For a long time now, I've been trying to find a way to get music in my car on the cheap, and since I've finally succeeded, I thought I should share this tale of 12 volts.

When I first purchased my car, it had a crappy cassette player installed. The unit would only play through the right channel and it would randomly eject whatever cassette it was playing. Eventually, the player started eating my cassettes and then died altogether.

Fortunately, my local thrift store was selling a cassette player for $5, as well as a bunch of cassettes for $1 each. Six dollars and 20 minutes later, I was rocking out to Boston's "More Than a Feeling". Not too shabby, but I want to listen to music from my digital collection as well as some audcasts. Purchasing an "audio out to cassette" adapter proved to be a fruitless endevour as the cassette player started ejecting the adapter after a few seconds of playing.

The next step was to purchase an FM modulator that plugs directly into the antenna port on the back of the cassette player. Unfortunatly, the radio decided to break when I tried to tune into the FM modulator's selected channel. "That's OK" I thought, "I can just listen to cassettes from the thrift store." Jerry Lee Lewis, Glenn Miller, Back to the Future Soundtrack, and some Lionel Richie mostly kept me entertained until the cassette player started to fail.... Time for another solution

The Busted Beast
Personally, I like having a busted crappy looking cassette player in my car, because It lets people know (or think) that there is nothing of value in my car. So, the junk cassette player will stay mounted in my dash. Perhaps I can convert it to a change holder in the future. Oh well, perhaps some other day.

Why yes, that is the Little Mermaid Soundtrack in the cassette player. How did you know?

200 Watts of Fury
For $16, including shipping, I purchased this amplifier from an Ebay store. The amp was advertised as 200 watts and I certainly believe that the actual amplification number does have a 2 in it, but it certainly isn't 200; it is more like 2.

What the amplifier does have is a 3.5 millimeter stereo input jack, which will allow me to connect nearly any portable audio player.

Body Modification
In order for my plan to really come together, I would need to hide the amp in my trunk and keep my portable music player in the glove compartment. This would require cutting a hole in the glove compartment so a cable could be run to the trunk.

What? You can't access your trunk from a hole in your glove compartment? weird.

Custom Mounting Bracket
Nothing says "awesome" like a custom mounting bracket, and in this case, that mounting bracket is Gorilla Tape. Hot damn, that is some strong tape.

With the amp installed, I plugged everything in and tested the system. Not bad, not bad at all.

For a victory lap, I went out for a drive while listening to Riddle of Steel/Riders of Doom from the Conan Soundtrack by Basil Poledouris, and I turned left where I had never turned left before, just to explore what was there.

Now quit reading, and listen to Riddle of Steel/Riders of Doom while Crom laughs at your Four Winds.

On a recent commute home from work, my engine stopped running. It didn't splutter as though it was starved for gasoline and it didn't run rough as if not all cylinders were firing, and there was plenty of electricity ( at least enough to keep my headlights bright and the Glenn Miller cassette playing ). Luckily I was already in beautiful Petaluma and much to the distain of the driver behind me, I drifted as far as I could before pulling over and trying to trouble shoot my problem.

So what would cause the engine to stop like that? A bad distributor; perhaps no electricity getting to the coil. Turning the ignition key lit up my console lights but didn't engage the starter motor and I didn't hear any clicks from the solenoid. Fine, no juice was getting to the solenoid. If no electricity is getting to the starter and the coil, the common point of failure is probably the ignition switch. But why would it fail when it did?

Hold on a second...

I need to take a moment to salute the best problem solvers that I know of: the Shade Tree Mechanic. Named so because it isn't uncommon for them to use the branch of large tree to help pull the engine out of a car. Most shade tree mechanics that I know, have limited formal education in the art of automobile repair and instead have Doctorates and Masters degrees in real world experience.

Alright, back to my car.

After walking the mile and a half back to my home and having a bite to eat, I thought it would be best to see if the headlights dimmed when I tried to start the engine. If the lights dimmed, then electricity was being diverted to the starter, and the problem may not be the ignition switch. So on my bicycle I rode, to perform the test.


Writing Software
I enjoy writing software. Sometimes I need the challenge, and almost all of the times that I write a piece of software, I actually need/want the software. When there is a problem with software, it is referred to as a bug, although some people call it a feature. In order to fix a software bug, it is necessary to determine the steps required to reproduce the bug. If the bug happens everytime a certain action is performed, it is easier to track down what is causing the bug and therefore easier to fix. If, on the other hand, the bug only happens sometimes and there is no decernable scenario that will cause the bug, then there a lot of head banging against the wall trying to find the problem. This is the worst kind of bug.

Turning the Key
With my bike parked in front of my car, I was ready to check the headlight brightness as I turned the key. Click. RRRRRRRRR RRRRR RRRRRR VROOOOM!
Damn it! The car started. If I can't reproduce the problem, how can I fix it? What was I missing? The car started after it cooled down....

The car stopped running shortly after driving in quite a bit of stop and go freeway traffic followed by normal highway speed and then slowing to in town speeds. Could it be too much heat affecting my electrical connections? Why isn't it cooling properly?

In the end, I replaced a worn fanbelt to help keep the engine cool. The ignition switch was also replaced since it could have been faulty, and my key sometimes fell out when the car was running. I also cleaned and tightened many of the electrical connections. Hopefully, this will fix the non-reproducible bug.

Perhaps I'm not properly testing the fix under similar condition? I guess I'll find out on the commute home...

Now stop reading, and try to fix something that may or may not be broken

Why Yes; that is the Nokia N810 that I purchased on Ebay. Again, yes; the nokia is resting upon a torn black t-shirt and some ugly old shorts that no longer fit me.

The N810 has a wonderful screen that I fear will get scratched to hell if it stays in my pocket for too long. For portability reasons, I'm going to need a screen protector or, even better, a Nokia Coozie.

First things first, cut out a large strip of fabric from the t-shirt. Follow this by cutting a large strip of that ghastly fabric from the shorts.

Pin the pieces of fabric together and then sew the fabric together. This will make it easier to handle.

That's a lot of pins. Hopefully the screen will respond to bloodied fingers.

After wrapping the fabric around the N810, it is possible to determine where to sew the fabric in order to make the beginning shape of the coozie. After sewing and cutting off the excess fabric, things are starting to really take shape.

I left plenty of extra fabric on the length-wise measurement so that I would have some slack to make hemming easier.

Putting the N810 in the almost coozie, I marked where I needed to fold and hem the opening, and like Riker does after Picard says "Make it so", I made is sew.
Yes, I made a Star Trek sewing joke. Engage!

After hemming the coozie, half of the extra fabric was removed and the other half was shaped and sewn to make a flap that I could tuck into the coozie after the device.

Originally, I wanted to use velcro to hold the opening shut, but I would have had to either sew the velcro on very early in the process or sew it on by hand, which I am too lazy to do.

Finally.

Here is the coozie with the N810 inside and the flap tucked in. It may not be pretty but it is pretty damn useful and pretty damn ugly.

Sweet, I've got Linux in my pocket.

Now quit reading, and go make something ugly and useful.