ION AIR PRO External Microphone DIY Modification.
What you gone need:
A set of small screwdrivers, cutting tools
Solder and tin-solder
A small drill or dremel
A piece of thin flexible two pin cable
A female mono 3.5mm jack
Some Glue or Silicon
Electrical Tape
An external Microphone
( all of the above should be available in any good sorted hardware or electrical store )
How its done:
First, you need to remove all screws on the front of the camera from the lens cover and take it off.
Remove now all screws beneath the lens cover located around the lens. Also remove the two screws on the underside of the camera housing.
You can now slowly slide the black metal cover towards the front and take it of.
Remove the screw from the on/off switch and put those pieces aside.
Take of the podz on the backside of the camera.
You now need to remove a thin plastic cover around the podz opening, which is glued to the housing and remove all screws beneath that plastic cover.
Slowly slide the camera to the back, don’t take the inner body of the camera out just yet, since the microphone cable are still attached to it.
You also need to slide the blue cover towards the front for about 1cm, doing so will reveal the internal microphone under that cover on the top side of the camera.
Go ahead and remove ( solder ) the original microphone cables from the camera electrical board and slowly take out the camera body and put it aside for now.
The original microphone is screwed to the housing; remove those screws and the microphone.
Use a dremel or similar and drill a hole as seen in image (there is a little bump which is just on the right position ).
Cover the old microphone hole with silicon or glue and screw back the original holder on top let it dry.
Slide back the blue cover to its correct position, the original ‘design holes’ on the underside of that blue cover should now fit perfectly the new hole you just drilled.
Insert the cable you prepared and leave it long enough ( you can cut on length later on ), space is tight, make sure you don’t use to much excess cable and clue the cable just over the hole in place and let it dry.
You can now go ahead solder that to cable to the camera electrical board (important polarity!) and add the 3.5mm standard mono jack to its other side. PLEASE be careful don’t use too much heat, those boards are very sensitive and the space to the surrounding components is small.
Now may be a good time to test drive you camera before you start putting all back together.
Make sure to cover to cable with electrical tape where needed and slide back the camera body and reverse all steps above.
Some additional Tips and information’s:
It took awhile to figure out the best place and length of the cable, there is not much room inside the camera, there may better ways to do it.
I figured that a cheap mono microphone works the best, I also bought and expensive one, but it seems that the camera does not produce enough juice for it to work probably.
This is a DIY based on my own experience, I’m in no way responsible or held accountable if it does not work or if you damage the camera.
The camera will not be waterproof anymore obviously, but even heavy rain worked just fine with mine, I would not take it under water though!
Please do ask if there is anything unclear!!!!
HAVE FUN!
! Just using the bit of audio knowledge I know form the TV station 
heh~
