So what's my logic? There are existing adapters on the market. Why not just buy one?
I have three reasons:
- price
- durability
- 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
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'll try to post something when I have a working test subject.
