Now that I have a new car, iTunes, and a little bit of a commute… naturally, I would want some decent sounds to listen to.
So I started looking at what it would take to get the car hooked up with an ipod, since that would probably be the easiest way to enjoy music.
Essentially it is a mess. I found a few sites where people have modified their car to hook up to an iPod and the results are expensive. Usually, there is a little box that emulates a CD changer which then talks to the iPod in the Apple iPod remote protocol. These boxes cost about $200 and require you to pull the head unit out. For a while, the hardware hacker in me said ‘hey, I could do this.’. Then my reality about how much time I have hit home and I came to my senses 🙂
This whole thing just shows how lack of standards cause problems. What if the auto industry standardizes on a connector… will it be Apple’s iPod connector? Why does the wiring in a car have to be such a mess? Why isn’t it just a network rather than the mess of cables they have right now?
For now, I’ll just burn a few CD’s and then deal with this later. I mean, I don’t even have an iPod.
If you do get an iPod, which you should. 😉 Don’t go for the FM transmitter crap. Those things never work. The best for cheap money seems to be casette adapters at the moment.
There does appear to be some stuff for adapting to the CD changer port on the stereo. And on a car as big as the Pilot it should be fairly easy to get to the port.
BTW, Lori swore up and down for several holidays that she didn’t want an iPod. I had one, then I got another from the office as a gift. So I gave my original to Lori. Now she loves it and never leaves home without it.
Yeah, I see an iPod in my future as well. I got a shuffle for Char and she really enjoys it.
I’ll definitely avoid the FM thing. I do have a casset adapter, but I didn’t think the quality would be that good, and it doesn’t charge. I guess I’ll just bite the bullet and rig the stereo when I get an iPod.