My iPhone Car Kit

You never realize how well you have integrated technology into your life until you try to replace it. One thing I had down was my Treo 750 in my car. It had a suction mount, bluetooth GPS and charging. When I purchased my iPhone I hadn't given a lot of thought as to how I would use it in the car. I already had an iPod kit for my Pioneer stereo using Pioneer's CDIB100 iPod connection accessory. Unfortunately, Apple changed the charging method on the newest iPhones and iPods which left my car-kit able to play, but not charge. So began the project.

I thought I was pretty well set already having the iPod interface. Even the charging problem didn't bother me, I mean, how hard is it to send 5v down the USB line instead of 12v down the firewire line. It turns out... very. Luckily Scosche had a simple solution in their charging adapter. Wait, what is that in the fine print? Doesn't work with Pioneer iBus adapters including... mine?!

Well, that's not going to stop me. After doing some pin-out investigation and having nightmares about letting the magic smoke out of my beautiful new iPhone 3G, I decided it was time to come up with something custom. My first stop was the forums on theiphoneblog.com and ilounge.com. They lead me to a great little company called ProClip that makes in-car mounting for any car and any device. I liked this modular design since it would allow me to move my iPhone into my Jeep Commander when I get it this summer. The price of the rotating clip was a little steep, $100, but I decided I liked the idea of being able to orient my iPhone either direction for future turn-by-turn applications for the iPhone so I bought it and the Jeep Cherokee adapter. This mount also has a very nice pass-through adapter so you don't have to plug and un-plug your connection, it's more of a dock and it works extremely well.

My next stop was audio and power connections. This is where you get screwed. Apple has the right cable,but it's expensive to the tune of $50. That at least gets me audio out, now for charging. The XtremeMac InCharge Auto Charger for iPod/iPhone fits the ticket providing an Apple certified 5v USB connection for auto. Now everything is installed, clean and works great.

I accidently deleted all the pictures I took of the installation. Sorry guys and gals.