPilot

I had been using a belkin car kit for my older ipod, but that charged through the firewire pins which are no longer supported with the iPhone 3G hardware.

That meant buying a new line out car charger. I settled on the Griffin Technology Autopilot mainly for the play/pause and track controls. I really like the build quality on all the griffin tech products.

There was one problem: Since my car has only one 12v power port and the use of hands free devices is required in california now, I needed a way to charge my bluetooth headset. In my volvo I had rigged a multiport car charger and hidden it in the arm rest, but I am not quite ready for electrical modding projects on the new car.

So the answer was to add a USB charge cable output to the AutoPilot. Since I know it provides 5v output to the iPhone and it's rated at 2A output, it should have more than enough juice to deal with my little Motorola H700 headset.

The hardest task was getting the beautiful AutoPilot apart. The front bezel with the buttons pops off with a little effort and is held on with some strong plastic barbs that will hold up to the prying. The fuse should be removed. There's no glue on the body of the device, just some friction based plastic pins that hold it together. You can safely pry it apart without too much worry.

Once you are inside there is a well designed board for the power supply and an attached separate board for the iPhone/ipod controls.

I chopped a usb cable in half leaving about a 2 ft length attached to the mini usb connector. I tested the color coding on this cable by plugging the other end into a hub and looking for the +5v and ground wires. Luckily, they were the red and black respectively.

I piggy backed on the red +5v power wire that the iPhone control uses and soldered my red wire from the usb connector there. It's a very small board, so I ran the cable around to the front side to ensure a better connection.

The ground was easier because there were many to choose from on the board. I found an unused pad just below the black ground wire for the iPhone and soldered the black wire from the usb cable there.

Then I realized that I needed to have the cable actually exit the nice plastic case
for the Auto Pilot. I used the soldering iron to melt a hole in the bottom of the case and unsoldered all my recently made connections. Then I threaded the wire through the case and resoldered the connections.

This didn't provide any strain relief and was a very tight fit, so I used some liquid electrical tape to provide a black rubber seal on the outside. This gives a little strain relief and also a bit more of a finished look.

Then I put on a black split plastic cable management tube to keep the cables tidy and routed around the interior of the car.

I really should have taken pictures, but that never happens in the middle of a project. This is a great improvement, and I'd love to see griffin tech add something like this in a future version product for the iPhone.

Nat Geo

So I found a great site that National Geographic had listed on their corporate blog. It seems to be a community application that allows the sharing of trip data and gps tracks.

http://beta.topo.com/explore