5W0P3

So i'm at my local stereo shop looking around since my coveted Alpine 9835 stopped playing cd's. I'm checking out the new iDA-X001, which is...


Now what got me was not the fact that it has no CD player but that you need the included conversion USB to Ipod cable with it. What got me thinking was, why not hook up a 500gb external hard drive and an AC/DC converter to it through USB. Then, I wondered how i'd load it up the easiest way with out taking it out of the car. So why not put a USB wireless NIC in it and open it up as a shared folder from a laptop in the car or while the car is in the garage.

Anyone see any problems with this? Or better ideas?

Do you think its possible to have this kind of setup? The radio, reading all the music on your 500gb external hardrive thats mounted in your car? And access to the HD, via wireless lan?

Gundam

You have 500gb of music? I've been collecting music for a long time, and have about 2500 albums, and that's barely larger then 150gb.

pentavolvo

The wireless NIC via usb isnt gonna work cause physically the alpine doesnt know what to do with it

IDK if the alpine can handle a 500gig harddrive but similar things have been done, my understanding is with a harddrive of large size it has to load the whole drive at bootup and can take 30+ seconds

5W0P3

Well I wouldn't expect the alpine to know what to do with the Wireless nic, That'd just be for putting new music on it.

It doesn't necessarily have to be 500gb, i was just using that as an example, I only have a couple hundred meg of music... right now.

pentavolvo

But if the alpine doesnt know what to do with the NIC and associate it with a folder on your harddrive your pc's in the house wont be able to talk to it

5W0P3

I dont think the Alpine would have anything to do with it. The Alpine could be off as long as the HD and the NIC were on. It's just be a wireless mobile storage lol.

TheKomoman

Problem you have there is that a straight-up external hard drive has no on-board OS to make it available for sharing. You'd need to get an NAS-style device that has file sharing built-in and plug that into a wireless ethernet bridge...

By the time you've done all that, WAY easier to pull the connector off an iPod and synch it on your computer.

DPG

or just get a carputer

pentavolvo

yup what all those guys said... i know they make some usb harddrives that are networkable/standalone but idk if they are wireless or not

patfife

You could go with a slim usb drive and mount it under the arm rest for easy removal. These are powered from the usb port so you don't need to run extra power.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1177113149231

If you don't want to keep removing the usb drive, you can wire in a usb hub to plug your laptop into for easy updates.

scofolo

Just make sure they are able to run off of the power that the Alpine supplies through the USB port. The max power consumption of the hard drive can't be more than 500mA. A friend tried a couple of ones on a Kenwood model with USB. They wouldn't work because they needed more power.