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After I posted my first iPod Dock in the
iLounge forums, some guy by the
name holto2go posted an interesting idea. He sells the 30-pin connectors
that iPods use for much less than anywhere else. He suggested that I use one of those to customize
my dock. After a few more posts, I had a pretty good idea of how to include an audio out in my dock. I got audio out, he got sales;
sounds pretty good to me! Afterwords, I figured I not only
wanted power to my iPod, but the ability to take the firewire cord and plug it into my computer for music transfer.
I researched pin layouts and such and came up with a good schematic
that included audio out, power, and data transfer. Below is the schematic I built from.
This new setup has many benefits. The most obvious of which is being able to play music through my stereo without a
big cable coming out of the top of my iPod. Also, since the 30-pin connector doesn't have the plastic
casing that the Apple one has, the dock can now sit flat on a surface, instead of needing feet to give ground clearance.
Finally, since I used a firewire port instead of a firewire cable, the dock can be disconnected from
the audio and firewire cables to be transported, shown off, or gazed at. Other than adding electronic features,
the actual dock itself didn't change much. A how-to follows:
Construction
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Putting the electronic components together is probably the hardest part. Be sure
to follow the schematic exactly, because you don't want shorts anywhere.
Well, you never really want shorts, but it's a little more important when
dealing with something as expensive as an iPod. The wires I used were about
2-3 inches long, and even that was probably too long. The first thing to
hook up is the 1/8" audio out port. I got mine from an old CD player, but
they're avaliable at Radio
Shack. When you solder, be sure not to use too much. Also, I suggest
using holto2go's idea for protecting the other pins from solder bridges,
which can be found on here. Essentially, you can put a small piece of paper in a "V" shape, such that the to-be-soldered pin is within the vertex of the "V."
Just solder 3 wires to the jack like in the schematic, and solder the other
ends to their respective pins. Be sure you have the 30-pin connector orientated
correctly so you don't solder to the wrong pins. Next, solder a wire to
each of the firewire
port's 6 pins. Now, make sure you know which pin is which and solder
the wires to their respective pins. When you're done, it should look like
the schematic. Double check your wires and solder joints before you move
on. I wrapped some twist-ties around my wire bundles to keep everything
in place, too. If everything looks good, plug the 30-pin connector into
the iPod, and then hook the audio out port up to an 1/8"- dual RCA cable.
Plug it into the auxilary/line in port in your stereo. If you can play music
through it, you done good. Then hook up the power to the firewire port with
a firewire cable, and if you get "charging", you're two for two. Finally,
plug the firewire cable into your computer and see if you can transfer music.
If you can, move on. If any of these tests failed, check your soldering
and connections again.
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Like I said, the new dock is constructed just like the old
one. In fact I used the same one, just modified it. The only difference
in construction is the bottom. Instead of just making one groove for
the cord, you need 2 strangely-shaped grooves for the firewire and
audio out wires. I just put my assembly on the dock (being sure to
have the dock connector facing so that the front of the iPod would
be at the front of the dock) and traced out where grooves needed to
be. Then I went at it with a Dremel tool to get all that material
out. when I was done with that, I did a test fit, and made any adjustments.
One of the adjustments I had to make was wrapping the 30-pin connector
in electrical tape so it would fit in the hole that was already there.
When everything was in its place, I smothered the whole thing in hot
glue, all the way up to the bottom surface. Since the whole assembly
didn't extend past the bottom, I could remove the little feet that
were there with some pliers. The final step was to make a bottom veneer
plate just like I made the ones for the other 5 sides. After that
was stained to match, I had a fine dock suitable to any iPod occcasion. |
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