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iPod Mini Custom Installation In A Ford Explorer
Johnny Mozzarella writes "MacWorld has a nice write-up on Jesse Melchior, an amateur special effects artist and filmmaker, who used his skills to create a custom installation that is worthy of an iPod mini. The article outlines the materials he used such as latex, plaster and dental acrylic to create an integrated dock complete with blue LEDs and Apple logo in his Ford Explorer."
You won't save anything because the mini-iPod edition of the drive doesn't work outside the iPod. There is however another player out there based on the Hitachi drive which has full functioning electronics, and it's cheap to boot! Btw I'm not sure why you would use a mini if you are just going to put it in a huge custom enclosure, the full sized iPod would work just as well.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Not all that impressive. I mean, its obtrusive while not being terribly convenient to use while driving. If you want to see some truly ingenious fabrication though, a truly topline car show is the place to see it. And you can usually find a regional one closer to you than SEMA, which is where the best toys are. Adding the mini to a car? Neat idea. But just like the recent running gadget thread, this just proves that the average /. geek isn't that up to date on what's available, and gets impressed easily - kind of like the way that non-geeks get impressed by what /. considers "trivial" product modifications or improvements.
Don't get me wrong, its not bad - just not all that newsworthy. Now, if it included things like tying the existing steering wheel radio controls into the iPod when it was plugged in, and rerouting them back to the radio when it wasn't, then I'd start getting interested. Systems integration can be a lot of work, and a lot of fun - and when you do it right, nobody even thinks about it. That's cool.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
the whole point of the dock is that it connects to a cable made by belkin which allows the ipod to charge and provides RCA outputs, if you read the article you would see that he connects these outputs to his radio. so placing the ipod in the dock effectively makes all the required connections...
if only the icelink came with such a nice method for connecting it to a VW beetle...
You get more bang per buck by using the 4GB drive out of the Creative Nomad - I use one in my Canon Digital Rebel. The 512MB CF card is now in my Nomad and both perform just fine. Two working products rather than a drive and a mangled iPod mini.
Incidentally, I was under the impression that the iPod mini drive doesn't work out of the iPod. I've never heard of people getting it to function successfully in anything else.
Ever since I got my iPod, I've dreamt and drooled over the possibility of using it in my car. But I just have never thought up a good way to really integrate it, and I mean fully, like having an easy way to choose songs to play, hit play/pause, change the volume, etc, that is just as easy to use an in dash player that supports mp3's.
:)
Having it sit somewhere mounted is a good start, but you still would have to reach down there and twiddle the buttons. And in an big vehicle like an Explorer? That would get old, quick.
By the looks of the pictures, he is using the line out connector on the bottom. You can't change the volume that's coming out of that right? I mean not from the iPod, therefore you'd have to use the main stereo for that. So you would have two places to reach now, for different activities. You would have reach down to the iPod to change songs and pause, and reach to the stereo to change the volume. That little extra step of deciding where need to reach would be a huge burden when you're going down the interstate at 70mph.
If anybody has thought of a good way to integrate the iPod into a car, I want to know. Right now my setup is using the headphone jack to connect to the aux input of my stereo, and using the inline remote that came with it. I can at least do all functions from one place (the headphone jack can have it's volume adjusted), but I can't really charge it well, because then I'd have a connector sticking out of the bottom *and* top. What I would like is for the iPod to have a docking place like in the article, but still be able to do everything easily, from one place, without needing to look too much. Maybe I need a wireless remote? Maybe I'm asking too much.
Not really impressive in my point of view. Specifically, there is too much wasted space around the docking point.
Some football player named Lawyer Milloy has a custom Hummer that was shown on TLC's Rides, and the car has a dock for a regular iPod. Sorry, but I can't find any pictures to show it....
There's obviously lots of room for Automobile-Area Networks, but few folks are doing anything about it.
Design for Use, not Construction!
I'd love to see someone make a small box that sits in my trunk or under my seat that acts like a CD Changer. Yeah, I know about the PhatBox, but I don't see the need for the removability at such a high cost. Something more like the YAMPP-3, but with WI-FI.
Heck, I'd even be willing to drag an ethernet cable out to the car (hey, a drop in the Garage isn't out of the question) to load up new MP3s over paying ~$800 for the 20GB Phatbox.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
I've got the Belkin charger/line out in my car. It works well and plugs right into the stereo... but it's not that slick. I have to control the ipod to change songs, etc. and then use my cd deck to change volume. I want a deck that I can buy that acts as an ipod dock. You just slide that ipod in like an 8 track and then the deck has normal controls for volume, track selection, etc. and a display that shows song titles, etc. If it had a radio too I could care less about not having a CD player in the car. So you get to listen to the ipod, control it easily.. it gets charged... When you leave the car just eject the ipod, grab it and go! Something like this would be popular, wouldn't you think?
sig
This is a really sweet car mod, but what I really want is to be able to buy an in-dash car stereo into which I can dock the iPod and use the stereo's controls.
Alpine has announced one that's close, but it has the iPod on an external cable. I'd rather not deal with the iPod and cable floating around inside the car.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Supposedly many of the commonly used drive access modes have been disabled because Apple DIDN'T want people canabalizing them for cheap Compact Flash microdrives.
http://www.alpine-usa.com/company_info/press_relea se/010804_ipad.html
ALPINE DEBUTS WORLD'S FIRST CAR AUDIO HEAD UNITS THAT ALLOW TRUE INTEGRATION WITH iPod
TORRANCE, Calif, January 6, 2004 -- Alpine Electronics of America, Inc., the industry-leading manufacturer of high performance mobile electronics, will demonstrate at CES the world's first solution that enables consumers to connect and control their iPod from their in-vehicle sound system....
To really impress me, take the whole iPod apart, mount the internals in the dash and the controls in the steering wheel. Now, that is functional integration. In it's current state, it's an over-glorified coffee cup holder.
Of course, you'd need a heck of a long USB cable to upload.
Whenever you read this sig someone's refrigerator light turns on.
Not necessarily. Where I live (Scandinavia) I can legally rip and keep MP3s from my friends' CDs, as long as I rip them in my house, and have had the original in my house at one point. I could also tape them, if I could bear the hassle and squeaky sound of cassettes. If my friend rips a CD for me and gives me the MP3s, that's technically illegal. Go figure.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
I had something go wrong with my iPod. I called Apple and the next day, a specially designed (for the iPod) FedEx box arrived at my door with instructions for mailing back. In two days, I had a brand new (not refurbished) iPod.
1) It didn't cost me a cent.
2) I didn't lose any *customization
(*what the heck was that supposed to mean anyways?)
Just saw this on TLC last night.
:)
Apparantly 310 customs/west side customs (or whatever) basically did something almost exactly like this (but for a regular iPod) on a H2 (hummer) brought in by some NBA star. Slide the iPod into the dock and it played on the stereo. Needless to say thats not all they did to the H2 but I thought I should mention that.
One thing is it probably cost a LOT more than he spent on his Ford Explorer doing it himself
suddenly I feel very tired
or, try one of these icelink units. very cool. keep your stock head unit and your optional steering wheel controls. they also sell mounting brackets that require no drilling into the car. nice if you are leasing...
-There are no wires to attach or add because the Belkin car charger I integrated into the design has an audio line-out built into it, which I used to run directly into my car stereo via an adapter. The music plays through the car speakers at perfect quality. Yeah, I still control the volume throught the car stereo but HOW HARD IS THAT? Come on people.
-The blue LED lights were added ONLY for one reason: TO BE ABLE TO SEE THE DAMN THING IN THE DARK AT NIGHT WHILE PLUGGING IT IN OR CHANGING SONGS.
-It can not "fly" out of the console because if you had actually read what I wrote you would see that I made it so the iPod fits very snugly into it, making it able to lock it in place and push on the buttons or scroll through songs very easily without it so much as moving. There is no way it would ever wobble around, or even fly out.
-It is not difficult to use, or awkward in any way...the thing sits right where my hand rests over the console and it takes no effort to press any of the buttons.
-I am NOT the kind of guy who "tricks out" his car just to look cool, especially not with an explorer. While I do like the car, I only made it because I wanted to use MY iPod in MY car while I was driving, and that was it. It's a hell of a lot better than carrying around 400 cd's. For those of you who remarked about it being unsafe...How safe is it to look through all your cd's trying to find the one that has the one song you want to hear while trying to watch the road at the same time? With the iPod, I can make up song lists I want to hear before I even leave, or while I'm just sitting in the car at a red light or in traffic, or even just let all 1000 songs play in random order. Anyone who actually OWNS an iPod knows how easy it is to use one.
I personally don't care what any of you negative people think because I didn't make it to please you, I made it for myself. I enjoy using it and that's all that matters. Until I see pictures of your installs that are any better or more practical than mine, maybe you should think twice about bashing it.
Could this have been done better? Of course! I'm the first to admit that. I started rethinking and redesigning it after I installed it. I made the thing on a whim and didn't take the time to completely think out EVERY practical application, I just wanted to make something to play the thing in my car til I came up with something better.
I'm glad there are some people out there who did enjoy it and maybe got some ideas of their own. Thanks everybody!
When I switched to OS X, it was because Apple made nice notebooks and could do LaTeX, either through LyX, or through a decent LaTeX editor. As it was I found TeXShop and my mind was made up.
When I told a Mac-using designer friend of mine, he was all to keen to help me switch, but was amused by my LaTeX requirement. When he told his older friends at work, they laughed. You see they all switched to Macs back in the early days so they could use desktop publishing software rather than typesetters like LaTeX.
When they heard I was switching to Mac to use a typesetter they thought it was the craziest thing they had heard in years.
Your gag perhaps should have been...
he's a mac user. shouldn't he use Quark?
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