Would this be possible?

[shah456]

I was in class the other day and my teacher was talking about an idea he thought of and I wanted to know how difficult this would be. The headunit in your car could have a USB port and then you can plug in USB flash drives into them and play music directly off it. These days the cost of USB flash drives are becoming so cheap that it is economical. A USB flash drive is very durbale as compared to CDr's (being that they cannot get scratched.) Also you can delete the music off the USB Flash drive and put other music on it. This, to me, sounds like an amazing idea. I would really like to hear what you guys think and how difficult would this really be. Thanks.

 

[Peter]

I've seen a few head units with an SD slot, playing MP3 from there. That's much simpler to implement than a USB host controller, and there's a much narrower standard to aim at as far as media compatibility goes.

 

[Cogman]

yep, thats just what I was about to say. A SD card is ligher weight and stores about as much data as a usb card. I think that would be a better alternative.

 

[shah456]

I have seen the SD card capable headunits that Panasonic made. It just seems that USB would make more sense because it is so universal. The majority of computers these days are already equipped with a USB port so no additional equipment would be needed to work it. SD cards are smaller and lighter, I agree. This whole idea to me seems very promising. You could place multiple USB ports around the car, with headphone jacks, and other passengers could listen to whatever they wanted provided they had a USB flash drive with music on it.

 

[HermDogg]

Originally posted by: shah456
I have seen the SD card capable headunits that Panasonic made. It just seems that USB would make more sense because it is so universal. The majority of computers these days are already equipped with a USB port so no additional equipment would be needed to work it. SD cards are smaller and lighter, I agree. This whole idea to me seems very promising. You could place multiple USB ports around the car, with headphone jacks, and other passengers could listen to whatever they wanted provided they had a USB flash drive with music on it.

Why not save yourself the trouble and get a flash drive MP3 player? I picked up a 256 MB for $80 on NewEgg, and I just plug it in the way you would a portable CD player and go. The other problem with doing it USB-style is that it has to stick out somewhere, because not all flash drives are created equally. This could prove to be a hazard to turning things, or else make for some extreme instablitity as far as maintaining the connection when turning/accelerating/etc. The SD has the advantage because the whole of the card is maintained within the headunit, as for the "no additional hardware" argument, if you're shelling out that much for a car with an SD unit in it, couldn't it come with a card reader upon purchase? They're not that expensive anymore.