Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Piping Audio from Phone to Car

I am listening to a great audio book (Beton by Thomas Bernhard) in my phone. I actually have a few queued up in the phone to listen to them when I jog or otherwise have time. But my car has a CD player and radio and no easy way to get at the audio content in my phone. What I currently do is play CDs from the library or burn CDs with audio book content. But then I cannot continue listening to the same book and have a few going at the same time.

So my thought was to have the car stereo bond via bluetooth to my phone as a stereo headset. And I looked around for some way to bluetooth from my phone to the car stereo. My product search came up with some bluetooth to FM transmitters but they were rated poorly because the FM transmitters are too weak. And they were quite expensive. So I looked around for other alternatives. I finally decided to get a "full range" FM transmitter that has an audio-in jack and a 2.5 mm --> 3.5 mm converter to plug in to my phone. My wife had an old mounting bracket that mounts on the vent tines on the car's air conditioning vent and my phone mounts snugly onto it, just above the cigarette lighter. I ordered this device with some trepidation because it costs only $11.50 (including shipping and handling).

It arrived this week and it works perfectly! I am now playing audioboks from my phone through the device. And it has a built-in mp3 player that plays from SD cards or USB flash drives. I tested both and they work perfectly as well. The "full range" FM transmitter has no static at all at the lower range (87.5) but had a bit of static at 107.9. I am really thrilled with the device. Now I need some way to pad it when I pack it up for trips where I rent cars.

It's really cool. I love it.

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