I hope this topic is in the right section, it's a little bit hacking, isn't it? (Otherwise feel free to move.)
Before today I experienced a poor FM radio quality with the original Touch Diamond headset, so I couldn't properly use TMC, via HyperGPS.
At my home I had a few spots with TMC reception, but sometimes moving a few inches/centimeter could result in a total loss of the TMC signal.
Driving around with iGo and TMC was even more terrible, on a 50 KM (~31 miles) trip I had 3 succesfull TMC receptions, for a few seconds that is.
With other words, HyperGPS worked perfectly, but my own reception quality was very very poor.
So after some research on the extUSB pinout, I've decided to build my own antenna.
Getting an extUSB connector
I few weeks ago I've bought a few USB to 3.5mm headphone adapters, so I could "waste" 1 if it didn't work out that well.
These connectors are highly useable for this small project.
I managed to open the connector with a screwdrawer, don't force it or the clips will break.
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As you probably can see, there are 3 wires connected in the original connector.
On pin 6 a green wire for the left speaker.
On pin 7 and 8 a yellow/gold-ish wire for the antenna and the ground (?) wire for the left and right speaker
On pin 11 a red wire for the right speaker.
With a soldering iron I was able to heat the wires a little bit, so they came loose.
When you are done, pull of the big flexible plastic part, and save it for later. (Dunno the name of it)
Wire
Now, find some wire. I've read that 1.5 mm thick cable is perfect.
I didn't have 1.5 mm, so I used a 1.0 mm thick cable. And now I'm done, I'm glad I didn't had 1.5 mm as it would be more difficult to attach to the connector.
About the cable length, some say 75 cm is perfect. At this site they say 95 cm is the ideal lenght for a 5/8ths lenght antenna. (Whatever that means tho, I'm not that technical. Something to do with the wavelength.)
My cable is currently 110 cm, and I haven't seen any negative effects yet. Maybe I can have an even better reception with a shorter cable, but at this point I don't see a reason why I should risk my current quality.
Connecting the wire
We need to solder the wire to both pin 7 and 8.
But the pinout image shows only pin 7? Indeed, but with only pin 7 connected the phone doesn't recognize a headset, thus the FM Radio isn't working. (And probably also HyperGPS, didn't test this.)
The headset detection can be skipped via a registery edit, but I think this solution is more solid, since the reg edit has to be done each time you reset your phone, or connect a real headset.
Be sure your wire doesn't hit other pins, in the worst case it could seriously damage your device.
Finishing the connector
To add a little bit more strength to the cable, I've added a little bit glue.
Re-attach the flexible plastic part we kept separate earlier.
Done
When you connect the antenna, the phone will now recognize a headset, so you can listen to the radio without attaching your headphones, and without performing a registry edit to fake the headphones.
But the best of all: I have a much better TMC reception.
I haven't tested it in a real world trip, but so far the reception indoors is perfect, without loosing the TMC signal every second.
Hi there,
I have been thinking about this for some time and hope to get around to it one of these days (latest when GNS is working )
Have you considered hooking it to your car antenna?
Perhaps you can check if signal strength changes with an FM-Tool (PowerRadio, XFMRadio - I think they show).
Only reference I have would be this post by beemer
My final goal would be to have charging+tmc-antenna permanently installed to my passive mount.
Excellent tutorial Nakebod. I agree with Schmeichler. My goal would be to be able to use my car cradle, with charger, aerial AND link to my car stereo. However, I don't know how to get to the AUX input of my car stereo anyway!!
I wish they made cars a little easier to tamper with too....
I gave up on all the TMC traffic stuff as I did get it to work with my headphones, but that had no point to me as I wanted to use my car cradle. I suppose your tutorial Nakebod would equally apply to the car cradle, but I don't really want to tamper with it. Also, because it is charging, perhaps it is already a bit crowded with wires....
I have thought about using my car antenna, but that will be a little bit more difficult.
Probably a good reception, since it's "industrial built", and hopefully the ideal length.
I don't know if you can share the antenna, because I also like to listen to the radio in my car, or I have to use two antenna's.
The pinout reference posted by beemer is the same pinout as I've linked in the startpost, the one I used for this small project.
For power + TMC I have the original HTC audio adapter, so I can use 2.5/3.5mm and extUSB "headphones", and charge it via the 2nd extUSB port.
In theory you can extend this project any way you want, attach a car power connector to it, use your car antenna, maybe if your car stereo supports it, you can even hook the "headset" part to your radio
Today I had my first real world experience with my own antenna, and after switching to a more stable station with TMC, it worked much better then before.
Not a 100% coverage, sometimes it's still searching for a signal.
Excellent info, for me the best solution would be car charger with integrated antenna wire that should not be so difficoult to make, I'll try to see how many wires my charger have and consider changing the connactor
shamus said:
Excellent info, for me the best solution would be car charger with integrated antenna wire that should not be so difficoult to make, I'll try to see how many wires my charger have and consider changing the connactor
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly my idea. Connection the car charger including antenna cable to radio power and antenna too, only leaving the usb connector for the phone coming out with integrated car-antenna.
But all chargers don't have an extUSB connector, so I am going to rebuild the headphones I guess.
Riel said:
But all chargers don't have an extUSB connector, so I am going to rebuild the headphones I guess.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would suggest not to use the headset as basis a for this - I bought myself some extUSB connectors and started some tests (limited time).
Even a 50cm wire gives you better reception than the headset - and less sensitive to antenna movement also....
Hmm, yes, but i really never use the headphones And I think it is easier to cut 5cm cable off the connector, and solder right onto the existing cables.
Can I connect power to USB car adapter and antenna to car antenna then? (I could then even connect the audio output to car radio!)
soldering to existing cables will for sure be easier than soldering onto an extUSB - that's for sure!
I have also thought about using audio-out but utilizing aux-in for me would mean loosing my CD/MP3 so that's a nogo
I have not tested car antenna yet - but I know that mine is "live" as VW uses the antenna cable to power the amp in the antenna-socket. So you should really make sure no power is able to get to your phone on pin 7.
If I'm lucky I will be able to do some more testing this weekend....
EDIT: ok - did some tests...
Hooking pin7 to car antenna gives you quite some improvement reception-wise!
I tested two channels with PowerRadio - one jumped from 8 to 15 the other from 14 to 20
Something I noticed:
I only connected pin7 without bridging it to pin8 as a detected headset seems to dim speaker-volume a bit. Test this with headset connected for tmc and pull it out while your navi-voice is talking.
Its not much - but I can hear it - maybe its only my device....
BUT: routing FM-Radio to speaker does not seem to be possible at all without hardware thinking a headset is connected.
PowerRadio starts and tunes - but no sound. Setting headset-state to 1 via registry lets you start HTCFMRadio but no sond when changing output to speaker also.
I also soldered on a miniUSB-jack for charging... works like a charm. Although before putting in something permanent i guess I will need to get some different soldering equipment (no fun at all).
I had also thoughts of changing the connector in my car holder to an ext-usb with GND, 5V and antenna cable attached to it. So i've bought 2 usb to 3.5mm headphone adapters from ebay. The only problem was that the pins on the ext usb connectors were not all there.
So I cut and stripped the original headphone ext-usb plug and soldered (yes it was tiny!) wires to the +5v pin, GND pin (and soldered the GND wire to the shield of the connector) and soldered the pin 7 for the antenna.
The cable is working, but I have a major problem: when charging the radio is not recieving a signal. I looks like the phone is switching pin 7 off when charging. The phone I use is a Topaz (Diamond2)
Has anyone the same problem or a solution? and anyone knows a place on ebay who sells the ext-usb connectors? Then I could test it on another connector.
Hi,
can I use one of this adapter for charging and TMC on my Diamond 2 (Topaz)?
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@dbox2
try checking if perhaps some of your grounds are bridged internally - as the original headset is not meant for charing I would not be surprised.
And read from here
I connected only 1,5 and 7 - does not make a difference if power is connected or not.
I've indeed used the connector of the headset, but I complete stripped it(including the tiny smd parts on the internal pcb) before soldering the wires to it. Tonight I've checked my ext usb connector with an multimeter. only pins 1, 5 and 7 are used. also the gnd pin 5 is connected to the shield of the plug. There is no bridge. The rest of the pins are not used, so my cable is fine! Also I made a sort of RF-filter, to filter the +5v and the power line going to the connector. It didn't make any difference.
When the telephone is connected to my self-made connector (whithout connected to +5v all is working well! The problem is when I connect the +5v wire and the diamond2 is going to charge the battery, the signal is complete lost. I found out that the charging mode is the problem cause in the WM software of the diamond2 (settings->energy) there is an option you can select that the diamond2 goes not in charging mode when connected to a PC). With that setting enabled the diamond2 goes not in charging mode when I put my self made cable to it (whith the 5v line connected to it). Then all is working well... Very strange... when I deselect that option in the energy settings, the diamond charges the battery and signal is complete lost!
I think that my diamond2 is in the software or hardware
Maybe the diamond2 is different working than the diamond1, or it could be in the rom or radio rom and maybe a setting in the register?
Very, very strange!
I use a Dutch original rom: 1.39.404.1 (47382) NLD and radio rom 4.47.25.01
ok - I have a TD1, have never selected 'do not charge when connected to pc' (this phone needs all the charging it can get )
So the ONLY differences between our two diy-adapters is that I did not hook GND to shielding of extUSB.
So just to be sure about our phones working in a different way - perhaps you could cut this connection and test again.
Adminius said:
Hi,
can I use one of this adapter for charging and TMC on my Diamond 2 (Topaz)?
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2.
3.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Im also intersted to know if its possible to use any of these.
I have number 2 in my car right now..
Also, is it possible to make an antenna with no electronic equipment? I dont have a way to solder the wires and everything...how worse is it to use the regular headphones instead?
Just ordered this
http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00271I3UY/ref=ox_ya_oh_product
here is another link
http://cgi.ebay.de/3in1-11-PIN-ExtU...3.l1177&_trkparms=240:1318|301:1|293:1|294:50
it has a longer cable so already enough antenna, hopefully. Also it has a wired through connector for pwr supply usb. Will test and report.
@schmeichler: Tonight I have cut the connection between the shield and the gnd pin... It makes no difference, the problem stays the same.
Just to be sure I want to buy an new ext-usb connector, only I can't find one for sale here in the Netherlands or (worldwide) Ebay, I have no credit card, only Paypal. Maybe you or someone in this topic knows where to buy one for a reasonable price (where I can pay with Paypal)?
The only thing I can do now is solder a switch between the +5v line and my 5V power supply. Then I can manually switch between tmc and charging, only I'm not satisfied with this solution.
dbox2 said:
@schmeichler: Tonight I have cut the connection between the shield and the gnd pin... It makes no difference, the problem stays the same.
Just to be sure I want to buy an new ext-usb connector, only I can't find one for sale here in the Netherlands or (worldwide) Ebay, I have no credit card, only Paypal. Maybe you or someone in this topic knows where to buy one for a reasonable price (where I can pay with Paypal)?
The only thing I can do now is solder a switch between the +5v line and my 5V power supply. Then I can manually switch between tmc and charging, only I'm not satisfied with this solution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What cable did u use to supply the 5 Volts ? The old Headphone cable ? Or did u wire some new cables to the supply.
What supply did u use, maybe its producing "noise" on the power line when charging current is drawn.
Did u try a different supply ?
The antenna cable, how is this related to the Power cable ? Is it part of the power cable or an extra cable ?
On a schematic i saw, there was a total seperation of the Pwr and the Audio part.
I just bought some ext-usb connectors from http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=9078 I Hope they arrive next week.
I made my own 5v and gnd cable. It runs from the connector to an 12 to 5v power supply (5v, 2A). I've build a sort of RF filter yesterday (with a coil, a few capacitors and Ferrite? coils) so there can be no noise on the 5V and GND line running to the connector. The antenna I made is a sort of extra cable (0.75mm). (and I lead it far away from the power line and supply, only near the connector it's not possible.)
I didn't tried another power supply, It's a good idea to check it. I hope next weekend I have time to try it with another power supply I'll post the results next weekend.
@dbox2:
I was gooing to offer you one or two of the extUSBs I bought from sparkfun
You seem to have more knowledge concerning electronics than I do - could you advise me what to use and how to connect to my car antenna?
I measured the connector from my radio while turning on and the antenna reads 16.something Volts!
THX
Edit: also you might want to try older HyperGPS-versions as people are reporting the same behavior (loosing signal when powering) although older versions worked