MP3CAR

My favourite addon so far would be the buttons I glued to the back of the
steering wheel. These little babies are wired as a digital joystick. It is
wired for up-down, left-right, and buttons 1-4, which gives me 8 discrete inputs.
It was wired up with an unshielded 8 conductor cable I had previously laid as a
spare. Winamp has a few joystick control plugins. I am using the MindTwist
Joystick Control v1.1. It was the only one tested that really worked well with
a digital joystick. The tiny buttons have a great click feel to them and they
are fairly well hidden from view. I have bound the buttons to next/prev,
volume, play/pause, visualization on/off and fast forward/rewind.

In this second round of modifications I added an Altec Lansing ACS 54
Five Speaker 40 Watt Sound System. Previously my computer was wired to the
audio input of my car stereo, and I was hearing annoying engine speed related
frequencies, so for a small $100 investment in this cheap sound system, I now
get great sound. It runs off AC and plugs into the inverter.

I removed the controls from the left speaker and chopped up the plastic to fit
inside an unused ashtray compartment at the rear end of the center console. It
was a great location since it is handy to reach and the cable easily reaches
from there to the trunk where it plugs into the subwoofer. In the pictures you
can see that I have just glued the two front speakers to the dash panels.

I have added a microphone hiding up under the driver's visor. The intent is to
use voice command software to select mp3s for playback. I placed a microphone
jack under the steering wheel beside the main power switches in case I need to
connect a better quality microphone or headset some day.

A USB jack has been added beside the microphone jack down under the
steering wheel. I built the extension cable so I could have my webcam
up front and take pictures while driving. You can find USB pinouts here.
USB data lines are a twisted pair and the power lines are not. The webcam
great except it looks like a radar detector which are illegal here. The USB
jack is also extremely handy for connecting the digital camera to move
pictures or files to and fro. As an added bonus, while I was working down
there I discovered I have tilt steering!