Submitted 3 weeks ago by Mickey7@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/30700991
I still have an old ipod. So old it has no wireless ability. I want to use it in my car which doesn’t have a cassette or cd player. It plugs into the car’s usb port but the car radio “doesn’t see it”. Any tips on how to get it to work?
There are 3.5mm (headphones) to Bluetooth adapters. If you car are Bluetooth u can use this… daily inexpensive. And if you have FM radio in your car there is 3.5mm to FMbadapters…basically you have a mini radio station with short range but enough for your car to pick it up
i use one of these as my car doesn’t have Bluetooth. Works fn great. Has usb port and aux port on it. Plugs into 12v on car
My last one was a little more powerful, would transmit clearly to 3 or 4 cars around me, but i accidently snapped it
Used to set it to the local country station so that i never had to listen to country music when stopped at a light.
But i digress, bought mine at best buy for about 50 cdn
An iPod nano can’t play over USB, you need to use the aux port
This is unfortunately the only real answer. “Install an aux port in your car, or get a different player that will play via USB” isn’t a good answer to hear, but it’s the correct one.
You can use 3.5mm jack to usb or bluetooth adapter.
Or even 3.5mm to FM adapter like this avinusa.com/fm-transmitter-mini-aux-adapter-with-…
That’s really annoying for everyone else though.
These work well. I have to power mine through the cigarette lighter, but newer cars should have USB power as standard.
“probably won’t remember”?
Man. Fuck this kid. I’m not that old…
Just started using my 2006 SanDisk equivelant of this, I feel attacked lol
Okay, yes, this is older technology & cars don’t have infinite, universal backwards compatibility. Cars have Bluetooth & they think that just fixes everything…well…not quite.
Maybe there are other fixes & other workarounds, but you need to employ old(er) technology solutions to fix this old(er) technology problem. You need a (QUALITY) FM transmitter that will plug into your aux, blast the signal as an FM radio station, and you tune your radio to that station & listen. Notice I said QUALITY…most of them are kinda crap & you have to deal with static. I have no specific brand, model suggestions. Good luck.
A better but more expensive solution: upgrade your car’s head unit. Stock head units are shit, anyway. 🙂 Get yourself a nice head unit with 3.5mm aux connection & aux in that iPod, if your budget allows. THEN, you’ll have the best sound quality and also Bluetooth connection, etc.
I wish you well, music makes the driving experience, I hope you get EVERYTHING you need. 🙏
It’s strange that most radio head units look like they were designed by high school students in 2010 and an infinite RGB and plastichrome budget.
Can you just get an aux cable and plug that in?
It is likely the car USB port is looking through directories for MP3 files, and thats not now those iPods present themselves when hooked up via USB. You might be able to find an audio-to-bluetooth adapter, but it is likely you will not be able to control the device through the car’s interface, so you would have to press play manually.
(Side note: older cars with USB might have a very low-level relationship with the USB sticks, where they read files in the order they were written to the device, without regard to what folders you put them in. There are utilities that can reorder the files’ physical position on the stick so that albums play in order)
I use a Bluetooth to aux for my phone, which is only slightly annoying at times, but I blame the apps. I can play, play, pause, skip forward with my Bluetooth receiver, and OP will miss out on that, except they can PROBABLY use the dial blindly for just that.
There are also bluetooth adapters that plug directly into those older iPods’ multi-function ports (the slot on the bottom) instead of the headphone jack.
The main benefit of the one I used was being compact, with no wires. The main drawback was having to remove the adapter to charge the iPod.
I’ve had one of those (battery died, unfortunately) and if you’d look at its files, you’d notice that they are organized in a different structure than what a USB player might expect.
iPod_Control\Music’s sudirectories might contain some songs, but the filenames are hashes (corresponding to the entry in the iPod db). The metadata and the contents are perfectly fine, and you can play the file yourself via a different player (you can probably test it in your computer).
I suggest you just connect the iPod through the 3.5mm output audio jack or find a 3.5mm audio output to Bluetooth transmitter. adapter.
The USB port in your car radio might only support a specific file format for the drive (like EXT, FAT32, NTSF) that the iPod doesn’t use.
Or it doesn’t see directories and would work with a plain USB stick loaded with .MP3s loosely added to it. You could get a iPod to do this, but it wouldn’t work as an iPod anymore; it would be an external hard drive.
NTFS*
No AUX to plug into - only USB
Aux to FM signal adapter, powered by the USB port.
Then I think you’ll have much better luck figuring out a way to get a jack-to-USB adapter to work with your car’s radio
There are AUX cables that have a transmit and recive switch. You can use this to transmit the output of your iPod through AUX to a built in bluetooth receiver in your car or other device.
Aux to aux in your car stereo not available?
I don’t think it will work in USB. Afaik on PC it can only work with iTunes, so good luck installing that in your car. If it’s “that” old though, it should have the one interface that is so perfect it has barely changed in one century.
(The audio jack…)
Seperate from the FM transmitters that other people have mentioned, you can install an FM modulator into your car. This is a box that goes behind your stereo, feeds power off the stereo power supply, and connects directly to the antenna wire to supply the frequency modulated sound signal directly to the antenna without traveling through the air. Similar to an FM transmitter, it has a headphone wire that plugs into the headphone outlet of your ipod for the audio signal. It can bypass the interference problem that FM transmitters run into, but the one I installed back in the day actually picked up engine revving noise from my alternator, so maybe it needed better wire shielding. Obviously this requires taking out your stereo and doing some wiring work so you need some tinkering skills or have it installed by a pro.
The reason the USB plug on your ipod doesn’t work is that earlier audio devices like the original ipod didn’t have a way to transmit audio digitally over USB, it was only used for charging and file transfer.
3 potential solutions:
Usb to aux for an iPod lol.
We should start with, what car do you have? Then we can figure out if it has an AUX port.
Also if this think has an original battery, you might want to replace it before it becomes bloated.
Are you sure your car doesn’t have an aux in? Most cast do. Otherwise, maybe a USB to aux converter might work but I doubt it. So I’d go with a Bluetooth or FM transmitter like others adviced. If your car has Bluetooth, I’d go for that one as FM can have interference. Or just play music from your phone. No iTunes hassle and more storage.
Amazingly my 2024 german made car does not have an AUX
Why is it so hard for car makers to equip every car with basic needs like enough cup holders, USB and enough power plugs, Bluetooth, AND A FREAKING AUX PLUG *major facepalm
How old is your car? Ipod support is odd like post 2015.
I still have one. No these ones specifically don’t have wireless capabilities. Later ones do, though.
The more usual thing are aux to USB adapters but they can only do USB to aux, nit the reverse. What you need is aux to USB converter, they can do both ways.
This article is good, autotranslate if not german.
Back in the day, I had one of the fm transmitters wired into the antenna with a ground loop isolator from radio shack (!) and I tapped a power lead so it would also charge my iPod while in use (and automatically turn off the power when the car was off). Honestly, it was awesome. CD quality sound. If I remember correctly Belkin made the transmitter.
Further to the other answers; I have one of these for using my iPod in the car. It has the added bonus of taking line-level volume, so you set the volume from the head unit, not the iPod. And it can charge while you’re using it.
I think it’ll charge from the head unit’s USB socket without trying to connect, because the USB plug is just for charging.
nixcamic@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Everyone in these comments are idiots? Or bots? Usb to aux outputs, Bluetooth to aux outputs guys it’s a freaking iPod the one thing it has is aux output. The problem is getting it into the radio.
Op, does your radio have aux in? That’s the easiest but it’s so simple I think you would have done it already.
If you don’t sometimes you can buy an adapter that plugs into the back of your radio, heck eBay might net you an actual iPod 30 pin cable specific to your radio.
If your radio has Bluetooth, you can get an aux Bluetooth transmitter not reciver like people linked here, to transmit from the headphone jack to your radio.
Last resort is a fm transmitter with either aux or a 30 pin.
toofpic@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I was selling smartphones and smartphone accessories when they were just emerging, ending PDA era, and we had FM transmitters - it is powered from car, you plug in your device through aux, and the transmitter sends out the sound in FM, so you can catch it on your effin radio (the frequency were either fixed or selectable). This was the future!
Sgt_choke_n_stroke@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yea I think you can find one at “5 below” or “best buy”