So you’ve got a brilliant MP3 – be it a PodCast or a new dance track – and it’s stored on your Smartphone. Then, you get in your car and you wanna listen to it on your way to work. Options? Well, you could use your headphones – y’know, the ones you got with the phone. That’d do it. Your other option would be to have never put the music on your phone at all – burn it to a CD and stick that in your car right ? Sure.. but that’s messy and you’ll have to fiddle around burning the CD, labelling it, bla bla blaaaaaaa!
So, I saw a story on SmartPhoneThoughts and I figured maybe us in the UK (and the rest of the world) could get in on this too. The deal is that this little Audia-x FM Transmitter plugs into your phone (oh, you’ll need one of these adaptors too to convert the tiny 2.5mm plug on your Smartphone to a 3.5mm plug fo this transmitter) and then broadcasts the audio out on a specific frequency (this is digital, so it shouldn’t have a “drifting” FM signal sometimes found in these mini-transmitters) which can then be picked up on your car stereo.
Yes, yes, people may say, “that’s illegal you know” but I don’t give a stuff – it only broadcasts around 2 metres at an absolute maximum, and you’re going to choose a “free” channel to broadcast on so that it doesn’t clash with radio stations. Are you gonna get pulled over by the Police because you were in traffic and someone in a car next to you was searching through the FM band and found your MP3 “broadcast” for a brief few minutes? I don’t think so.
The Audio-x FM Transmitter is available here for about £20.80
2.5mm Stereo Plug to 3.5mm Stereo Socket Adaptor is £0.99 available Maplins here.
Update – Right! I want one, I’m ordering it now! 🙂
Update 2 – Lee Smart has detailed his experiences with a Belkin FM transmitter and a C500. Read all about it here.