I've been dreaming of an iPod accessory for awhile and haven't known how to go about it. I'm hoping to find a few people who know more than me to help clear some things up, maybe lend a hand in development.

The plan is that I would like to create an DIN sized external display screen for my iPod. I would like to be able to plug cable into the iPod and display the current track name, artist, album and timer on the external monitor. This way I can leave the iPod in the glovebox, use an RF remote and still see what's playing.

There are stereos that will hook up to an iPod, but generally they don't show song information without an expensive add on module.

I've found descriptions of the dock connector, the serial iPod interface, and have looked at serial LCD displays. But I'm not sure how to bring these pieces together. Anyone interested in helping?

Pioneer has a whole range of Ipod and Bluetooth compatble units. I just put one in the 911....

you need some sort of programmable logic inbetween ...

making sense of the iPod serial output is (fairly) easy, if you have the documentation.
same goes for the LCD screen input.

what you need is a guy who knows how to solder his own boards and knows a thing or two about chip/component layout.
it shouldn't be too hard for someone in the know ...

i can do the assembler programming of the module that takes the iPod input and creates the LCD screen output.

used to do device drivers in ASM. and operating system stuff.
i might be a bit rusty, but if it's 80x86/x87 or 6502 or 680xx or Z80 based, i'll be able to help ...

Andy

Paging Jeff K.

It would be pretty easy. You just need to translate the ipod serial data into row-column data for the LCD. The HW wizard I work closely with could spit the layout out in a few days. Unfortunately hes old and doesn't have much interest in extracurricular projects.

Andy, obviously you could use any of those processors. But there are so many microcontrollers specific for that application these days. You could look at some Atmels or Microchip PICs. Once you can do assembly, you can do it for any chip. Shit, you could probably bang that out in straight C just as easy. Both Atmel and Microchip offer some free programming tools I think.

What Z said. The pioneer displays most everything you want.

By the way, thanks Z, I bought one and it works just fine.

Its pretty easy to do, how soon do you want it? and how much do you want to pay? By the time you make boards, buy lcds, pay for programming, you will be over the $200 mark, and probably could have bought one.