6 replies to this topic

[Mr Small]

Hi Peeps, I'm half way through the gestation period and the Saturday after this I'll be the proud new dad of LY74 (thanks to Pete for phoning me last night ;-) Just one thing whats the stereo like in them, I think its a Vdo Dayton Cd 3200. I have a dogs nadgers Clarion HU which was about £400, is it worth taking it with me and popping into Halfords and getting a £50 for the car I'm trading in. Is the Drayton capable of playing MP3's? This will help me keep the weight down as I wont have to carry around millions of CDs..... I cant wait! I got rid of my S2 Elise when we got moved office at work (and we thought bird might be up the duff) and the millage on the thrashy k-series was going to cost me a packet with a new cambelt every year which at the dealer in Swindon was going to cost me £1k a shot.... So I bought a Scooby WRX, it maybe fast but by heck its a big lolloping pile of poo and is doing less than 20mpg cos of the modded engine, I dont want to slide around corners not being able to feel what the wheels are really doing, I want to DRIVE around corners! I had a Janspeed Exhaust on the Elise, it was a bit noisy for everyday, is the OEM exhaust on the VX na easy to live with? Cheers peeps, looking forward to being a dad again! Mr Small.

[mandarinvx]

You'll love it mate (the car that is!) As for the VDO, it's a bag of pants. It doesn't do MP3's (and there really isn't anywhere accesible to store lots of CD's), the built in amp is very mediocre and tends to distort quite quickly, mine tended to skip a bit - tho mainly due to the harsh suspension, tho the Sony I have now is much better! It's a good idea to upgrade the paper cone phillips speakers too The tend to go for £20 - £50 on ebay when they come up

[Mr Small]

Thats that one sorted, I'll invest fifty quid on a Halfords special, sell the VX one for £30 and keep the Clarion. Cheers m8. Mr Small.

[cyberface]

Weight-wise, a good bet is either to get an SD-card MP3 head unit, or an MP3 head unit that plays DVDs. The DVD player can get 4.7 GB of MP3 files on one disc, so you can get a large proportion of your music collection on one disc, without needing additional discs (and somewhere to store them safely and in the dry). I bought a JVC SD-card player, it has a nice touch-panel control which keeps changing colour for some odd reason, but the touch-screen is very handy when wanting to maintain concentration driving the VX. Unfortunately, the JVC hardware only takes up to 1 GB SD cards, which is damn annoying since I have a bunch of 4 GB cards here. Each card can take nearly a DVD's worth of data, and each card is very lightweight and more robust than CDs / DVDs (which can get knackered very quickly in damp environments, like VX220s left outside overnight...) Changing discs involves a big distraction to the driver and isn't that safe in the VX. Without adding weight to the car, there's also not anywhere suitable to store additional discs. The other solution (i.e. an iPod adaptor) I've always been wary of, since anything (like a connector cable snaking out from the head unit) visible could attract theft attempts. Even if you take your iPod with you, I'd be paranoid about some scum breaking in to try to find the iPod.

[ferg]

I dream of Bluetooth streaming MP3s from the mobile in my pocket to a stereo that's mounted somewhere hidden in the car. Maybe inside the dash if the metal doesn't block the signal. I believe most of this is possible, but I'd need a remote for the stereo, and most seem to use infrared which of course wouldn't work if the stereo was hidden. My car doesn't have an opening in the plastic for a stereo, so this would be neat if it was possible. Any ideas?

[cyberface]

Isn't bluetooth max bitrate too low for decent-quality MP3 streaming? You'd have to allow 50% performance of the BT system (i.e. being enclosed in metal does attenuate the signal!) and not need it to run at 100% potential performance as well. I reckon it'd be too slow, and you'd need some sort of custom software on the 'stereo' to allow it to be controlled by the phone (equally you'd need software on the phone)... Assuming you've got a smartphone with Wifi, it'd be possible to use a small laptop as the 'stereo' hidden in the car, and set up a peer-to-peer wifi network with the laptop and the smartphone. You could hack some code together on the laptop to mount the smartphone storage device (SD card or whatever) as a volume on the laptop over Wifi when the network device is in range, and then automatically play the MP3s found on that volume. It's a sledgehammer solution though, I've got a small old laptop that could do the job but you'd need external amplification to drive the car speakers. Cars are also NOT friendly environments for laptops. Cool idea though. A proper integrated solution would have some custom software / hardware in the stereo itself, this would need a manufacturer to have a go though. Homebrew stuff would probably need some sort of computer (general purpose programmable), though you could probably do all of this with one of those small Linux system-on-chip boards. Perhaps a project for a hardware hacker?

[ferg]

I think I'd try first to mount it in the existing hole in the dash, but from the inside in some way so that it doesn't stick out. Then I'd replace the silvery plastic front, mounting it with velcro for the odd occasion that I needed access. This would help the Bluetooth reception too. So a standard car audio device would be most appropriate. If I found one with the possibility for an external I-R transmitter/receiver, then I'd sy the project was close to getting realistic. I Googled a while ago, and found out that a standard does exist for some kind of Bluetooth remote control, and I believe I also read something saying that the bandwidth would be adequate. And I found a few car radios that support Bluetooth streaming. This bit should be fairly easy to check out though. Anyway it's early days yet, and my projects usually progress extremely slowly, if at all. But if anything does materialise, I'll send an update.