Brad Ideas - Car dock for my MP3 player - Comments

Renault, and probably many

jessamine — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 04:22:11 -0800

Renault, and probably many others, have the radio controls on the steering wheel, which is cool for changing stations and volume without having to reach or take your eyes off the road.

Peter Jennings — Sun, 22 Feb 2004 22:01:11 -0800

Ideally, I think the functionality belongs in the radio and not in some external box that you have to carry with you. Especially if it links by FM which I have never found to work well in any populated areas. It's impossible to find a clear frequency.

Some cars now come with an audio input jack in the glove compartment for MP3 player input. All should.

Car radios that play MP3 CDs are available for less than $150. Integration allows standard European features such as automatic interruption of MP3 or CD playing for traffic reports.

The Rockford OmniFi <?> already provides a car audio system with WiFi and a 20G hard drive. I don't know if it can automatically sync the MP3 collection when the car is in the driveway, but that would be nice and a "simple matter of programming".

Renault, and probably many others, have the radio controls on the steering wheel, which is cool for changing stations and volume without having to reach or take your eyes off the road.

A feature I miss when I am in North America is automatic network tracking of radio stations as you drive. Our ten year old car radio will happily find the strongest France Culture station in range and switch seamlessly as we drive from here to Paris. It also displays station names and content on its little display as you search or scan.

Max — Sun, 22 Feb 2004 09:18:39 -0800

Hey Brad, I saw your pan pictures. Since I can't find any way to find your email address, this is the only way I can contact you. What program do you use to stitch the pictures together? They look flawless unless you just have an amazing camera.

Car dock for my MP3 player

brad — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 05:25:44 -0800

I like to use our Rio Karma MP3 player in the car, but it's not nearly as good as it could be. So here are some jottings on what an ideal car dock would do for the player.

Power and charge the player, of course
Offer various options for sending audio to the car, including a built-in quality FM transmitter, a port for a special Cassette sized interface (more below) and various cables for car stereos that have an accessory jack (as mine has for a trunk CD-changer) or plain audio inputs.
A wireless remote control to stick on the wheel (not needed if other remote control methods can work.)
A microphone.
To get really fancy, an 802.11 interface to allow it to sync up with computers inside the house while in the driveway. Though strictly, this would be even better inside the player, not in the dock.

The microphone would perform several roles. One, it would detect the ambient sound level in the car, and boost the music volume as the car gets noisier. No more super-loud when you start the car either.

Secondly, it would listen for the sound of the music the player is playing. It would try to tell if it was playing, so it could detect when the stereo is turned off or switched to something else, or when the car is turned off (if the loss of power from the accessory jack doesn't already reveal this.) When the sound stops (even if this takes 5 seconds to confirm) just pause the music back in time when the sound was first detected to stop. One could then from time to time send out pulses of the forthcoming audio, and if it hears them, treat that as a resumption of play.