iPod Mini Custom Installation In A Ford Explorer

Johnny Mozzarella writes "MacWorld has a nice write-up on Jesse Melchior, an amateur special effects artist and filmmaker, who used his skills to create a custom installation that is worthy of an iPod mini. The article outlines the materials he used such as latex, plaster and dental acrylic to create an integrated dock complete with blue LEDs and Apple logo in his Ford Explorer."

Battery problem

Once this is done, the Explorer becomes like the iPod. When the car's battery runs down, you replace the whole car.

Re:Battery problem

If we're going to follow this analogy, we might as well get it right.

In the rare occurance that the battery go, then Apple will replace the whole truck in less than 3 days for the price ($59.00) of an iPod extended warrenty [apple.com].

Re:Battery problem

I had something go wrong with my iPod. I called Apple and the next day, a specially designed (for the iPod) FedEx box arrived at my door with instructions for mailing back. In two days, I had a brand new (not refurbished) iPod.

1) It didn't cost me a cent.
2) I didn't lose any *customization

(*what the heck was that supposed to mean anyways?)

Why not go all out?

If you're going to do something this fancy, why hamstring yourself with the 4GB mini?

Re:Why not go all out?

If you're going to do something this fancy, why hamstring yourself with the 4GB mini?

Even more, if you're going to do something this fancy, why hamstring yourself with a Ford Explorer?

Re:Why not go all out?

Even more, if you're going to do something this fancy, why hamstring yourself with a Ford Explorer?

Because Escalades only play pr0n on 15 different screens?

Re:Why not go all out?

very simple.... whens the last car trip you have taken where you get even remotely close to playing 1000 songs? I sure havent come close with my 5gig 1st gen

Re:Why not go all out?

very simple.... whens the last car trip you have taken where you get even remotely close to playing 1000 songs? I sure havent come close with my 5gig 1st gen

Geez, I could never imagine filling up 4 gigabytes of space with music. Don't forget to figure in the $1000 for buying 1000 songs off the Apple iTunes store! That stuff adds up quick. I just don't understand how people can afford to have huge collections with 10,000+ songs in them. They must spend every penny on music, no wonder they hate the RIAA!!

Re:Why not go all out?

But that's piracy. I can understand ripping your own CDs, but ripping your friends' CDs is illegal.

Not necessarily. Where I live (Scandinavia) I can legally rip and keep MP3s from my friends' CDs, as long as I rip them in my house, and have had the original in my house at one point. I could also tape them, if I could bear the hassle and squeaky sound of cassettes. If my friend rips a CD for me and gives me the MP3s, that's technically illegal. Go figure.

Re:Why not go all out?

Why not indeed. I had a 6GB Creative Nomad Jukebox, and filled that up QUICK. I now have a 40GB iPod and love it.

It's easy to gather up 10,000 songs when you have a CD collection from two generations of people; not to mention the downloads (purchased *and* free). Ripping CDs and stuff, I currently have 1760 songs, and that's without all the comedy routines and prank calls that i've downloaded, and I'm not even doen ripping CDs. 1000 songs? bah.

The question "How often do you have a car trip where you can play 1000 songs?" is simply missing the point - the point is not playing that much music, the point is, when I want to listen to Disturbed, I can. If I want to hear Tribal Tech, I can. If I want to hear Black Eyed Peas, I can. And I don't have to fumble through 100 CDs while driving to do it. The point is choice, not volume.

Think about it.

Re:Why not go all out?

It's easy to gather up 10,000 songs when you have a CD collection from two generations of people

Is that a subtle way of saying "I live at home with my parents, so it's easy to afford music"?

Ummmm

The point isn't how much you listen to, but giving you how choice as to how much to listen to. I have 3000 songs in my library. I listen to several repeatedly over the course of the day. I skip over many of them too. Some people don't listen this way, but i'd rather have my whole library at my fingertips. I never know which song i'll want to listen to next.

Re:Why not go all out?

Riiiight. Are you going to carry that around rig around?

The advantage of creating a dock for a portable MP3 player is that you can take your music with you, but still have a nice way to listen to MP3's in the car. Plus, your risk of theft is decreased if you can remove the $500 piece of equipment from the car.

Re:Why not go all out?

you would be better off just buying a cheap computer, a very large hard drive, and a touch screen LCD off of ebay

Unless you want to get out of your car, walk away, and still be able to listen to your music. (No, I'm not suggesting bigger speakers in your car).

Re:Why not go all out?

Unless you want to get out of your car, walk away, and still be able to listen to your music

That's why they invented extension cords.

What next?

What next - an iPod Mini?

Mini Sales Explained

It has been expressed here previously that the iPod mini has much less bang-for-buck than the regular iPod, which is only a few bucks more but comes with an extra 16GB.

However, if you simply want to buy a Hitachi 4GB mini hard drive, you'll save as much as $150 if you buy the mini and take the drive out over buying the boxed hard drive product.

Re:Mini Sales Explained

You won't save anything because the mini-iPod edition of the drive doesn't work outside the iPod. There is however another player out there based on the Hitachi drive which has full functioning electronics, and it's cheap to boot! Btw I'm not sure why you would use a mini if you are just going to put it in a huge custom enclosure, the full sized iPod would work just as well.

shouldnt this be installed in a honda civic...

with a shitty tin spoiler bondo'ed onto the body?

All that equipment...

latex, plaster and dental acrylic

This guy uses all that stuff intimately with his car and gets on the front page of slashdot.

I mention using the same stuff intimately with my girlfriend and she runs away.

pfft.

Re:All that equipment...

His girlfriend is made of latex - you insensitive clod!

Too Bad You Can't Get One

Due to a design flaw that causes nasty static noises, iPod Mini shipments have stopped cold. [appleinsider.com]

Might as well just get a the full sized iPod or another MP3 player unless you don't mind waiting till July.

That just looks tacky.

Someone took the already ugly concept of ground effects (neon lights under the car) and put them in the car. I'll pass, thanks. And that big silver bump, it's an eyesore. But, to each his own I guess.

Re:That just looks tacky.

The term 'ground effects' typically refers to the fiberglass spoilers and skirting that (if done properly) induce downforce under the car to hold it down to the road at high speeds, similar in design and function to that found on Formula 1 racers.

The correct term for neon lights under your car is 'a waste of fucking money.'

Re:That just looks tacky.

induce downforce under the car to hold it down to the road at high speeds

Sorry to be a pedant, but what skirting ("ground effects") does is induce a partial vacuum, or at least a lower pressure area, within the enclosed underside. The rest of the bodywork produces high pressure over the top of the vehicle, skirting produces low pressure beneath, and Bernoulli does the rest.

The result of all this is increased downforce. FYI, skirting is now prohibited in F1 racing.

If you think this is cool...

You should see my custom cupholder/cellphone mount.

Really, guys, is it THAT slow of a news day?

Ford Explorer

Cool. Now you can grove to some cool tunes while you're waiting for the tow truck.

Re:Ford Explorer

You know what Ford stands for, don't you? Fix it again, Tony.

No, that would be FIAT.
Ford stands for:

Fix
Or
Repair
Daily

I have no idea where you got that, there isn't even an 'R' anywhere in the phrase "Fix it again, Tony".

that still won't get me to buy a ford

Between the faulty mini ipod's (as /.'ed a few days ago) and the ford's faulty fuel system and steering column, I think I have been odds with a two bullet russian roulette.

Maybe they should've coupled the mini ipod with the OTHER mini; the mini cooper.

All that work...

All that work and he still has cables to connect (he doesn't seem to think they're photogenic). I use this FM transmitter called the iTrip that snaps to the top of the iPod 10 gigger and I can hide the whole thing, zero wires. Amazingly (to me), the iTrip uses less battery power than the backlight on the iPod. Appetite For Destruction all night on repeat!

Re:All that work...

If you RTFA, you will note the dock manages all the connections:

connected the iPod mini to my Pioneer car stereo using the CD-RB10 adapter, which connects to the L+R audio output RCAs from the iPod mini using the line-out from the Belkin car charger. I added two extra cigarette lighter adapters to plug in the car charger and the LEDs. Everything was nicely hidden below the center console.

As these things go...

Not all that impressive. I mean, its obtrusive while not being terribly convenient to use while driving. If you want to see some truly ingenious fabrication though, a truly topline car show is the place to see it. And you can usually find a regional one closer to you than SEMA, which is where the best toys are. Adding the mini to a car? Neat idea. But just like the recent running gadget thread, this just proves that the average /. geek isn't that up to date on what's available, and gets impressed easily - kind of like the way that non-geeks get impressed by what /. considers "trivial" product modifications or improvements.

Don't get me wrong, its not bad - just not all that newsworthy. Now, if it included things like tying the existing steering wheel radio controls into the iPod when it was plugged in, and rerouting them back to the radio when it wasn't, then I'd start getting interested. Systems integration can be a lot of work, and a lot of fun - and when you do it right, nobody even thinks about it. That's cool.

Great...

(joke)Just what we need, another jackass in an SUV with a blinky detachable electronic gadget to operate while driving and try to get everyone else killed.(/joke)

Seriously though... that seems like a lot of wasted space. It also looks like it would be too easy to accidentally bump it out of the little holder while driving.

Re:Great...

It also looks like it would be too easy to accidentally bump it out of the little holder while driving.

You mean, it would most likely be "thrown" from its holder when the owner goes off-roading because, I mean, why else would you buy an SUV righT??

MIME

I Can't See half of the full sized pics in Mozilla due to wrong MIME types. When will these web developers ever learn?

latex?

he's a mac user. shouldn't he use BBEdit?

SIZE!!!

Could this guy have bought a smaller MP3 player to put into a bigger vehicle?

Let's put an MP3 player the size of a chicklet in an army tank! That way I hav to take my eyes of the road for 10 mintues (potentially destroying several small villages) just to figure out it's doing!


Seriously, am I they only one who find the whole "tricked out SUV" fad retarded?

What's the next fad going to be? Big rigs?
Are we going to se idiots driving around 1000hp diesel trucks with 15 speed gearboxes and no trailer? Of course it will have 36" chrome rims too....

Seems to me...

This is just another way to have more pileups on the interstate. Why can't people toss all these things in the back and focus on driving?

It looks good

but when i saw it was a .mac homepage i expexted it to be slashdotted, luckily only 20000 of us hit that site. Kudos to the owner for doing it, it looks nice and nobody should really knock the effort he has gone through.

Bone Thugs?

All of that just to listen to Bone Thugs? What a waste.

But it's still cumbersome to use

Ever since I got my iPod, I've dreamt and drooled over the possibility of using it in my car. But I just have never thought up a good way to really integrate it, and I mean fully, like having an easy way to choose songs to play, hit play/pause, change the volume, etc, that is just as easy to use an in dash player that supports mp3's.

Having it sit somewhere mounted is a good start, but you still would have to reach down there and twiddle the buttons. And in an big vehicle like an Explorer? That would get old, quick.

By the looks of the pictures, he is using the line out connector on the bottom. You can't change the volume that's coming out of that right? I mean not from the iPod, therefore you'd have to use the main stereo for that. So you would have two places to reach now, for different activities. You would have reach down to the iPod to change songs and pause, and reach to the stereo to change the volume. That little extra step of deciding where need to reach would be a huge burden when you're going down the interstate at 70mph.

If anybody has thought of a good way to integrate the iPod into a car, I want to know. Right now my setup is using the headphone jack to connect to the aux input of my stereo, and using the inline remote that came with it. I can at least do all functions from one place (the headphone jack can have it's volume adjusted), but I can't really charge it well, because then I'd have a connector sticking out of the bottom *and* top. What I would like is for the iPod to have a docking place like in the article, but still be able to do everything easily, from one place, without needing to look too much. Maybe I need a wireless remote? Maybe I'm asking too much. :)

Alpine has it - Control through the head unit

Visit Here [vwvortex.com] for a press release. The unit will be available later this year. It integrates all control through the head unit, via the dock connector. You can tuck the iPod away inside the glove box. Still requires you to take your eyes off the road and look at the display of the receiver, however. Until Alpine comes out with an easy-to-install aftermarket heads-up-display...

you're absolutely right

That little extra step of deciding where need to reach would be a huge burden when you're going down the interstate at 70mph

You're absolutely right. I had to stop driving manual transmission cars because I couldn't deal with the complexity...having to press a pedal AND move a lever? All while braking or tapping the gas?

But then, I didn't find automatics much better. One pedal for stopping, one for going? Aaaaa! What insane trickery!

Something to listen to while rolling over...

That iPod mini will sound great while he's flipping over in the inherently unsafe vehicle that is the Ford Explorer.

Waste of space

Not really impressive in my point of view. Specifically, there is too much wasted space around the docking point.

Watch where you put...

... your Quadruple Venti Mocha Turtle Cappachino... one big bump and BAM--unhappy iPod mini coated in sugary goodness... ;-)

Archos

The Archos AV 120 player I have is mounted on my steering wheel between the top of the wheel and the horn of my Camaro Z28. It has 1 wire that runs down the back of the column to the turn signal where it splices into the back of my Stereo. I can put on videos or music while riding down the road and it is less intrusive than having to mess with the console between the seats.

Definately safer for my driving and easier to read than the annoying dials behind it like the RPM guage that takes a good 5 seconds to digest.

Re:Archos

Yeah, watching movies while reaching through the steering wheel in your camaro to mess with your Archos is totally safe. Whereas fiddling in that dang console is really hazardous. Why else would car manufacturers put stick shifts down there, within easy and comfortable reach of the driver's right hand...and just imagine, if it were down there, your passenger could change the music while the driver...drives! How dangerous!

Seriously though, how about watching the road instead of how many RPMs your Z28 is whining along at?

Nice

I don't care what anyone here says i think it is pretty cool to have a docking station for your mp3 player in your car...it would be cool if it played trogh the car speakers... didnt RTFA so i dont know if it does...now somone should do that with a Mini Cooper to match better than explorer.

Arggg blue led

Those damn blue leds are everywhere arggg!!!!g!

Coincidence?

I think he'll regret this whole project when his iPod stops working [slashdot.org], his Firestone tires fail [firestone-...recall.com] and his Explorer rolls [car-accidents.com].

The standard for what is "News" sure is sinking

OK, this guy does some plastic fabrication that anybody with some time can do, and he gets on the main page.

So, if I submit my photos of my '04 Grand Marquis, wherein I have not ONLY added a 30G Neo35 MP3 player, but a Kenwood dual-band transciever plus two extra speakers for it, the antenna for the Kenwood, a second battery, extra power points, a battery isolator to charge the secondary battery, a second power distribution panel, would that make the front page?

Handheld/Vehicle Interfaces

Frankly, the fact that he needed to do this shows that the aftermarket auto industry is not doing its job. My car and my handheld constellation need to talk to each other:

• Very few audio head units have a front jack for aux input. You can dangle an adapter cable out the back (on most models this means you can't use a CD changer), but that's butt-ugly. Otherwise you're at low-fi FM transmitters or cassette adapters
  
• For that matter, why shouldn't it be two-way on the audio link? Record off-the-air onto the MPS, eh?
  
• My PDA should be able to get odometer readings from the car easily for expense reports (a GPS may substitute, but it doesn't talk to my PDA well either). [Hmmm... should the Mobil Speedpass let my PDA know what it's spending on gas and McD's?]
  
• What kind of communication do I want with the car? I don't know. Perhaps just a USB 2.0 jack on the dash, although that's not peer-to-peer. IEEE 1394? Is Bluetooth good enough for hi-fi audio? Do I want all cars to be wardriving units?
  
• I hesitate to mention M$'s AutoPC. Let's just leave it at that.
  

There's obviously lots of room for Automobile-Area Networks, but few folks are doing anything about it.

Mini Custom?

I am not sure if I understand it correctly. Does a mini custom install mean a somewhat standard install more or less or what?

iPod Lounge

The iPod lounge forums has a shitload [ipodlounge.com] of these. Some ranging from hacks to good, professional jobs like this story. Of course you could just get a Smart car, since it has an iPod option [panoramas.dk]. Of course it is only for Europe, which is crap since I really want one, and it is kinda an antithesis to the Explorer.

MP3 Decoder board w/802.11 + Hard Drive...

I'd love to see someone make a small box that sits in my trunk or under my seat that acts like a CD Changer. Yeah, I know about the PhatBox, but I don't see the need for the removability at such a high cost. Something more like the YAMPP-3 [myplace.nu], but with WI-FI.
Heck, I'd even be willing to drag an ethernet cable out to the car (hey, a drop in the Garage isn't out of the question) to load up new MP3s over paying ~$800 for the 20GB Phatbox.

ipod deck?

I've got the Belkin charger/line out in my car. It works well and plugs right into the stereo... but it's not that slick. I have to control the ipod to change songs, etc. and then use my cd deck to change volume. I want a deck that I can buy that acts as an ipod dock. You just slide that ipod in like an 8 track and then the deck has normal controls for volume, track selection, etc. and a display that shows song titles, etc. If it had a radio too I could care less about not having a CD player in the car. So you get to listen to the ipod, control it easily.. it gets charged... When you leave the car just eject the ipod, grab it and go! Something like this would be popular, wouldn't you think?

In-dash iPod dock

This is a really sweet car mod, but what I really want is to be able to buy an in-dash car stereo into which I can dock the iPod and use the stereo's controls.

Alpine has announced one that's close, but it has the iPod on an external cable. I'd rather not deal with the iPod and cable floating around inside the car.

More impressive

To really impress me, take the whole iPod apart, mount the internals in the dash and the controls in the steering wheel. Now, that is functional integration. In it's current state, it's an over-glorified coffee cup holder.

Of course, you'd need a heck of a long USB cable to upload.

Confusing about apple

This is what confuses me about apple theyve got a great product (ipod, ect) and a chance to breack into a compleatly untapped market ala the icar. an apple package that integrates ipod GPS onstar and maybe eaven infrared or adaptive cruize control this could be a major comodity. but where is apple, not there.

Where's the usability?

While I don't think the mod is really aesthetically pleasing, it doesn't seem to be very user-friendly either. So he got the thing to charge? Great. He doesn't show in his pics the cord he has to connect to the audio out of the iPod because I bed a plug sticking out the top would be pretty ulgy. Also, he doesn't show himself USING the iPod. It doesn't look like it'd be easy to reach forward and control the little controls/display from the drivers seat while driving. Not only bad design, but unsafe too.

has been done before

Just saw this on TLC last night.

Apparantly 310 customs/west side customs (or whatever) basically did something almost exactly like this (but for a regular iPod) on a H2 (hummer) brought in by some NBA star. Slide the iPod into the dock and it played on the stereo. Needless to say thats not all they did to the H2 but I thought I should mention that.

One thing is it probably cost a LOT more than he spent on his Ford Explorer doing it himself :)

I feel sorry...

Not only has he invalidated his car's warranty (for unauthorized modifications), and he's gonna get sued by Apple for unauthorized use of their logo, but now he's getting slashdotted.

Money Money Money

How to stay rich by keeping up with technology: 1) Create a way for people to play Mp3's in their cars. 2) Install the player in a popular vehicle. 3) Make sure the manufacturer of the Mp3 player charges a lot for each song downloaded so you get a kickback from them. 4) Give a little money to the RIAA so they won't say you're trying to rip of record producers........Anyone else smell setup?

Alpine's iPod ready Head Unit

Alpine [alpine-usa.com] is coming out with a HU this summer that will allow you to plug your iPod in, and store it in any location (glove box, center console, trunk, etc..) and the HU will display the song info and allow you to control the iPod. Google for more information, here is a quick link to their press release [prnewswire.com].

Nice site

It would be even nicer if the guy knew a little bit about proper user interface design and didn't open the links in another window by default. Breaking the back button is a bit annoying.

Hell, if my grandmaw knows how to right click and choose "open in a new window," I think pretty much anyone can do it on their own if they so choose.

Just want to clear a few things up...

It's nice to read all the positive, and not so positive comments people have said about what I did. I want to clear a few things up for all the negative people out there...

-There are no wires to attach or add because the Belkin car charger I integrated into the design has an audio line-out built into it, which I used to run directly into my car stereo via an adapter. The music plays through the car speakers at perfect quality. Yeah, I still control the volume throught the car stereo but HOW HARD IS THAT? Come on people.

-The blue LED lights were added ONLY for one reason: TO BE ABLE TO SEE THE DAMN THING IN THE DARK AT NIGHT WHILE PLUGGING IT IN OR CHANGING SONGS.

-It can not "fly" out of the console because if you had actually read what I wrote you would see that I made it so the iPod fits very snugly into it, making it able to lock it in place and push on the buttons or scroll through songs very easily without it so much as moving. There is no way it would ever wobble around, or even fly out.

-It is not difficult to use, or awkward in any way...the thing sits right where my hand rests over the console and it takes no effort to press any of the buttons.

-I am NOT the kind of guy who "tricks out" his car just to look cool, especially not with an explorer. While I do like the car, I only made it because I wanted to use MY iPod in MY car while I was driving, and that was it. It's a hell of a lot better than carrying around 400 cd's. For those of you who remarked about it being unsafe...How safe is it to look through all your cd's trying to find the one that has the one song you want to hear while trying to watch the road at the same time? With the iPod, I can make up song lists I want to hear before I even leave, or while I'm just sitting in the car at a red light or in traffic, or even just let all 1000 songs play in random order. Anyone who actually OWNS an iPod knows how easy it is to use one.

I personally don't care what any of you negative people think because I didn't make it to please you, I made it for myself. I enjoy using it and that's all that matters. Until I see pictures of your installs that are any better or more practical than mine, maybe you should think twice about bashing it.

Could this have been done better? Of course! I'm the first to admit that. I started rethinking and redesigning it after I installed it. I made the thing on a whim and didn't take the time to completely think out EVERY practical application, I just wanted to make something to play the thing in my car til I came up with something better.

I'm glad there are some people out there who did enjoy it and maybe got some ideas of their own. Thanks everybody!

Not that great

It looks nice, but from a practical perspective - The ipod is sitting vertically which would make it difficult to see the screen (not to mention, the tiny screen) when you are looking from above.

I have my 40 GB iPod in an angled holder in my car. It is nice to have the angle, but controlling the iPod while driving isn't that great. Especially if you have 7,000 songs and you want to get to a specific album. You have to make about 15 revolutions on the scrolley wheel to get even close to what you're looking for

It would be cool if there were a car stereo inteface made specifically for controlling the iPod in your car. Nice big screen, volume and track switching, etc. Could have a custom cable run from it to the iPod. you know, the audio / data controller plug thing. Kinda like the remote control that comes with the iPod (20 and 40 models) but way better.

thats right

Timothy is completely right. Thats my opion, too.

Rockin

Now all you need is to create a G5 dock so that you can create l33t appz "On the go!"

Denison ICE-Link

ICE-Link from Denison allows you to plug your iPod (both mini and normal) into both a OEM and aftermarket head unit and control it using the CD changer controls.

With my Sony I have the multichanger so can have the iPod and the CD-Changer at the same time.

Works a treat. This is probably too late in the post to get seen - but if you do see it, mod it up and pass it along.

ICE-Link [densionusa.com]

Re:Watch that counter roll!

It's hosted on mac.com, so I'd bet it'll last quite a while. :P

Re:Watch that counter roll!

Mac.com usually handles high loads very well.

Re:Ugly and tacky

This is not a troll. This whole install looks grafted and cheap.

The _real_ solution is to have a widget that treats the iPod as a CD changer, ala Phatnoise.

That would probably run at least $100 tho, as it'd need to be basically an iPod without the screen, drive and controls...

I'd buy one in a second tho if it were compatible with any firewire ipod and the becker/HK trafficpro.