- Jun 30, 2004
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Some could be annoyed. I'm obsessed with my 25-year-old SUV. But my retro-fit bringing it into the 21st century appears at an end. "On the Seventh Day, he rested, and he saw that it was good . . . " I made some tremendous discoveries, although some would say irrelevant, because . . . who is driving a 25-year-old car, attempted to preserve the original OEM audio system?
When I was seven years old in 1954, we had black and white TV which, for some makes and models, required a technician to visit the house frequently for repair. It was the beginning of the Golden Age of television, and there was a precursor of Star Trek entitled "Captain Video". Captain Video was more realistic in some ways than "Flash Gordon" with its characters Dale Arden, Dr. Zarkov and the Emperor Ming ("yellow peril"). Captain Video featured aging space freighters -- the equivalent of used cars and trucks.
My mother would bring home cardboard boxes from the A&P grocery; I would find a nice stiff one, cut the open side of the box at an angle so that it would sit on the floor like a space-ship command console, and I would use my Crayons to draw little "LED" lights or pushbuttons on the box. Then I would find a pencil or something of an appropriate shape to stick in the box as a "lever". When Captain Video appeared on TV, I was ready at the helm.
Star Trek was always entertaining, presaging the age of the "Beam-me-up-Scotty" cell-phone era, but after the movie release of "Star Trek: First Contact" which I first saw at the age of 49, I became something of a pervert. It was the Borg Queen (Alice Krige), who brought forth in me taboo desires. With Picard shackled and standing before her, the Borg Queen is doing some maintenance on herself, lifting her torso and head from her lower body using her spaceship's robotic arms as she continues a nonchalant discussion with her captive. I thought to myself "Wow! What a rack on that b****!" I began to have erotic dreams of slam-dancing with lavender or gray colored female humanoid space-aliens -- all cold and slimy like fish.
So in the spirit of my innocent childhood play and my X-rated adult obsessions, I began to think of my Trooper project along similar lines. My Android tablet is my Borg Queen. And the entire makeover I gave to my OEM 1995 digital receiver and speakers adds two independent Bluetooth receivers, three USB ports (two "QC"), three separately-stored and accessed music libraries -- the least of which is my OEM 12-CD changer. I have a "backup camera" which is really a "rearview" camera -- switched and turned on persistently as long as I want. I've got voice-recognition and voice-navigation from the Borg Queen's "Google Maps". I'm on the verge of something big, here, if I can make the voice announce at my destination, "Home Depot! You have arrived at your destination. Please connect the electronic Vac-U-Jac, and I will give you a b***-j** . . . . "
The original Isuzu receiver head-unit has FM radio (of course), a cassette tape-player and the CD changer -- selectable with each of three push-buttons. In another thread, I showed how I added an MP3-player (FM-transmitter and Bluetooth receiver), with some neat woodworkng to produce a walnut face-plate for the device. To use it, I only need to punch the FM radio button, preset to an unused frequency to pair with the transmitter device.
At that point, some folks asked me why I didn't just replace the OEM head-unit/receiver. My answer, of course, was that such a choice pre-empted the continued use of the 12-CD changer, integral to the OEM Isuzu audio system. And the Trooper's Isuzu head-unit was considered to be a darn good one in 1995. I was told that I was missing out on the new stuff "out there and available", like a $1,000 double-DIN Pioneer Android head unit that would allow addition of a backup camera, like the Rohent model I chose (another thread, easily found by its title). Well, I was certainly missing out on spending $1,000! And a double-DIN unit might require cutting up the "lower console cover" to make it fit. What could I do for much less, without cutting up or modifying my dashboard? I hadn't even thought of the possibilities before installing the MP3 player. Whatever it would cost beyond the approximately $50 MP3 project would also be less of a consideration just for wanting to keep the function and appearance of the OEM audio parts.
The Vankyo S7 tablet cost me about $80. It does not have a SIM card; there is no mobile connection paired with a phone number. I don't need or want a subscription to pay monthly for having mobile access. I only need GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, an accelerometer sensor and the remaining features of the tablet with Android 9.0. From our garage, I can always connect to our household LAN and Wi-Fi to download software updates, Google Map data files, new music and so on.
MOUNTING THE BORG-QUEEN ON THE DASHBOARD BODY
Tablet PCs -- Androids or I-pads -- can weigh up to 1.3 lbs. How do you mount them on your dashboard so that they (a) don't obstruct your windshield road-view, (b) don't wobble from road vibration and worse -- (c) don't fall off to cause a distraction and driving hazard?
I've found two types of devices for mounting tablets. Both are exemplified with the OHLPRO mounting kit:
OHLPRO Tablet Holder
which allows one to use a suction-cup dashboard mount or an air-vent mount that secures to the vent louvres.
How any particular model performs on your car depends on the type and strength of the vents and your dashboard's ability to maintain a reliable suction with the suction cup mount. Customer reviews are mixed; sometimes the suction cup comes loose from the sun's heat. Special 3M discs are available for a "permanent" mount of the suction cup -- an additional part with extra implications for removal that complicate the strategy. The vent mount option can still be a problem: vents can be broken or damaged; the mount might seem to be installed properly but they come loose; they may wobble more from vibration than with the suction
cup approach, which still behaves the same way.
Another example is this vent-louvre mount which seems more promising in certain respects than the one bundled with the OHLPRO:
Air Vent Tablet Holder by ANSWERWIRELESS
So I decided to add my own construction to the OHLPRO suction cup mount -- which, for the time being, seems stable and strong. I designed these little "Thunderbird wings", laminated in pairs of black foam art-board, which fit snugly in between two or three louvres at a time. The louvres can't move, and they can't be broken -- assuming the wings are cut with some precision with slots 2mm wide and 1cm apart (the specs will vary from one make and model of car to another).
At the moment, these two inserts take the tablet's weight off the OHLPRO mount, insuring that the suction cup won't come loose from a construction-zone jolt. If indeed the OHLPRO does fail, a local intersection's construction zone proved to me that the foam core additions prevent the tablet from falling off the dash, because the bracket holding the tablet can be knocked off its mount to the suction-cup device -- which it did -- and the foam-core inserts still held it in place.
But the plan goes beyond the hybrid of the foam-board and $20 tablet mount. I may eventually add two more foam-board pieces to the equation which secure the upper edge of the tablet and eliminate the need for the OHLPRO altogether. This poses an option of an outer frame and sun-visor for the tablet -- nothing that can't wait for a long time. In the meantime, one might wonder if the ANSWERWIRELESS device wobbles from road vibration around the axis of the single vent-louvre mount. Since the foam-board DIY parts work so well, I may never bother trying this latter item at all.
I can redesign the foam-core parts so that the tablet will sit lower on the dashboard. But then, I have the problem that the tablet's rear camera can't serve as a dashboard camera and recorder. I have an idea to resolve that, which I can explain later.
I'd chosen a 7" Vankyo Android tablet because it only weighed 8 ounces, and I made the decision before I proved the success of the foam-core inserts. I might instead have opted for the 8" Vankyo MatrixPad, but the 7" tablet seems perfectly adequate.
After my construction-zone observation proving the partial success of the foam-core vent inserts, I was anxious that I needed to proceed more hastily with the additional foam-core parts that would nail down the tablet on its upper edge. I also purchased a high-quality 10"-long USB-to-micro-USB cable to run from the thoughtfully-placed USB QC ports to the tablet.. It turns out that the cable is stiff enough, and can be secured to vents behind the tablet to do just as well holding the tablet in place during rough travel. So I can save the extra heat-knife work with foam-core for later.
BORG WIRES
Earlier in my "fuse-box extension" thread, there had been a lively discussion as to whether wiring these accessories to the ACC circuit and its 50A fusible-link was adequate. I'd been concerned that I only had so many amps to allocate to stay within the fusible-link's limit. The cigar-lighter has a 20A fuse, but probably draws less -- how much less, I don't know. However, that discussion was biased by mistaken specs. The specs I quoted for amperage draw on each of four devices was based on an internal device voltage of 5V, while the draw against the fusible-link involved a 12V circuit -- therefore considerably less amperage than I had cited.
ACCESSORY________________MAX AMPS @ 12V_______EXPECTED FUSE RATING
Rearview Camera____________________0.3A____________________________1A
MP3 Player _________________________0.5 to 1.5A*_____________________2A
USB QC Charger ____________________1.5A____________________________2A
WinPlus Interior LED system_________3.0A____________________________3A
MAXIMUM TOTAL DRAW: . . 6.3A
If I want to play cautious while firing up a doobie from the cigar-lighter, I can switch off the LED system and USB charger. But I doubt that it matters. Other accessories -- the robotic mirrors for instance -- are never going to be operated when the newly-added accessories are turned on, so only the radio receiver bears any consideration. Yet, the OEM manufacturer fused audio and mirrors with a 10A fuse. Further, the anti-theft system supposedly can draw up to 10A, but it has been de-activated.
Rocker switches come in two or more flavors -- the most common being the 3-pin LED switch and the 5-pin switch with 2 LEDs. These latter switches allow you to connect your parking/side-marker light circuit to illuminate one LED, and flipping on the switch illuminates the second LED. So ground wires for the LEDs can be jumpered. One wire comes from the battery and fusible-link -- perhaps for the ACCessory circuit, another connects to the device drawing power, and a third connects to the comb-switch parking-light hot wire.
For a different reason I won't discuss here, I didn't want to add LEDs to the comb-switch light circuit, so the 5-pin switches I use still draw power from the ACC fuse-box extension. Thus, they light up when you start the car. One of these I used for the backup camera's power. The remainder of my switches are 3-pin.
I tried connecting the Android charging cable to the USB port provided by the MP3 player. The Android charges from it, but slower than it consumes power. I needed "QC" Quick-Charge ports, and investigated the options. Since I had rocker-switch blanks on my dashboard located just below the tablet's mount and center console vent, I chose to put the dual-port switch there, and switch it with a 3-pin rocker switch.
At this point, what did I have? I had two Bluetooth devices to pair with a cell-phone or other item independently. With the MP3 player's BT06 Bluetooth receiver, I could play music from the Android through the MP3 player and transmitted to the FM receiver, and I could toggle at will between the Android's playback and the MP3-player's own USB album library.
That left available my tape player. If I play my old rock-and-roll cassettes, it's usually for a one-time conversion to digital media. I don't take them in the car.
THE DWINDLING SUPPLY OF USED CARS WITH TAPE PLAYERS -- FINDING A BLUETOOTH CASSETTE ADAPTER
There are many devices available as cassette adapters for MP3 players and Walkman CD-players, which transmit music through the tape heads of the car's tape deck. Sony once made a pretty good one, and now there are others. Yet, after 2000, fewer and fewer cars offered tape-players and opted for Cd-players in the OEM head-unit/receivers. That was 20 years ago!
Who is going to use these devices you can still find at Amazon? The other day, I was watching a video recording of the Rolling Stones' free concert in Havana, with their Latin American tour. And I remembered. Cuba's motor fleet has a lot of old cars, some dating back to the 1950s -- due to the US embargo. Third-world countries around the globe probably have large inventories of older cars with cassette players, and this might still include China, India, SE Asia and Latin America. Maybe there are a lot of old cars in Russia or eastern Europe. There's a car-culture in Iran that takes pride in oldies from the 50's and 60's, and there are probably -- more broadly -- more used cars across the Middle East, excluding centers of wealth like Abu Dhabi. Did I forget Africa? Can you imagine how many used cars there are in Africa?
So there's still a market for cassette-adapters, whether they feed sound by 3.5mm stereo-phone jacks, or . . . something else. There are Bluetooth cassette adapters -- some of which accommodate an SD/TF card of music files as another source music library selectable from the driver's seat. I began to salivate over the possibilities.
What else can one do, to re-deploy a vehicle's cassette player? Here's a DIY project, that requires removal of the head-unit/receiver, its disassembly and soldering about 4 wires to the cassette circuit board in order to connect a USB-to-3.5mm Bluetooth dongle:
DIY Cassette-to-Bluetooth Project
For me, just removing the head-unit is a lot of work. The author of the article cites his own mistakes as he works through the project. How can I avoid all that -- the work, the mistakes?
There are reasons to use a conventional cassette-adapter with 3.5mm phone cable. The Vankyo tablet not only features Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth. It offers digital FM radio. The FM radio needs a 3.5mm phone wire for an antenna. And the only problem with using it: it cannot feed sound through the 3.5mm phone-jack and cable when there's a Bluetooth connection to the Android. So the Android's BT connection must be disabled. It offers these possibilities.
Reception of FM through the Vankyo is not as strong for pulling in stations as the OEM radio. So you can play music from the MP3-player USB library, to pass it through the FM-transmitter to the Android after pairing the frequencies. This then allows for regular use of the OEM radio as originally intended. But this is just an option. It is not a necessity.
We want to choose a cassette adapter which has the highest sound quality, produces music at a volume equal to that of the OEM CD-changer, and generating little or no background noise. I looked at two conventional cassette adapters, and two which offer Bluetooth receiving music transmitted from the Android.
Here's my summary of results.
TO BE CONTINUED
When I was seven years old in 1954, we had black and white TV which, for some makes and models, required a technician to visit the house frequently for repair. It was the beginning of the Golden Age of television, and there was a precursor of Star Trek entitled "Captain Video". Captain Video was more realistic in some ways than "Flash Gordon" with its characters Dale Arden, Dr. Zarkov and the Emperor Ming ("yellow peril"). Captain Video featured aging space freighters -- the equivalent of used cars and trucks.
My mother would bring home cardboard boxes from the A&P grocery; I would find a nice stiff one, cut the open side of the box at an angle so that it would sit on the floor like a space-ship command console, and I would use my Crayons to draw little "LED" lights or pushbuttons on the box. Then I would find a pencil or something of an appropriate shape to stick in the box as a "lever". When Captain Video appeared on TV, I was ready at the helm.
Star Trek was always entertaining, presaging the age of the "Beam-me-up-Scotty" cell-phone era, but after the movie release of "Star Trek: First Contact" which I first saw at the age of 49, I became something of a pervert. It was the Borg Queen (Alice Krige), who brought forth in me taboo desires. With Picard shackled and standing before her, the Borg Queen is doing some maintenance on herself, lifting her torso and head from her lower body using her spaceship's robotic arms as she continues a nonchalant discussion with her captive. I thought to myself "Wow! What a rack on that b****!" I began to have erotic dreams of slam-dancing with lavender or gray colored female humanoid space-aliens -- all cold and slimy like fish.
So in the spirit of my innocent childhood play and my X-rated adult obsessions, I began to think of my Trooper project along similar lines. My Android tablet is my Borg Queen. And the entire makeover I gave to my OEM 1995 digital receiver and speakers adds two independent Bluetooth receivers, three USB ports (two "QC"), three separately-stored and accessed music libraries -- the least of which is my OEM 12-CD changer. I have a "backup camera" which is really a "rearview" camera -- switched and turned on persistently as long as I want. I've got voice-recognition and voice-navigation from the Borg Queen's "Google Maps". I'm on the verge of something big, here, if I can make the voice announce at my destination, "Home Depot! You have arrived at your destination. Please connect the electronic Vac-U-Jac, and I will give you a b***-j** . . . . "
The original Isuzu receiver head-unit has FM radio (of course), a cassette tape-player and the CD changer -- selectable with each of three push-buttons. In another thread, I showed how I added an MP3-player (FM-transmitter and Bluetooth receiver), with some neat woodworkng to produce a walnut face-plate for the device. To use it, I only need to punch the FM radio button, preset to an unused frequency to pair with the transmitter device.
At that point, some folks asked me why I didn't just replace the OEM head-unit/receiver. My answer, of course, was that such a choice pre-empted the continued use of the 12-CD changer, integral to the OEM Isuzu audio system. And the Trooper's Isuzu head-unit was considered to be a darn good one in 1995. I was told that I was missing out on the new stuff "out there and available", like a $1,000 double-DIN Pioneer Android head unit that would allow addition of a backup camera, like the Rohent model I chose (another thread, easily found by its title). Well, I was certainly missing out on spending $1,000! And a double-DIN unit might require cutting up the "lower console cover" to make it fit. What could I do for much less, without cutting up or modifying my dashboard? I hadn't even thought of the possibilities before installing the MP3 player. Whatever it would cost beyond the approximately $50 MP3 project would also be less of a consideration just for wanting to keep the function and appearance of the OEM audio parts.
The Vankyo S7 tablet cost me about $80. It does not have a SIM card; there is no mobile connection paired with a phone number. I don't need or want a subscription to pay monthly for having mobile access. I only need GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, an accelerometer sensor and the remaining features of the tablet with Android 9.0. From our garage, I can always connect to our household LAN and Wi-Fi to download software updates, Google Map data files, new music and so on.
MOUNTING THE BORG-QUEEN ON THE DASHBOARD BODY
Tablet PCs -- Androids or I-pads -- can weigh up to 1.3 lbs. How do you mount them on your dashboard so that they (a) don't obstruct your windshield road-view, (b) don't wobble from road vibration and worse -- (c) don't fall off to cause a distraction and driving hazard?
I've found two types of devices for mounting tablets. Both are exemplified with the OHLPRO mounting kit:
OHLPRO Tablet Holder
which allows one to use a suction-cup dashboard mount or an air-vent mount that secures to the vent louvres.
How any particular model performs on your car depends on the type and strength of the vents and your dashboard's ability to maintain a reliable suction with the suction cup mount. Customer reviews are mixed; sometimes the suction cup comes loose from the sun's heat. Special 3M discs are available for a "permanent" mount of the suction cup -- an additional part with extra implications for removal that complicate the strategy. The vent mount option can still be a problem: vents can be broken or damaged; the mount might seem to be installed properly but they come loose; they may wobble more from vibration than with the suction
cup approach, which still behaves the same way.
Another example is this vent-louvre mount which seems more promising in certain respects than the one bundled with the OHLPRO:
Air Vent Tablet Holder by ANSWERWIRELESS
So I decided to add my own construction to the OHLPRO suction cup mount -- which, for the time being, seems stable and strong. I designed these little "Thunderbird wings", laminated in pairs of black foam art-board, which fit snugly in between two or three louvres at a time. The louvres can't move, and they can't be broken -- assuming the wings are cut with some precision with slots 2mm wide and 1cm apart (the specs will vary from one make and model of car to another).
At the moment, these two inserts take the tablet's weight off the OHLPRO mount, insuring that the suction cup won't come loose from a construction-zone jolt. If indeed the OHLPRO does fail, a local intersection's construction zone proved to me that the foam core additions prevent the tablet from falling off the dash, because the bracket holding the tablet can be knocked off its mount to the suction-cup device -- which it did -- and the foam-core inserts still held it in place.
But the plan goes beyond the hybrid of the foam-board and $20 tablet mount. I may eventually add two more foam-board pieces to the equation which secure the upper edge of the tablet and eliminate the need for the OHLPRO altogether. This poses an option of an outer frame and sun-visor for the tablet -- nothing that can't wait for a long time. In the meantime, one might wonder if the ANSWERWIRELESS device wobbles from road vibration around the axis of the single vent-louvre mount. Since the foam-board DIY parts work so well, I may never bother trying this latter item at all.
I can redesign the foam-core parts so that the tablet will sit lower on the dashboard. But then, I have the problem that the tablet's rear camera can't serve as a dashboard camera and recorder. I have an idea to resolve that, which I can explain later.
I'd chosen a 7" Vankyo Android tablet because it only weighed 8 ounces, and I made the decision before I proved the success of the foam-core inserts. I might instead have opted for the 8" Vankyo MatrixPad, but the 7" tablet seems perfectly adequate.
After my construction-zone observation proving the partial success of the foam-core vent inserts, I was anxious that I needed to proceed more hastily with the additional foam-core parts that would nail down the tablet on its upper edge. I also purchased a high-quality 10"-long USB-to-micro-USB cable to run from the thoughtfully-placed USB QC ports to the tablet.. It turns out that the cable is stiff enough, and can be secured to vents behind the tablet to do just as well holding the tablet in place during rough travel. So I can save the extra heat-knife work with foam-core for later.
BORG WIRES
Earlier in my "fuse-box extension" thread, there had been a lively discussion as to whether wiring these accessories to the ACC circuit and its 50A fusible-link was adequate. I'd been concerned that I only had so many amps to allocate to stay within the fusible-link's limit. The cigar-lighter has a 20A fuse, but probably draws less -- how much less, I don't know. However, that discussion was biased by mistaken specs. The specs I quoted for amperage draw on each of four devices was based on an internal device voltage of 5V, while the draw against the fusible-link involved a 12V circuit -- therefore considerably less amperage than I had cited.
ACCESSORY________________MAX AMPS @ 12V_______EXPECTED FUSE RATING
Rearview Camera____________________0.3A____________________________1A
MP3 Player _________________________0.5 to 1.5A*_____________________2A
USB QC Charger ____________________1.5A____________________________2A
WinPlus Interior LED system_________3.0A____________________________3A
MAXIMUM TOTAL DRAW: . . 6.3A
If I want to play cautious while firing up a doobie from the cigar-lighter, I can switch off the LED system and USB charger. But I doubt that it matters. Other accessories -- the robotic mirrors for instance -- are never going to be operated when the newly-added accessories are turned on, so only the radio receiver bears any consideration. Yet, the OEM manufacturer fused audio and mirrors with a 10A fuse. Further, the anti-theft system supposedly can draw up to 10A, but it has been de-activated.
Rocker switches come in two or more flavors -- the most common being the 3-pin LED switch and the 5-pin switch with 2 LEDs. These latter switches allow you to connect your parking/side-marker light circuit to illuminate one LED, and flipping on the switch illuminates the second LED. So ground wires for the LEDs can be jumpered. One wire comes from the battery and fusible-link -- perhaps for the ACCessory circuit, another connects to the device drawing power, and a third connects to the comb-switch parking-light hot wire.
For a different reason I won't discuss here, I didn't want to add LEDs to the comb-switch light circuit, so the 5-pin switches I use still draw power from the ACC fuse-box extension. Thus, they light up when you start the car. One of these I used for the backup camera's power. The remainder of my switches are 3-pin.
I tried connecting the Android charging cable to the USB port provided by the MP3 player. The Android charges from it, but slower than it consumes power. I needed "QC" Quick-Charge ports, and investigated the options. Since I had rocker-switch blanks on my dashboard located just below the tablet's mount and center console vent, I chose to put the dual-port switch there, and switch it with a 3-pin rocker switch.
At this point, what did I have? I had two Bluetooth devices to pair with a cell-phone or other item independently. With the MP3 player's BT06 Bluetooth receiver, I could play music from the Android through the MP3 player and transmitted to the FM receiver, and I could toggle at will between the Android's playback and the MP3-player's own USB album library.
That left available my tape player. If I play my old rock-and-roll cassettes, it's usually for a one-time conversion to digital media. I don't take them in the car.
THE DWINDLING SUPPLY OF USED CARS WITH TAPE PLAYERS -- FINDING A BLUETOOTH CASSETTE ADAPTER
There are many devices available as cassette adapters for MP3 players and Walkman CD-players, which transmit music through the tape heads of the car's tape deck. Sony once made a pretty good one, and now there are others. Yet, after 2000, fewer and fewer cars offered tape-players and opted for Cd-players in the OEM head-unit/receivers. That was 20 years ago!
Who is going to use these devices you can still find at Amazon? The other day, I was watching a video recording of the Rolling Stones' free concert in Havana, with their Latin American tour. And I remembered. Cuba's motor fleet has a lot of old cars, some dating back to the 1950s -- due to the US embargo. Third-world countries around the globe probably have large inventories of older cars with cassette players, and this might still include China, India, SE Asia and Latin America. Maybe there are a lot of old cars in Russia or eastern Europe. There's a car-culture in Iran that takes pride in oldies from the 50's and 60's, and there are probably -- more broadly -- more used cars across the Middle East, excluding centers of wealth like Abu Dhabi. Did I forget Africa? Can you imagine how many used cars there are in Africa?
So there's still a market for cassette-adapters, whether they feed sound by 3.5mm stereo-phone jacks, or . . . something else. There are Bluetooth cassette adapters -- some of which accommodate an SD/TF card of music files as another source music library selectable from the driver's seat. I began to salivate over the possibilities.
What else can one do, to re-deploy a vehicle's cassette player? Here's a DIY project, that requires removal of the head-unit/receiver, its disassembly and soldering about 4 wires to the cassette circuit board in order to connect a USB-to-3.5mm Bluetooth dongle:
DIY Cassette-to-Bluetooth Project
For me, just removing the head-unit is a lot of work. The author of the article cites his own mistakes as he works through the project. How can I avoid all that -- the work, the mistakes?
There are reasons to use a conventional cassette-adapter with 3.5mm phone cable. The Vankyo tablet not only features Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth. It offers digital FM radio. The FM radio needs a 3.5mm phone wire for an antenna. And the only problem with using it: it cannot feed sound through the 3.5mm phone-jack and cable when there's a Bluetooth connection to the Android. So the Android's BT connection must be disabled. It offers these possibilities.
Reception of FM through the Vankyo is not as strong for pulling in stations as the OEM radio. So you can play music from the MP3-player USB library, to pass it through the FM-transmitter to the Android after pairing the frequencies. This then allows for regular use of the OEM radio as originally intended. But this is just an option. It is not a necessity.
We want to choose a cassette adapter which has the highest sound quality, produces music at a volume equal to that of the OEM CD-changer, and generating little or no background noise. I looked at two conventional cassette adapters, and two which offer Bluetooth receiving music transmitted from the Android.
Here's my summary of results.
TO BE CONTINUED
Last edited:
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