Make your own multiport AV switch. Worth it?

[Locut0s]

I have a long term goal of collecting a lot of old school vintage gaming hardware. Love old school gaming and collecting this stuff is starting to become a serious (though still small) hobby. Anyway in order to have multiple systems connected to a single TV you will need some form of AV switch of course. Why not just switch the systems out as you want to play them? Well past a certain point you will have to do that anyway. But I can easily see wanting to have at least 5 or 6 systems always connected for easy play. Off the top of my head maybe a NES,SNES,Genesis,N64,TurboGrafix 16, etc... I could go on and on but past 6-8 it would just get silly and you would want to plug and play. But in that range there is an interesting do it yourself project I'm eyeing:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/13/how-to-make-a-solid-state-a-v-switcher/

It would also be a very fun beginner electronics project. I'm handy enough with this kind of thing to build something like that without much trouble. At 3 or 4 inputs as they are showing though it's not worth it (cheaper to just get a cheap one off the web). But at 6 or 8 inputs it probably starts to get cheaper to do it yourself like this. Anyone ever done something like this?

 

[Locut0s]

Actually having read the whole thing now this is JUST past my current skills so it would be best for me to take on a few beginner projects first and brush up on some stuff. I could build this in a computer circuit tester too I imagine, to play around with and learn a bit more. Still have some simple beginner circuit design software lying around here somewhere.

Also with that rats nest of wires it would be MUCH nicer if you could design your own PCB for this. I remember even in high school electronics 100 class we built some simple PCBs. Are there any facilities one could find where you could pay to spend some time using their equipment to etch some simple PCBs like this, using the black marker + acid bath kind of technique?

 

[Rage187]

Meh, I'd spent $20 at Monoprice.com instead.

 

[Zap]

$6.46 shipped 4-to-1
May be shoddy quality.

$12.58 shipped 4-to-1
Looks much nicer.

 

[Locut0s]

$6.46 shipped 4-to-1
May be shoddy quality.

$12.58 shipped 4-to-1
Looks much nicer.

Yeah which is why I was saying that it would probably only make sense if I wanted a 6 to 8 way one. Even then the time spent on it probably wouldn't be worth it. But it's a cool electronic built to try out anyway. :hmm:

 

[Locut0s]

Meh, I'd spent $20 at Monoprice.com instead.

$6.46 shipped 4-to-1
May be shoddy quality.

$12.58 shipped 4-to-1
Looks much nicer.

Another thing is that the do it yourself method above, given you can get it to work well and know what you are doing, scales linearly with the number of extra ports you want to add to your switch. So while it doesn't make sense to build a 4 in 1 out switch as you can get them far cheaper as above. But what about a 10 or 15 in 1 out ? If god forbid you ever needed such a thing. And it's just a nice project to do for fun too.

 

[Zap]

And it's just a nice project to do for fun too.

Just remember to document the build process with pics. :thumbsup: