Cool Engineering

Info on some cool engineering projects

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Title: MacGyvering my line input

One problem I have previously noted with my laptop is the absence of a line input port. The after spending some time to Googling and consultation with a fellow engineer from work, I built and tested a small circuit consisting of only three components to convert the line-input signal into a mic-input signal. The circuit consists of to resistors which form of voltage divider providing approximately 20 DB of attenuation of the input signal. It also a includes a capacitor which the effectively removes any DC offset those introduced by the line in stage. I have already used this device when connecting out my video camera to the computer to extract some audio from a production I was putting together. The one limitation I have identified is that it only works as a mono input as contrasted that with the stereo line input provided on most computers. This however should serve well as most of my recordings of from conferences and speeches. Another recent development is my acquisition of the first two seasons of MacGyver on DVD. Soon I hope to provide a photo and circuit diagram.
This is a series of grew up with and enjoyed very much a child and am now more aware of some of the limitation of the various hacks he performs as an adult engineer. Funnily enough of the last conference I’d attended (church camp) I remembered this recording limitation of my computer a little too late, and on the spur of the moment thought to record the presentations directly onto my MP3 player – something in the best traditions of MacGyverisms.
On another note, this post was almost entirely in the multi its but spoken to using some text to speech software that I’m currently trialling. So… debate over all words completely out of place they can blame on the speech to text engine.

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