All posts by Tony Blews

Android, Android, Guitar, Music, Phones, Projects

Smartphone Guitar interface

Leave a comment

Apps such as Garageband on the iPhone allow you to record your guitar noodling and play about with various effects. But first you need to get the guitar connected to the ‘phone.

Looking about on t’internet, there are loads of instructions on how to build a guitar interface for the iPhone, but most involve butchering existing cables.

 

As the cost of the required AV cables is stupidly high, I decided to just buy the bits and have a go at making one from scratch.

So, lets have a look at what we need:

A 3.5mm 4-pole jack – plugs in to the phone

A 3.5mm stereo socket (case mountable) – for headphones

A 1/4″ mono socket (case mountable) – for the guitar input

Some 3 core shielded audio cable. Sadly, Maplin fucked up and sent me 2 metres of the wrong cable, despite them looking totally dissimilar and having completely different catalogue numbers.

Anyway, sod Maplin, I’m prototyping here. I’ll make do with bits from my wires box.

The first thing to do is solder the cable on to the horrendously fiddly 4-pole plug.  Get the most difficult thing done first, that’s my philosophy.

The pin out for the plug now looks like this:

  1. Green – (Input)
  2. Yellow – (Ground)
  3. Orange – (Output Right)
  4. Red – (Output Left)

 

Wrap it all up in the casing that came with the plug, and get a “pigtail” lead:

Originally I wanted this lead to be about four inches longer, but this will have to do for the moment. (You can insert a joke here if you really want).

Next, solder up the stereo socket. I went for the same colour code for Ground/Outputs.

Finally, solder-wise, its time to connect up the socket for the guitar input.

Following the same colours from above:

And here it all, all breadboarded up for testing:

After buying a small case, I discovered it was too small to mount the 1/4″ mono socket in, so I had to look about for an alternative.

I haven’t found anything handy yet, but you get the gist.

UPDATE:

An old 35mm film container prooved to be the best case I could find. So, now it looks like this:

Health

So you think you’re having a heart attack

Leave a comment

As it is a year today since I had my pathetic little heart attack (if there can be such a thing), I thought I’d put finger to keyboard about my thoughts on a certain bullshit thing thats going around t’internet like a sawn-off broom handle in a convent (since 1999 – but such shit never dies due to Facetube/Buzzspace/Mybook/Youfeed whatever).

I’m not going to link to it, but its called “Cough CPR”, and the idea seems to be thus: Rhythmically coughing while having a heart attack will save your life. This is obviously horseshit. (I will, however link to the Snopes page about it: http://www.snopes.com/medical/homecure/coughcpr.asp).

Should you think you are having a heart attack, and you’re alone, you really have two options. I shall present them here, so you can choose which one you think is the right one.

Option 1: 

Sit down and have a cup of tea.

Look on the internet about heart attacks.

Go and have a dump*.

Try and have a lie down, hoping the pain will go away.

Have a smoke. Things are always better after a smoke.

Look on the internet again.

Have another cup of tea and a smoke.

Realise that you can’t stand up properly.

Ring NHS Direct and get kept talking while they sneakily send an ambulance to get you.

 

 

 Option 2: 

Ring the fucking emergency services right away!!!

And don’t forget to grab your ‘phone and charger, otherwise you’ll be bored shitless.

*Oddly, heart attacks bring on the feeling that you’re about to suffer from diarrhea. This is probably why a lot of people die on the khazi, and certainly why all toilets in hospitals have an emergency alarm nearby.