I just installed a new radio in my vehicle. I now have to find and start a program or song then plug the Ipod into the radio. I can not see the Ipod screen while it is plugged in. To change a program or find a particular song I have to unplug the Ipod, find what I am looking for, then plug it back in. If I listen to the Ipod through headphones I do not have this problem. So, how can I plug in the Ipod to the car radio and still see the screen?
How are you connecting the ipod to the stereo? Just using an audio patch cord should keep the display active.
I assume the ipod is plugged into the radio with a cord that goes to the dock connector on the bottom. Does the radio have an input that looks like a headphone jack? Easiest solution is to buy a cord that has a headphone jack on each end. You don’t have to buy some fancy one made for the ipod, you should be able to find one for a couple dollars.
This charger has a line out port (headphone jack) that uses audio from the dock connector (better audio quality than headphone jack) and will charge your iPod and comes with the cord to plug into your stereo. $7, free shipping.
I would think the radio can can control the iPod somehow while it is plugged in to the dock connector. I am also sure the interface is horrible and far inferior to the one the ipod has built in. Everything I have seen that disables the iPod controls offers a terrible interface instead :mad:
Yes, iPods become simple slave devices when plugged into car radios via a data interface, akin to mass storage USB drives. The radio should be able to navigate through the songs using up/down/left/right buttons, but you probably won’t see anything on the radio’s display except maybe the name of the immediate folder you’re playing from at the moment.
As others have said, the better option is to use an audio patch cord from the iPod’s headphone jack to the car stereo’s input jack - provided it has one. If it doesn’t, you can buy FM transmitters that will broadcast your iPod’s output to your radio via the FM broadcast band:
My car stereo actually has a few different ‘modes’ for Ipod/iphone hookup via the USB cable. There’s ‘Head mode’ where the stereo has full control and the iphone is a slave, or ‘Ipod mode’ where the iphone/ipod controls are active and the stereo can only feed a few keypresses (play/pause, track back and track forward) through to the device. I think there’s also an ‘Ext mode’ where the stereo has no control at all, but just functions as speakers for whatever app is running on the iphone, not necessarily music or podcast playback.
You might check your radio manual to see if it has anything similar.
use whatever means is the safest. an audio cord where the mp3 player controls the songs allows you yo pick up the mp3 player and you can keep your head forward.
i have and FM radio device, plugs into the lighter socket and transmits to your FM radio, which takes an audio cord input. it also has a USB cord input. it also has a a memory card input, it has a wireless remote to control the song playing as well as buttons on the device.
I have this too. I keep the remote stuck to the dash with Velcro. Very handy.
Anachronism, I just want to thank you for mentioning this accessory. I bought it from Amazon and it’s the best $7 I ever spent. It arrived yesterday and I tooled around town today and tried it out. It works perfectly with my iPhone 3GS (and according to the reviews it also works with the iPhone 4 and 4S). It pops up a message that says “This accessory is not optimized for use with this iPhone,” but that’s meaningless. Hit “Dismiss” and it works fine. It provided a steady current to the phone from the cigarette lighter port and played the music through the docking connection through the AUX jack of my in-dash stereo loud and clear. I know I should have put this review up on Amazon, but I can’t rave enough about this connector. At that price, I’ll probably buy another one as a spare.