Master Series, Archos Cable

[Afton Grant]

After finally getting fed up with the travel adapter mess, I sat down and made myself a nice, clean solution for handling video in and out, as well as power to my Archos AV500. Probably the biggest thing keeping me from doing this sooner was not wanting to cannibalize the stock docking cradle that came with the Archos, but after seeing that thing just sit in a drawer for about a year, I finally figured I could put its parts to use.

 

The solution is a nice Y cable that uses the proprietary Archos 500 connector at the base, and is then split - one end going to the built in 6V jack on my sled, the other going to the RCA video in/out jack. To avoid a second split at the video end (one for video in, one for video out), I installed a switch inline which utilizes just the one cable and one connector, but can alternate from video in to video out.

 

For the majority of its use, everything will be in default mode: sled switched to "camera" mode, cable switched to "out [to dvr]", and dvr switched to its own monitor. For when I need to playback: DVR is switched to external monitor, cable is switched to "in [to sled]", and sled is put into "vcr" mode. Still a quick 3-step process either way, but much easier than dis/reconnecting cables.

 

...I normally hate to use electrical tape, but the piece of shrink tubing I installed before soldering everything up shrunk a little more than expected. Grr. Please excuse.