Calling all Guru's

I am a newbie to this sort of thing but I figure someone will know on here if anyone would.. I had a brainstorm today on the way home while thinking about how I am going to afford the Carpc I am wanting.. Here it is.. I have a Pioneer HU as many do.. You can burn mp3s and play on it and it will show them in folders if you burn them right.. Now here is my question.. You can control a external cd changer and many different things through the input BUS plugin in the back of the Head Unit.. Is there someway to interface a hard drive to the BUS line for the Head Unit to access? I know you would need drivers, but heres what I was wondering about that.. Could you somehow format the hard drive to appear as a CD to the cd player? I figure this would take a special program that one of you great programmers would have to right but is this possible? If so this would create a GIANT CD changer! With my pioneer you can also burn the mp3 cd to show the names of the songs and the artist so you could do that on the hard drive.. Then just unplug it attach it to your pc and add songs to it! Let me know what you guys think! Sorry for such a long post!

No

lol that was short and sweet! just a thought :( thanks frodo!

you're welcome :)

Just found this! This is something like I am talking about!!!


http://www.ssiamerica.com/products/neo35/

Thumper,
There are adapters that plug into CD changer ports on radios to allow the connection of an ipod alot like the way you are talking about conneting an external hard drive. Some models work with stock radios, stock controls and others work with after market units.
You can find out more about one of them here
Not sure if there are ones that would work with a standalone hard drive.

phatbox make this type of device 20Gb H/D. They've even licenced the technology to kenwood who make they own version

Yes it is very possible and it has already been done for that matter.

I don't have the link on me but you need to check out the Ipod/BMW project that Apple and BMW are doing.

A friend of mine had the system installed in his Mini Cooper and it is almost exactly what you want.

The Ipod is basically a external HDD....it has a connector to the Head Unit....when plugged in the Stereo just sees the Ipod as a CD changer.

Basically its the coolest damn thing I had seen from a car manufacturer in a looooong time.

I will find the link and post it in a sec.

Here is the link. BMW/Ipod thingy

Oh yeah...and as mentioned above....Phatbox is another example that it can be done.....

FYI...if I remember right the technology that allowed this to happen is iBuss....or something along that lines.

Hope this helps

Thanks for all the replies.. I knew it could be done someway.. Just thought it may be a good project and maybe cheaper until I get the money for the Carpc...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by savante

Thumper,
There are adapters that plug into CD changer ports on radios to allow the connection of an ipod alot like the way you are talking about conneting an external hard drive. Some models work with stock radios, stock controls and others work with after market units.
You can find out more about one of them here
Not sure if there are ones that would work with a standalone hard drive.

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That's true, but an Ipod is something quite more complicated than a normal hard drive. The Ipod contains 'logic' (an embedded Os running on a cpu or µcontrollers) a hard drive itself can not be used by a system that controls a cd-changer. Maybee if you have a lot of time and technical expertise you could build your own µcontroller-based system that does the trick, but even then, you will have other issues. e.g.: How does the head-unit selects a cd? And can it select more then 6 or 8 or (whatever type cd-changer it normally is) cd's? And if not, can it handle a 'virtual' cd that will have more then 700 Mb on it? Will this head-unit be able to browse through gigabytes of music all sorted in thousands of folders? and blahblahblah...