Hardware that DEFINITELY works in car mode?

[bryguy]

My beloved Sansa e200 died a few months ago after many years of faithful service in car mode. Power comes from the car, the device wakes up, power turns off, the device sleeps. It's wonderful.  i replaced it with a Sansa Clip+ and found that when power from the car is attached, music will not play. Wasted money, oh well. I searched ebay and found an e200 model for a reasonable price, hooked it up... same problem. I guess the v3 firmware doesn't support playing when power is attached.

Can someone point me to hardware *currently available* that will definitely work in car mode? If it suppords microSD cards that's even better, but I've already wasted many hours and a good bit of money trying to make something so basic work again. Rockbox is awesome but the hardware vendors ruin it for us.

Thanks!

[saratoga]

The Clip+ actually does work in car mode, used mine for over a year in the car.  Nothing in particular is required to support it, other than being able to detect a charger and charge in rockbox.  Any device that can do that should work.

[bryguy]

It runs but the output is muted except for a clicking noise with the version I have. May be different firmware than yours, or maybe the electronics in your lighter/stereo are different from mine in some way. I wish it worked!

[saratoga]

It runs but the output is muted except for a clicking noise with the version I have. May be different firmware than yours, or maybe the electronics in your lighter/stereo are different from mine in some way. I wish it worked!

That is a wiring problem with your stereo, not something a firmware can do anything about.  An isolation transformer or isolator might help though if you can't fix the stereo itself.  Maybe check out a car audio form, there are probably well known solutions to this problem.

[bryguy]

I've looked and not found anything useful for it. The frustrating thing is that it worked perfectly with my e200 model with v1 firmware.

[saratoga]

The e200v1 doesn't directly couple the headphone jack, so its resistant to bad wiring.  The newer Sansa players cut off the audio to keep you from burning up the player, but they won't work until you fix the problem. 

[Crafty]

To drive a speaker coil both + and - voltage are needed to push the diaphragm in and out.
imo, the Clip regulate battery voltage to 3vdc and 1.5vdc.  The regulated 1.5vdc becomes the ground.  It's a cheap powersupply.
 
batt regulated 3.0v-------------- +1.5v
       regulated 1.5v------------  ground (device output jack)
batt ground  --------------------- -1.5v

Some car stereos isolate their power supply and/or aux in....some don't. 

USB stick radios start at $80.  They may need a playlist maker because some new car stereos don't support playlist......ipod contract maybe.....does anything with the 'i' logo support playlist?

 

[bryguy]

So if I were to take my car into a car audio shop and ask them to fix the ground problem, would they likely be able to fix it, or is this a flaw internal to my stereo? For the record I have a 2005 toyota matrix and an aiwa cdc-z137 (I think, the picture matches after a quick google search).

Any advice on how to phrase my request for a technician to try to fix this would be awesome.

[saratoga]

To drive a speaker coil both + and - voltage are needed to push the diaphragm in and out.
imo, the Clip regulate battery voltage to 3vdc and 1.5vdc.  The regulated 1.5vdc becomes the ground.  It's a cheap powersupply.
 
batt regulated 3.0v-------------- +1.5v
       regulated 1.5v------------  ground (device output jack)
batt ground  --------------------- -1.5v

I think you have the right idea about the ground on the stereo, but its not the battery that is the problem here.  A battery floats, so by definition it can't impact the ground.  And thats why the player will work fine until you plug in the USB adapter and go from battery to the car's power supply.   In that case you're not longer floating, and the choice of ground matters a lot.

I guess an isolator or high pass filter would fix this problem. 

[Crafty]

The problem is when the you plug the Clip into the aux-in and cigaret charger.  This can causes a short between the device jack ground and the device battery ground if the car battery and/or car stereo aux-in jack is not isolated.  The device's -1.5vdc supply goes to 0vdc and the device can't opperate.

[bryguy]

So a ground loop isolator would fix it? Something like this?:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062214

If that's the case maybe I could get my clip working properly in my car today, that would make me happy.

[bryguy]

Ok, the radio shack ground isolator fixed the problem with my e200 v3 firmware player, haven't tried the clip yet but I'm back in business one way or the other! If I'd been more patient there are a bunch of ground loop isolators that don't require extra rca adaptors on amazon for $10 or so, but I didn't want to wait that long to test it.

[Crafty]

for grins, I just tried the clip on my new aftermarket JVC dual usb head unit...it worked.  It didn't work on my old sony.