This project is taking way too long and I am getting bored to death of my local radio stations with their every 20mins commercials and poor DJ jokes so it’s time for a quick fix: a FM encoder.
After some documenting on the Internet (none of us EVER buys anything without documenting first, right guys?) I decided that the best bang for the buck is a FM encoder with RDS and USB port. This way I have easy access to my music with one or more usb sticks and I can also see on the display the current playing mp3.
The most suitable for the task seems this one: Sound Fly Pro FM encoder.
It has all kind of features, it reads mp3, wma, it even has a remote control (mainly used for folder navigation or fast forward).
Now for the USB stick part, I decided to pair the Soundfly Pro with Kingmax’s “world smallest USB flash drive” (yeah, right!), 2Gb in size:
You can see that Sound Fly comes with an attached cigarette-lighter socket, as most FM encodes do. Well, this socket it too long for the location I am using it into, as it makes the device hover about 2cm (1in) high over the center console in my BMW so it looks like crap! Really.
It is also very unreliable and unsafe in that position as it moves a lot and conflicts with my right wrist when using the Steptronic lever.
Well, after a few minutes of testing I decided to relocate it to a better position, above my head, so to speak. To be more precise, I placed it on the overhead center panel, where the garage opener is located in US models.
I carefully made an opening there, so that the cigarette-socket fits invisible above the panel and I took the power from the rain sensor, located nearby. This leaves only he actual device on sight, pretty neat, I might add!
Now, about the sound quality (I am sure you are curious about that): it is acceptable. The lower frequencies are somewhat dampened, the high frequency are pretty decimated but the middle ones are OK. Imagine the best audio tape you may get, with zero background noise and you get the idea.
Talking about reliability, the device works perfectly in high temperatures as well as below zero. The sound quality is consistent, regardless of the temperature (the device heats up pretty much in heavy use).
One thing I did not like, it seems very sensitive to voltage variations, it never survives a crank. It stops playing, throws errors reading the stick, and so on. I have to be careful and turn it on only AFTER I start the engine, or I may fry something…
Well, bottom line, music is back on, bearable quality, now back to may CarPC project!
