TrrsJack

Revision as of 23:11, 14 March 2011

TRS, TRRS Jack

TRS and TRRS are two types of jack plugs with 3 and 4 poles.

TRS Jack

A TRS Jack is a standard Jack plug used for a stereo headset. Typically it is 3.5 mm diameter, but also (tiny) 2.5 mm and (large) 6 mm exist.

TRS stands for Tip-Ring-Sleeve and denotes the three poles with sleeve being the inner pole next to the plastic/rubber cover of the plug.

The poles usage are standardised, all headsets and cables use same configuration.

 Tip R  S +-----
/---|--|--|
\---|--|--|
  1  2  3 +-----
.
1: Audio left - white
2: Audio right - red
3: Ground

TRRS Jack

A TRRS Jack is a jack plug with 4 poles, named from Tip-Ring-Ring-Sleeve, similar to the 3 poles TRS.

Depending on the type of device the extra pole may provide a composite video signal together with stereo sound.

Today (2011) many smart phones have a TV-out function that allow to display the phones display on a TV or video monitor using the Jack plug otherwise intended for headsets. The signal used is a composite video signal (SD resolution 15625 Hz line frequency). Note this is not a VGA like signal.

Unfortunately there is no clear standard pole configuration for this plug. There exists several configurations.

Config 1 (Nokia, Samsung):

 Tip R1 R2 S +-----
/---|--|--|--|
\---|--|--|--|
  1  2  3  4 +-----

1: Audio left - white 2: Audio right - red 3: Video - yellow 4: Common/Ground - Shield

Tested smart phones:
Nokia N900
Samsung Galaxy S

Config 2 (Apple):

 Tip R1 R2 S +-----
/---|--|--|--|
\---|--|--|--|
  1  2  3  4 +-----
.
1: Audio left - white
2: Audio right - red
3: Common/Ground - Shield
4: Video - yellow 
Note: R2 and S is swapped compared to Config 1.

Smart phones:
Apple Iphone 4 - not tested

Links

Samsung Galaxy S video out

other configurations