Ulf Schleth

von Ulf Schleth

skyzone cobraX earphone adapter

My first goggles were the Eachine EV800DM. I tried Mr. Steeles Earbud with them and found that very useful; if there is something weird with the quad, especially the motors or props, you maybe are able to hear it and can land before things are getting worse. The EV800DM are pretty okay goggles for flying in the summer, but in winter times the prism in front of the screen got foggy so i needed something with a fan. I watched loads of videos with goggle-reviews. Since i was not willing or able to pay 500 euros or more for new goggles (i wait with saving until there is an equivalent competitor to DJI’s digital video system), i found Skyzones CobraX appealing. One day, when there was a special offer at banggood.com for 150 euro, i ordered them. But not before i read the user manual. In it, the A/V plug was clearly marked as AV IN/OUTPUT. Kind of misleading.

I tried to plug my earbud into them but just got strange effects to the video in the goggles, but no sound. Nobody in any of that overwhelming positive reviews i watched mentioned that the CobraX don’t have a plug for an earphone. If i had known that, maybe i hadn’t bought them. Maybe those youtubers „only test them for 5 minutes . Then go back to using their favorite google“ as 1101 wrote pn RCGroups.com.

I wrote to skyzone if there maybe a way around that. I just got the answer „Sorry we cut the earphone function for the CobraX goggles.“ I asked some further Questions, but again just got the answer that they cutted the earphone function. Not very helpful. But i didn’t give up.

Fortunately after some searching on the internet, i found a post with a solutionon on RCGroups.com. I bought a female 3.5mm Stereo Headphone Jack and a male 3.5mm 4 Ring Jack (in germany, look for „4 pin kupplung klinke“) and tried my luck. I had already some wire and heatshrink at home. It is also good to have a multimeter with continuity tester so that you can be sure that you are soldering the right pins. First i tried that without a resisor. Quade2000 (THANK YOU!) was right: The line-out signal of the CobraX is strong enough that the audio is a bit to loud in the earbud. I didn’t solder a 10kΩ variable resistor, but a 880 Ω standard one after some testing. Also i soldered the audio signal to both the L+R rings on the jack for the earphones. Here is how i did it:

skyzone cobrax earphone circuit – the connector for the tip-ring of the male plug is in the middle of the other ones.

Try around with the resistor. Since this is a line-out connector you can’t change the volume without one. Maybe you find Quade2000s solution with a potentiometer better or maybe you have a not-so-ugly variable resistor from some old headphones at home. Maybe you will use some stereo headphones and have to do it without resistor, maybe your signal has less power and you’ll try to use a piezo-earbud, or maybe you will do a crazy solution with an usb powered amplifier, but for me, this works pretty well for now :)

Some other useful tips:

• If you are, like me, looking for a better strap than the annoying ones by skyzone, you could try the expensive „Ethix Goggle Strap HD“, the one with the knob, it fits perfectly for me. Maybe other DJI straps do also …
• If you are looking for a case for your Cobra, try looking for „Case Bose SoundLink Revolve+ plus Bluetooth“ at ebay.