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My name is Mike, and this blog is my way of saving people time. If someone has a specific problem that I've encountered before, hopefully these posts will save them the extraneous Googling I had to go through to solve the same problem. Also, when I have something to say about technology today, I will post my thoughts here. If this blog has helped you out, even a little bit, vote on the poll below, or let me know by sending me an email. I'm always open to exchanging links with other blogs or websites that share a similar interest.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

RCA to Mini-phone/Headphone Adapter

I have just recently purchased the Xbox 360 VGA cable, allowing me to use one of my computer monitors for gaming instead of a TV. This is good, because I didn't want to have to bring my TV with me when I move back to university. Before opening the package, I noticed that the audio connectors are RCA connectors, just like the original Xbox 360 A/V cable. Immediately, I thought of my speakers, which use the standard mini-phone/headphone jack. I had forgotten that the VGA cable comes packaged with an adapter, though the headphone end is male, meaning I would need a female-female adapter on top of that. Before finding this adapter though, I constructed a little potting box that converts from RCA jacks to a mini-phone jack for speakers.

I used spare parts from my Dad's store of junk in the basement, and soldered the connections inside a plastic box. The RCA jacks have two pins, one for common, one for signal. I used white and red wires inside the box for left and right signals, respectively. Black was used for common. I used a 6.3 mm TRS phone jack for output, with an adapter plugin that converts to the 3.5 mm headphone jack. The TRS phone jack has four pins, three for the above mentioned purposes, and a fourth that operates a switch that will disconnect main speakers and re-route audio to headphones when they are plugged in. This pin was not needed for my purposes.

The first actual test run revealed that continuity testing wasn't done properly, and only the left audio channel was working. Of course, this was after the lid was epoxy-ed onto the box. I had to re-open the box and re-do the connections, and finally got it working. Pictures are below. Build your own if you like, the pieces aren't all that hard to find.



1 comments:

Compression said...

Is this a new invention of the adapter? This is very good and its a good thought to change it into the headphone.

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