empeg - Easy Life and Early Retirement

It was both a very happy, and equally sad day today.

After many years of loyal service my empeg has been put back in it's mLord dock for the last time

I picked up my new Smart today, and I haven't been able to figure out a good way of getting the empeg to fit in the new dash. I want to leave the factory unit in place, but they have given me a aux input to try and tempt me into doing it. The glimmer of hope is in the glove box, but this is far from ideal of course.

I think the continued use of mp3 playing technology (iPone) in the car having links back to the empeg via a certain board member qualifies me to continue here

I find it amazing that the Smart headunit can't even read the tags in the mp3 files it plays. It is unbelievable that the motor manufacturers are so far behind. The empeg is still years head of it's time compared to standard headunits, and thanks to all of you who worked on this amazing product that has kept me amused on many many journeys. I am sure I will miss it every time I am trying to find a track on an mp3 CD (without filenames to help!!!) or trying to skips tracks on the iPhone while doing a roundabout.

Cheers

Cris.

Aw, you'd be welcome here no matter what.

Have you considered the remote display extender option?

Thanks



Nope! Totally forgot about that project, I will enquire about availability.

There could be life in the old dog yet!

Cheers

Cris.

There is an Apple's gadget that supposedly integrates neatly iWhatevers with Merc factory audios. I am not sure whether that applies to Smart, or just to "real" Merces, though, and it goes for something like $400 or so.

Real Mercs only

The only option on the Smart is an mp3 input which is basically and Aux in. Which I have gone for. For the £200 it cost I also got upgraded speakers/amp with a sub under my seat, to be honest I think it sounds every bit of the £200, really happy with it. This is why I want to keep it factory standard.

I am not sure if I want to use the iPhone in the car for music, I tend to put every song on the empeg in a random playlist and then just skip through a track at a time, I think I would have to unlock the iPhone every time I wanted to skip tracks, not something I would want to do. If I could find something that had hardware buttons on for skip track etc... then I think I would have to think twice again about the empeg.

Cheers

Cris.

Hmmmm a possible solution appears to be the Parrot MKi9100 seems to tick most boxes. Anyone have experience with these units?

Cheers

Cris.

I am told that you can skip tracks on a locked iPhone by double clicking the Home button. And go back by triple clickng. I think that was what they said here in the forum.

No, double clicking the home button shows the iPod controls on the lock screen, triple clicking does nothing. It is double/triple clicking the button on the headphone cable that skips/goes back.

Hm, interesting.... They go only through BlueTooth, don't they?

I employ a rather primitive solution in leased or rental cars: I have a spare Apple universal dock that comes with a primitive remote. Line out goes to AUX in on the head unit, and other (USB) cable to cigarette lighter to USB adapter. I jam the dock into a cup holder (and in some cars put a bit of packing foam behind the iPod to lessen vibration stress to the docking connector). Then I can either use controls on the iPod itself (160GB classic in my case), or on the remote, if I can find a handy place to jam, glue or otherwise mount it.

I tried one of those RF modulator thingies, bur results were terrible.

Sigh. Compare that cludge to empeg!

Bonzi

P.S. I just bought one of these thingies on eBay - three lighter sockets plus an USB for $5.99 and free shipping (from HK to Croatia!? - I will be happy to receive anything), so that I can plug in iPod, Garmin and still have a socket or two free.

In case you missed it, a lot of us have discovered DealExtreme: cheap prices, free worldwide air-mail shipment from HK, and reliable to deal with. Just the kind of place to look for small stuff.

Cheers

Serves me well for being absent for years

Thanks!

Edit: Wow, those things are 5-10 times cheaper than the original Apple stuff!

Ahh.. Here it is, for $6.36, postage included.

Yes, exactly the same thing. So, if mine doesn't show up in few weeks, this is the next stop

Thanks!

Ah. I was thinking of this post, and didn't remember it was talking about a button on the headphone cable. Mostly because neither my iTouch nor my iPhone came with a cable that has a button on it. There's a little bulge on my iPhone cable for the microphone, but no buttons on it. What cable are you folks talking about?

The little bulge for the microphone is the button

So much for Apple being intuitive then...

Well whaddya know. If you squeeze it, it makes a barely-perceptible click.

That's actually quite a brilliant piece of industrial design, in terms of the cleanliness and sleekness of the product. Shame that the cleanliness completely obfuscated its function. Apple does that kind of thing a lot. The bluetooth headset is almost like that. There's a button on the top edge, but it's so flush with the casing that you can't see it and it's hard to figure out what to press. The new miniature wireless keyboard has a power/reconnect button, but again, it's flush with one end of the keyboard and you can't tell where it is. I swear I turned that thing around ten times looking for the button. The symbol indicating that it's the power button is so artistically tiny that you have to look really hard to see it against the shiny metal casing. And so on.

This is pretty good, I use it on the Prius - power, aux-in audio and a wireless remote. Bit pricey, but it's a neat all-in-one and the shuffle/unshuffle button on the remote is a real nice-to-have in addition to the play/pause and track skip buttons.

http://us.kensington.com/html/14492.html

Hugo

Prius?!?

You moved from a Mazda MX-5 to a Noble to a Prius?

Hey, he's in the valley now.. where it's important to show one's green credentials by hauling around hundreds of pounds of toxic chemicals in the boot!

It probably still beats spewing them out of an exhaust tube, I suppose..

Hm. I guess the Tesla isn't available yet.

No back seat for a wee one, I betcha.
The daddy-hood has absorbed our faithful Hugo.

Thanks for the link Hugo. That looks like another possible solution.

Still very much undecided about what to do, I like the parrot option as it gives me handfree bluetooth too. But it's not clear from the online documentation if it puts the phone in flight mode as my old Kenwood system did, why does it do that ???

Cheers

Cris.

My empeg has also not made his way into my 2007 MX-5. I feel bad since I love my empeg but it has barely been used for the last 1.5 years.

Freaking SUCKY non MP3 player CD player came factory installed and NO aux port. I'm still trying to find an inexpensive, elegant solution to use my iPhone in the car...

- Jon

Ah yes, I read about DealExtreme here and have placed a couple of orders for various bits crap and have been impressed. $6.44 for a battery for my TyTN phone, $10.59 for an in/out thermometer, $10.84 for a hanging luggage-type scale (twice the price on ebay for the identical model), etc.

Yeah, I'm afraid that the original plan - a Scooby WRX - only lasted until Chloe was born, when it became very obvious that the kiddie seat didn't fit in the back... well, not without the front seat all the way forward on the sliders and the seat-back absolutely vertical. The old WRXes had very little rear legroom hence really very very little room for a rear-facing kiddie seat

Still, the new STi does fit the seat. Mmmmm.....

The Prius isn't bad, you get a lot of enjoyment driving it in both a non-Prius (eg cornering hard) and very Prius (eg not braking) fashion. I always find it hilarious to take the on-ramp to 280 at 45 and see the BMW driver behind me panic as he lifts half-way round <evil grin>

Hugo

No, plugging it in doesn't recommend flight mode (as with any made-for-iphone peripheral). Flight mode is only a *recommendation* anyway, you can always ignore the dialog...

Hugo