Control TV Audio - RS232 - Headphones - Wall Plate

Aaron_Ragmaan

I have a very interesting situation!



I have a multimedia wall plate that has controls for channel +, channel -, volume +, volume -, power on and power off and an audio jack.

I am going to connect this via an RS232 connection to the TV and control the TV using the buttons on the wall plate. This is the easy part!


Now here comes the trouble! This is for an elderly relative and he is hard of hearing. He wants to be able to connect his headphones into the audio jack on the wall plate and then have the speakers on the TV mute as they normally would as if you had just in headphones normally.

The problem is that when you connect the audio jack on the wall plate to the TV no sound comes from the speakers. I knew this would have and there is a dedicated switching circuit at the audio jack that when anything is inserted the speakers short and the connection flows through to the headphones.

My question is does anyone know of a method or device that will allow me to connect the TV to the wall plate and when headphones are inserted into the wall plate the TV speakers will cut out and the headphones will turn on and in turn when you take them out the TV speakers will kick back in.

I also don't want to open up the TV and rewire the audio jack (well that's plan B anyway)

and i dont want to have to split the audio either as in have it playing through the speakers and the headphones at the same time.

crosstownk

Basically you'll need to fool the TV into thinking that its 3.5mm TRS is at the wall plate rather than at the TV unit. I suppose the best scenario is to extend the 3.5mm TRS TV socket to the wall plate.