iPod in the '2...

zud · January 18, 2004, 17:15

Anyone connected their iPod to their ICE?

I'm toying with an iTrip (or similar) rather than a physical connection. For those who don't know, the iTrip fits into the top of an iPod and transmits an FM signal (just a couple of metres or so) and you tune to car radio into the iTrip... hey presto, a 5000 track ICE set-up!! s8)

s8) Anyone tried it? Any good? Any alternatives?

Anonymous · January 18, 2004, 19:21

installed a hard wired ipod and an itrip both sound the same and as long as you have the cradle to put it in it looks the nuts

Anonymous · January 19, 2004, 09:45

I have a mate who uses his ITrip in his fiesta .. its class just illegal in the UK .. but I wud still get 1 and use it if I had an IPod

Anonymous · January 19, 2004, 11:25

I've just ordered an itrip from the US for just over $48 delivered!

Anonymous · January 19, 2004, 11:59

they are on e-bay somtimes but $48 dose sound cheap good find

im still trying to find the cheapes place for a ipod any ideas chaps

Anonymous · January 19, 2004, 12:21

have u seen the small ipods that are coming out.. they are brilliantly sized (credit card size ??) and 4Gb and sub £200 .. not out yet tho

Anonymous · January 19, 2004, 13:06

Try a look at iPod lounge for more info on the iTrip and in-car solutions.
w www.ipodlounge.com w

crankshaft · January 19, 2004, 13:56

Sorry to report doom and gloom, but I have both the iTrip and the Belkin Tunecast on my ipod 40gb, and am very disappointed with the sound quality.

I have tried all levels of volume and downloaded the full range of frequencies and was not able to get any kind of audio quality even close to the quality using the superb earphones.

There's a continous background hiss and whine and any car (or more likely honda 90 motorbike) passing you with dodgy HT leads will burn your ears with crackle.

Do try and go for hard wiring using the Aux in if you have one, I beleve that Sony have a Unilink Dongle which allows you to add an aux input and I am also in the very early stages of developing an interface which will allow you to control your ipod from your standard Sony head unit.

As a side bar, I did also try some very expensive Sony in-ear earphones, which the shop assistant assured me were excellent quality and they ar absolutely no match to the standard earphones which are excellent.

CrankShaft

crankshaft · January 19, 2004, 13:57

Sorry to report doom and gloom, but I have both the iTrip and the Belkin Tunecast on my ipod 40gb, and am very disappointed with the sound quality.

I have tried all levels of volume and downloaded the full range of frequencies and was not able to get any kind of audio quality even close to the quality using the superb earphones.

There's a continous background hiss and whine and any car (or more likely honda 90 motorbike) passing you with dodgy HT leads will burn your ears with crackle.

Do try and go for hard wiring using the Aux in if you have one, I beleve that Sony have a Unilink Dongle which allows you to add an aux input and I am also in the very early stages of developing an interface which will allow you to control your ipod from your standard Sony head unit.

As a side bar, I did also try some very expensive Sony in-ear earphones, which the shop assistant assured me were excellent quality and they ar absolutely no match to the standard earphones which are excellent.

CrankShaft ==_=_=_=_==

zud · January 19, 2004, 14:13

Thanks for the feedback. I'd looked at ipodlounge and seen quite a range of views, so I thought I'd try here so as to get the views of people that I (sort of) know.

ipodlounge gives me the impression it depends where you live/drive, with cities being the worst. So as I live near London, and drive thru' H'row airport every day, maybe the itrip won't be too good for me. (the airport often interferes with xfm)

I'd prefer a hardwired solution for SQ, but I'd like the flexibility of the iTrip as I could use it in my wife's car and/or our boat which has a car stereo installed.

I also quite fancy the new Transpod as it charges at the same time, but that's only available in the US at the moment.

On the sidetrack... the iPod headphones... there seems to be a lot of people that rubbish them on ipodlounge, but i reckon they're pretty good. They're certainly excellent compared with the ones that came with my Sony CD Walkman (and I previously thought the Sony ones were excellent compared with other headphones that came "free" with portable units). I'm yet to compare them with bespoke headphones, but I'm quite happy with the ipod ones until I do.

Anonymous · January 19, 2004, 19:13

well iv'e used the itrip on other peoples installs and never had any problems with it but dont forget when using it not to place near power cables that are ran down teh sills of the car other wise it will pick up altornator whine from the electromagnetic force around the power cables

crankshaft · January 20, 2004, 03:07

Ahh too late ! I was going to develop and interface between the iPod and Sony Headunit, but I see it's already available for Sony and other head units @ USD149.00 !!

m http://www.densionusa.com/icelink/icelink_details.htm m

CrankShaft

Anonymous · January 20, 2004, 10:39

For those not wanting to spend serious money on the Sony Unilink adaptor, http://gnunilink.sourceforge.net/ might help.

Note that this project isn't for the faint-hearted, and requires a fair degree of electronics skill; I built one, but suspect that my PIC wasn't programmed right (and without my own programmer, couldn't re-do it).

crankshaft · January 20, 2004, 14:06

Hi Phil;

Yep, I have that link and (Simon's) .asm files too. I have gathered info from a few sites and will probably use a PIC16F628, but I need to start from scratch with the code as I know zip about assembly language and do everything using PICBasic.

I have a compiler and a programmer if you need any help !

Cheers

CrankShaft

Anonymous · January 20, 2004, 16:40

Quote from: "crankshaft"I have a compiler and a programmer if you need any help !

Thanks, but I gave up in the end (a friend of a friend programmed the PIC for me using the supplied binary code, so I couldn't keep faffing him around). I got so peeed off with Sony's proprietary stuff, I went out and bought a new Alpine headunit (and never looked back; it sounds so much better...)

Anonymous · February 4, 2004, 11:22

Here's something that may be of interest:
m http://www.everythingipod.com m

Search for DLO TransPod FM.

crankshaft · February 4, 2004, 11:43

Hi;

I have a prototype workiing whereby I can control my IPOD from a sony head unit. I'm not just talking about getting an audio input, but actually being able to fwd, reverse, play pause etc, and it will send the track time counter to the head unit and display the run time. i am also looking at the possibilty of automatic gain control and a couple of other bells & whistles !!

CrankShaft..

Anonymous · February 4, 2004, 11:44

I'd buy one of those s:lol: :lol: s:lol:

crankshaft · February 5, 2004, 07:40

The difficult thing is getting the proprietry Sony Unilink and the iPod Remote Control Connectors.

I have hacked some for my working prototype but would need to find a source if I was to make any more, and I think that will be hard !!

CrankShaft.

Anonymous · February 5, 2004, 09:57

It will be; when I was trying the GNUnilink project above, the forums there suggested that the Sony connector is made by a single factory in China, and they won't supply them to anyone other than Sony.

I bought a cable from eBay and hacked that up, but that's a not viable source for any sort of quantity.

Anonymous · February 6, 2004, 19:19

Quote from: "crankshaft"Sorry to report doom and gloom, but I have both the iTrip and the Belkin Tunecast on my ipod 40gb, and am very disappointed with the sound quality.

I have to agree with crankshaft. I was toying with the idea of connecting my MD to my ICE via an FM transmitter similar to the iTrip but the sound was just awful.

Admittedly, I was expecting it to be bad since the sound is downgraded to FM quality but it was worst than anticipated. I gave up in the end; apart from the concept being illegal, the price/sound-quality was largely unbalanced.

Hardwiring is the best option, if you value your sound.

Anonymous · February 10, 2004, 08:27

I happily use an Arkon FM Soundfeeder with my iPOD - FM quality only but I don't get any interference and the iPOD sits nicely in the ash-tray. s:P

s:P