Contour hd.

[withabitofginger]

Today I got fairly bored. Knowing I have owned the contour for over 18 months, I decided it was most likely to be out of its warranty period.

So on this basis I thought "fook it" and decided to modify it. Now before I get into it, I'll let you know that I'm no stranger to electronics and audio. I worked as a Dj from the age of 16 and to this present day I still occasionally cover for a few friends. I also worked as a theatre technician doing all kind of backstage work. I even soldered my own usb DMx control unit together.

In my helmet, there is a hard wired system of wires and a mic that I soldered together so my Bluetooth system and radio comms system all worked on the same mic and headphones. I wired in a 3.5mm jack port so that I don't have the shitty pad headphones and instead I can put in ear headphones in.... Which also act as ear plugs

Anyway.....

Armed with a glue gun, a soldering iron, an old pc sound card pliers and screwdrivers I modded the contour. Fairly easy to do to be honest. If I wanted I could have made it so that I kept the internal microphone and it would switch off when a mic was plugged in... But I didn't need to so I got rid of it all together.

I stole a jack port off of the PC Card, and soldered it to the camera. I then used the glue gun to make the port water tight and also to stick it to the bottom of the contour. So now it has its own mic input.

Now I have no mic to test the unit, but here's a quick tip to those who may not know... A pair of headphones is a microphone in reverse... So plug em in and test it! Mine works perfectly

Productive day

 

[withabitofginger]

Re: Contour hd. vid attached

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWQwDFFll8c[/youtube]

 

[Trinith]

In my helmet, there is a hard wired system of wires and a mic that I soldered together so my Bluetooth system and radio comms system all worked on the same mic and headphones. I wired in a 3.5mm jack port so that I don't have the shitty pad headphones and instead I can put in ear headphones in.... Which also act as ear plugs

I've thought about doing something similar. Would you mind doing up a basic color coded wire diagram?

 

[withabitofginger]

would do but its all taped up and hidden away so nothing can be seen. I'll probably be re doing it when I'm back on two wheels as I'll be trying to include all the radio comms between myself and other bikers in with the audio of the helmet cam, so will prob do a vid for that.

also.. It's hard to do a proper colour coded diagram as the colours may be different for each different headset system. what I could do is a very basic kind of vid of what you would need to do to incorporate everything. I'll have a look at it tomorrow for you.... things I should be able to cover...

wiring a 3.5mm jack port up including.. a switch style jack (ie when the jack is removed from the port, it would automatically switch to a different source/output.

and a normal jack, where if you remove the jack, nothing else is connected

wiring bluetooth headset and radio comms into one headphone and mic set up.

hope that makes sense. it may help you, it may not but worth doing just incase it does help

 

[Trinith]

Heh, videos would be cool, but I was just thinking of a hand drawn, cartoonish crayon drawing saying 'this wire connects from here to here.' I mainly want to be able to incorporate the headphone idea, and have my ipod feed into the same headphones as whatever com system we buy in the near future. That should be as easy as splicing a few wires together, I'd think. But knowing how you did yours would make it a lot easier for sure.

 

[withabitofginger]

Ok will sort that for you no problems it is as easy as it seems. Will draw the diagram but will try and explain it here....

Basically to get everything coming through the same set of headphones you need a point where all headphones from different systems meet. I used a 3.5 mm jack socket for this. There are 2 types of jack socket, switchable (5 pins) or non switchable (3 pins) 3 pins is all you really need for this type of thing.

Cut the earpieces off of your earpieces you no longer want but make sure you leave the wires connected (in other words cut close to the earpiece). This should leave you with four separate wires usually red and black but could be different(two from each side).Do the same for all other earpieces you want to include.

The jack ports are usually in a triangle shape 1 at top, two at bottom. Collect one wire from each side of the headphones ie both black cables and solder together onto the 1 point at the top of the jack socket. The two remaining cables need to be one on each of the two remaining points of the jack socket. Do the same for all other headsets you want coming to the same port.

Personally I would give this some sort of protection ie glue the solder points with a glue gun for extra stability and protection. Rap with electrical tape. You should be able to plug in any set of headphones into this jack point and have all the audio sources coming to the same headphones now.... The diagram should make this easier to follow, once I've done it

Will save the vid for when I'm rewiring.

 

[withabitofginger]

http://www.maplin.co.uk/pcb-mounting-3.5mm-stereo-socket-1199

Jack socket

 

[Trinith]

Rock on, thanks for that! I've got another idea up my sleeve that I'm not going to tell anyone about just yet. This all confirms what I was thinking though, so it shouldn't be too terribly difficult.