Cars + Rockboxed iPods, the definitive post

[Falco98]

I just had an oppurtunity to try out my 'new' ipod 5.5g 80gig in my girlfriend's '06 Scion, which has a built-in ipod connector.  I wasn't expecting it to do much at all, but now I can confirm it is at least 90% functional with rockbox (it's the latest release within the last week or so).

I even get track info on the car's built-in radio display, as well as pretty much nominal function from the car's controls (track skip backward works, but forward doesn't seem to work, but the "fast forward" button skips forward anyway).  Even the "shuffle" and "repeat" buttons on the car's controls toggle these functions in Rockbox.

One funny thing I noticed is that it won't let me pause the ipod when the car is on.  It will go through the "fade on pause" motions (even though the fade doesn't work with the line-out, so it's just like a pause that lags for 2 seconds every time), and then pauses for maybe a quarter of a second, and switches immediately back to play again.  Also, on one specific track, the car's display refused to pull track metadata, even though the WPS screen on the ipod itself displayed it all fine.

If anyone wants me to test anything else in this car, just let me know.

[dibby]

BMW 320d with DICE ipod adapter - Can't figure out how to get Rockbox working at all. No sound, no controls no matter what combination of car adapter and accessory power so I've had to switch back to the standard ipod (Fisher Price) interface which is driving me crazy because I now can't delete or move tracks on the move, no flac support, crappy basic Apple interface is back again. On the bright side, FFW, RW & shuffle buttons work through the stereo

Send me the car and I'll debug it.

lol. I'll post the car over for a bit!

Waiting for 3.5 to be released, the standard ipod firmware is driving me bugshit and other people seem to be getting on well with it. I'll even sacrifice the random play, FF & RW functions through the steering wheel to just be able to use Rockbox again in the car

[soap]

How about you all test out the latest improvements in accessory support?
They won't make it into 3.5 without testers.


http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=23666.0

[bakseetdrivr]

how do i go about doing that? I'm not at all new to rockbox but only got as far as wps customization, the build environment and all that other stuff was a little above what i was interested in getting into (despite reading and re-reading the wiki). Ive got an Alpine xd100 head unit that i would love to see rockbox work on and would be glad to test it.

[soap]

Just install the appropriate test build by unzipping the .zip file to the root of your player.

[Falco98]

3.5 seems to have introduced one major bug into playback via the Scion ipod port.  Playback still works, but if the player is turned on by being plugged into the car connection, it *always* displays "ipod connection error" on the car's display (and refuses to work) - the workaround is to reseat the cable into the ipod, at which point it starts working properly.  In 3.4 I occasionally had the issue, though it was intermittent and rare, and I got the impression it may have been from me plugging it in sloppily or something.  With 3.5 it happens every single time.

[Xenna]

[slightly OT]I like the iRiver H1x0 and H3x0 for this purpose. My H140 is stashed away safely in my glovebox with the line out connected to the aux-in on the radio and the remote control is velcroed to the dashboard. The display is hard to read, but I usually play my full collection in shuffled mode anyway. Sometimes I drop out of shuffle when I want to hear a whole album.

The H140 basically never leaves my glovebox. It's been there for ~5 years, most of the time running rockbox (which was a big improvement).

What's surprised me is that the player and drive have taken the permanent car environment (alternating heat/cold/moisture) without any problems. The only visible part is the remote and apparently nobody's ever considered that worth stealing...