Audio for my car using lightning connection

dirtychinchilla · 18 May 2016 at 18:54

Does anyone know where you can buy the lighting to USB and aux lead that's in the image below? I've conjured up an alternative Bluetooth solution, but I could really do with just buying this lead...thanks in advance.

dirtychinchilla · 18 May 2016 at 19:20

Mmm I could do that. I thought about it, but it's too cumbersome for my liking. The Bluetooth solution may actually be better.

dirtychinchilla · 18 May 2016 at 20:41

Perhaps the thing to have is the 30-pin one, and then have a converter wire...I don't know!

dirtychinchilla · 18 May 2016 at 20:53

The only advantage to the Bluetooth is that anyone could connect to it

dirtychinchilla · 19 May 2016 at 08:45

It's for my car...for the bluetooth to work, I have to buy a bluetooth module, wire that in to the stereo via aux, and then wire the module to the car via a micro USB lead to get power to it! The dual connector thing would have meant that I could sort of have one lead.

The more I think about it, though, the more suitable bluetooth is I think. My one concern is will it prevent the connection to the phone that the stereo has...not that I've experienced that working yet.

dirtychinchilla · 19 May 2016 at 10:25

Hah you make a very good point. I don't want to change the look of the car's interior, so no I don't want to fit an aftermarket head unit. However, it may be that the newer version of my head unit does all this, so I could look into getting one of those.

I'm not 100% sure that it would take all the steps that you're talking about, though. The phone would be connected to the car by bluetooth and aux via bluetooth. If the phone rings, the head unit would switch to the phone setting on it, and then I think I could take the call, and at the end it would switch back. The head unit would have no idea that you're involving your phone twice.

I always used to have to shout at my phone anyway, though, so that's not a huge issue.

dirtychinchilla · 19 May 2016 at 10:59

Because it won't look like it's supposed to, and because I can't afford a new stereo.

dirtychinchilla · 19 May 2016 at 11:16

Yeah but in the beemer it would look horrendously out of place.

Those are rather less substantial than changing the stereo. At the end of the day, I'm paying like £25 instead of £200.

dirtychinchilla · 19 May 2016 at 13:11

It does have bluetooth but as you say, you can only make calls through it. That's a great idea though, I'll investigate whether there is a software update.

All options bar the one I've chosen seem to be expensive.

Little bit of research shows that you can connect multiple bluetooth devices. Frankly, the ability to receive phone calls doesn't matter to me.

dirtychinchilla · 19 May 2016 at 13:29

Definitely worth considering, thanks

the bluetooth thing I'm working on is probably the cheapest solution, but if it's not integrated properly then I may change my mind.

dirtychinchilla · 19 May 2016 at 15:12

Amazon? Thanks, I don't think the sound quality of the radio transmitters is very good at all, though. I'm using one right now and you can't turn the volume up because the sound quality is so poor.

dirtychinchilla · 20 May 2016 at 13:15

Feek said:
The FM transmitters you can get now are pretty pants compared to how they used to be. I went through loads of them before I trashed the idea and moved to something else. They could be fine but the relaxation of the laws regarding transmitters some years ago reduced the power right down to practically nothing and also opened the flood gates for complete rubbish. Anything with enough power to be worthwhile is effectively illegal.

Exactly...they're fine for temporary usage but I hate badly integrated stuff, and this is exactly what these cables are, badly integrated with poor sound quality.

Feek said:
Out of interest, this is the sort of thing I bought for my car. It plugs into the CD autochanger socket and it's completely out of sight. I've even started playing radio using an app on the phone instead of actually using the car radio.

That's pretty neat, I like it! I think what I'm creating should be pretty much the same as this, although I won't be able to take phone calls. I think my head unit may do phone calls, though, I just have to work out how.

Jamesyboyjim said:
Agreed. They sound terrible. They are flaky aswell, you get all sorts of interference from other stations as you drive around.

Yeah!

So, an update. I got the lead for the head unit, got the bluetooth receiver. The receiver looks great, it's absolutely miniscule but seems to be really nice quality. I plugged in the aux...and nothing! So I'm thinking I either have the wrong head unit, a faulty head unit, or a faulty cable. I've contacted the seller to see if they have any advice. Otherwise, I'll try one more cable and then think about changing head unit to the slightly newer version, but that's about £60 instead of the £15 I've spent thus far.

dirtychinchilla · 20 May 2016 at 15:55

The entire problem is that the head unit doesn't recognise the aux. Otherwise, I can get the rest of it working. Bluetooth module is powere by battery, but has a charging cable that I'm going to wire into the ignition.

dirtychinchilla · 13 Jun 2016 at 08:50

Very nice