In this installment of Making with ReMade, Electromagnate demonstrates how they built a simple breakout cable, allowing virtually any microphone to be used to capture audio with a modern smartphone.

You will need:

1 3.5mm TRRS to Composite RCA cable: These cables can be found packaged as accessories with most consumer cameras.

2 3.5mm Female Stereo Adaptors: We used the solder types. Non-solder types are also available. These will eventually serve as microphone and headphone connectors.

Wire Stripper/Cutter

Soldering Iron

Basic Audio Editing Software: Audacity will get the job done and is free online, though whatever comes with your computer works just as well.

Smartphone headphone jack pin out configurations are largely up to the manufacturer. Because of this slight lack of standardization, we must first perform a series of tests in order to determine which of the three RCA connectors on the TRRS cable correspond with stereo left output, stereo right output and microphone input.

Record yourself saying "Left channel, left channel, right channel right channel" to the audio editing software on your computer.

Split the "Left channel" and "Right channel" samples and place them on their own tracks, one on top of the other, so they play simultaneously and loop each track for about 30 seconds.

Pan the track with the "Left channel" sample all the way to the left. Pan the track with the "Right channel" sample all the way to the right. Now each track is isolated to stereo left and right.

Export the tracks to a stereo audio file and upload it to your smartphone.

Plug the TRRS cable into your smartphone. Plug the RCA connectors into headphones or speakers one at a time while playing your new channel test audio file on your smartphone. From here it's easy to determine which RCA connector your smartphone is designating to which channel. The connector carrying the "Left channel" sample is stereo left, the one carrying the "Right channel" signal is stereo right and the one carrying no signal at all is the microphone.

Once you've determined which connector is which, cut each cable about six inches from the TRRS connector and strip the ends.

Solder the stereo left and right wires to the corresponding contacts of one of the female 3.5mm stereo connectors. Don't forget to also solder the ground wires of each to the ground contact of the connector.

Solder the microphone input wires to the remaining female 3.5mm stereo connector, making sure to bridge the stereo left and right contacts on the connector, as the mic is only a mono connection. Again, make sure to create a ground between the wire and the connector.

That's it! Close everything up and go to town. You can record audio to your smartphone from any 3.5mm microphone or any XLR microphone, (non-phantom powered) given the right adaptors.Good afternoon

After a pleasantly relaxing holiday, Electromagnate is jumping back in to begin the second leg of their North American hackerspace tour. Details will be announced shortly, but it looks like we have a pretty solid lineup as of this moment. We'll make sure to keep you updated every step of the way with more blog posts, videos and travel logs as we begin to hit the road again!

In the meantime, check out our newest DIY video. One of the things we've been very excited about since the beginning was showing off some elements of our minimalist road gear. The first leg of our trip was rough. We didn't have much money or space to work with so we had to improvise with what we had. We feel it's important, no matter how simple it may seem, to share what we've come up with in an effort to help interest and inspire the budget filmmaking community at large.

So yeah, enjoy the quick DIY video we put together over the holidays and be sure to check out the more detailed instructions below.

In this installment of Making with ReMade, Electromagnate demonstrates how they built a simple breakout cable, allowing virtually any microphone to be used to capture audio with a modern smartphone.

You will need:

1 3.5mm TRRS to Composite RCA cable: These cables can be found packaged as accessories with most consumer cameras.

2 3.5mm Female Stereo Adaptors: We used the solder types. Non-solder types are also available. These will eventually serve as microphone and headphone connectors.

Wire Stripper/Cutter

Soldering Iron

Basic Audio Editing Software: Audacity will get the job done and is free online, though whatever comes with your computer works just as well.

Instructions:

Smartphone headphone jack pin out configurations are largely up to the manufacturer. Because of this slight lack of standardization, we must first perform a series of tests in order to determine which of the three RCA connectors on the TRRS cable correspond with stereo left output, stereo right output and microphone input.

Record yourself saying "Left channel, left channel, right channel right channel" to the audio editing software on your computer.

Split the "Left channel" and "Right channel" samples and place them on their own tracks, one on top of the other, so they play simultaneously and loop each track for about 30 seconds.

Pan the track with the "Left channel" sample all the way to the left. Pan the track with the "Right channel" sample all the way to the right. Now each track is isolated to stereo left and right.

Export the tracks to a stereo audio file and upload it to your smartphone.

Plug the TRRS cable into your smartphone. Plug the RCA connectors into headphones or speakers one at a time while playing your new channel test audio file on your smartphone. From here it's easy to determine which RCA connector your smartphone is designating to which channel. The connector carrying the "Left channel" sample is stereo left, the one carrying the "Right channel" signal is stereo right and the one carrying no signal at all is the microphone.

Once you've determined which connector is which, cut each cable about six inches from the TRRS connector and strip the ends.

Solder the stereo left and right wires to the corresponding contacts of one of the female 3.5mm stereo connectors. Don't forget to also solder the ground wires of each to the ground contact of the connector.

Solder the microphone input wires to the remaining female 3.5mm stereo connector, making sure to bridge the stereo left and right contacts on the connector, as the mic is only a mono connection. Again, make sure to create a ground between the wire and the connector.

That's it! Close everything up and go to town. You can record audio to your smartphone from any 3.5mm microphone or any XLR microphone, (non-phantom powered) given the right adaptors.