Stacey said:
I believe that a couple of hours ago I saw on some site that the '07 OBS SE
will have the connections up front for all of the little electronic devices
that people have these days. That is a lot of help, isn't it? Sorry I
That's a good short term solution. However, there is no space
for an aux-in jack at the bottom of the unit. And any wires
hanging from the top of the unit would be irritating since
access to some controls would be hindered.
The industry seems to be overdue for a good arbitration solution
to integrate the wide assortment of the electronic crap with
the car audio system.
Ideally some large automaker (Honda for example) could grab
headunit makers (Alpine/Pioneer/Kenwood/etc) and third party
noise makers (Magellan, Garmin, cell phone makers, etc) gently by the
balls
and wisper softly in their ears: "Why won't we make a new standard
for plugging all the external noise sources into the head units?"
Such an industry consortium could start with a cigarette socket
like contraption that would feed 12V to the external units and get
stereo in
and priority/signal in information. You'd need at least these lines:
ground
+12V
signal present
device priority
at least two lines for two stereo channels
For example, a GPS unit would report that it's level 0,
cell phone level 3 and an MP3 player (in the phone or stand alone)
level 5.
When the level 0 device reports that it has something to say
the head unit can either lower the playback volume and mix
in the signal from the level 0 device or shut off all the
other noise sources and playback from level 0 exclusively.
Once nav directions are over the level 0 device shuts off
and the level 3 device gets a chance to play a tone for an incoming
phone
call for example. Once the phone call is over the music playback can
resume.
Then you can have one interface on top of the dash for an
aftermaket gps unit like RoadMate 900 and another two for
cell phone and an mp3 player somewhere else. Say where the cupholders
for the rear bench currently are (on the back of the armrest).
Then all you need a 1-into-2 splitter provided by the phone maker
for the phone and for the mp3 player.
This would complicate the car wiring looms even further though
and the electrical systems are by no means simple already :-(
They'd have to run one set of wires to the fuse box and other to
the head unit for every single socket and there are at least three that
you realistically need. Another problem is the tight real estate on
the back of single din HUs.
If replying consider crossposting to rec.audio.car
