The FIPO connects to my iPhone in about three seconds, less time than it takes me to put my seat belt on and pull out my iPhone to press play.Īudio quality is just shy of matching a direct plug into the cassette adapter. Not completely concealed, but there are no cables running outward and nothing to plug in. The cassette cord runs about half an inch from the player to the top of the door, while the USB cable runs from under the door to the car’s power port. The bulk of the kit fits in a compartment under the audio deck with a flip-down door. To compensate, I added in a volume control component from Koss. That’s fine for standard line-in devices, but for a cassette adapter, it’s too much. System looked pretty good, but there was one problem: too much volume. The audio cable outputs to a standard cassette adapter connected with a female-to-female coupler. I went with the “dual” in case we need to plug something else in (and our car has a second port too). Its USB cable plugs into a Griffin PowerJolt Dual car adapter. The other components came together from there.Ĭonnecting the FIPO to power and audio is a generic iPod dock cable with a 3.5mm output.
BLUETOOTH CAR ADAPTER BLUETOOTH
Testing it around my office, I find that it actually gets the 10m range that Bluetooth is advertised to get. It’s intended for devices designed for the iPod dock connector, but as I figured, it works on a dock connector cable too. The crucial component to this set up is a Bluetooth module that can run on USB. So I decided to address both issues by piecing together a USB solution. Bluetooth adapters that run on AC come with power bricks. One option is a Bluetooth cassette adapter, but that runs on batteries and requires recharging.
My wife gets a little particular when it comes to opening things up and tinkering with their innards, so I had to come up with an external approach. Unfortunately, an adapter built for my car deck is expensive and requires getting in behind the deck. To go wireless, there are two options: FM transmitter or Bluetooth adapter. Thus, I’ve been tinkering with solutions that satisfy both requirements, and I think I’ve finally hit it.
One thing my wife doesn’t love is wires strewn about connecting my iPhone to the car.
One thing I love is listening to my music from my iPhone in the car.