Iphone headphone hack for cheap tuner?

[knealebrown]

Ive been wondering about this for a while but can i hack a set of iphone headphones to allow me to route audio in from my pedal chain via the usual microphone pin to use a software tuner i have from the app store? or will the signal level be to hot/weak for something thats supposed to be mic level?

In a similar vein could i find the pin outs for the USB connector and hack the charge cable to run/be powered from a pedal power etc? obviously it would have to be brought down to the 4.5v or whatever the iphone runs on.

Just an idea as if these two could be achieved then a Iphone dock pedal could be rigged up to host the iphone etc and charge it at a gig/provide a tuner which would be sweet.

Kneale

[Projectile]

It's certainly possible, and shouldn't even be all that difficult if you know what you are doing. The voltage to the mic input would have to be heavily attenuated down to about 10-15mV. There is also a bias voltage on the mic input that will have to be dealt with, and it expects to see a certain load so that it knows there is a mic attached. There is some good info here:

http://blog.faberacoustical.com/2009/iphone/iphone-headset-input-options/


A USB charger should be able to be hacked just as you describe, though I've never tried any of this myself.

Though, if you can afford an iPhone and data plan, but can't seem to scrape together the funds to buy a used guitar tuner pedal for like 30 bucks, then I think your sense of economics is all kinds of screwed up. It would be a fun project and proof of concept, but rather pointless in a practical sense.

[mistahead]

Or just google the iRIG and see if you can fork out/hack together one of those.

No need to reinvent the wheel - just reverse engineer the axel!

[Processaurus]

Sorry, as much as smartphones try to be a substitute for everything else electronic, I dunno, the only people who'd regret owning a tuner pedal are people that don't play guitar.  I had a little tuner that wasn't a pedal for a bunch of shows when I started performing, and now every time I press that TU-2 and silently tune my guitar in 10 seconds I thank God I shelled out the $80 for the damn thing.

Now, a pedal with a true bypass switch that was kind of a dock thing to punch in some silly effects or samples from an iphone would be the bee's knees!  Did you see this thread here about making an irig cable that has a little fet circuit that runs off the phantom power intended for an external electret microphone?

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=85913.0

Actually, if you are making a dock with the proprietary connector,  maybe you could use the stereo line in, on pin 5 and 6?

http://www.allpinouts.org/index.php/Apple_iPod,_iPad_and_iPhone_dock

[edit] forgot a short but important word.