iPod Aftermarket

In the consumer hardware world you know you've hit it big when an entire aftermarket industry develops around your products. I mentioned in an earlier post that I gave my wife an iPod Mini, and in a later unrelated post that we bought a new car. Well, being a "car guy" I can never leave well enough alone so I did a little research over the weekend on what kind of stuff I could do to the new rig. I found a couple of interesting things, but the iPod interconnect products really caught my eye. These straightforward interconnect kits allow you to integrate an iPod cradle with the electronic bus that the audio system runs on, giving you not only playback capability but also charging and control via the steering wheel controls. Tre kewl.

What is particularly interesting is how multipurpose the audio bus really is, here's another product that allows you to tap into the navigation system LCD display for use with any number of add-ons, like a backup video camera that mounts in the hitch receiver under the rear bumper. So when you are backing up you get a video image of what is immediately behind your vehicle. This is a really nice safety feature, not only does it come in handy for parking, but it greatly reduces the possibility of backing over a small child hanging out behind your car.

So I ordered the backup video camera and the composite-to-RGB converter with the interface cable, It will give me 2 inputs so I'll have some room to expand to another input device. I tried to sell Lisa on the iPod interconnect, but she gave me "that look" so I'll hold off on that... for the time being.