[cardog]

I find it inexcusable and ridiculous that the Chevy engineers failed to create a system that readily accepts the Ipod. All my music is on Ipod/Itunes. I only buy new music on Itunes. If my Ipod isn't going to work in the Camaro, I will simply buy a different car. Period.

[Hyper16]

Originally Posted by cardog

I find it inexcusable and ridiculous that the Chevy engineers failed to create a system that readily accepts the Ipod. All my music is on Ipod/Itunes. I only buy new music on Itunes. If my Ipod isn't going to work in the Camaro, I will simply buy a different car. Period.

Yep. Older iPods are very finicky when trying to connect to new technology. I had issues with the last generation 160GB iPods (I have two, loaded with music, which are basically worthless now) connecting to a 2010 GMC Acadia, 2011 Cadillac SRX, 2015 SRX and my Camaro. I think the technology of the older iPods has been written off by third party manufacturers (and even by Apple), sort of like Microsoft and Windows XP. I don't know about you, but the infotainment system is NOT what attracts me to the Camaro. If it means that much to you, you probably would be pissed at all the other nuances. JMHO

BTW - thumb drives are the way to go. Verbatim has 32GB Nano USB drives that are hardly noticeable when plugged in.

[cardog]

Can you build playlists and shuffle play within the playlists on the thumb drives?

[Fraxum]

Originally Posted by Hyper16

Yep. Older iPods are very finicky when trying to connect to new technology. I had issues with the last generation 160GB iPods (I have two, loaded with music, which are basically worthless now) connecting to a 2010 GMC Acadia, 2011 Cadillac SRX, 2015 SRX and my Camaro. I think the technology of the older iPods has been written off by third party manufacturers (and even by Apple), sort of like Microsoft and Windows XP. I don't know about you, but the infotainment system is NOT what attracts me to the Camaro. If it means that much to you, you probably would be pissed at all the other nuances. JMHO

BTW - thumb drives are the way to go. Verbatim has 32GB Nano USB drives that are hardly noticeable when plugged in.

Agreed! My car will only sometimes recognize either my 4th gen or 7th gen Ipods.

But my 64 gb flash drive is in all the time built by CarPlayList. I have a couple of thousand songs on it. There is only a short wait for indexing and it works flawlessly. Even some of the songs have artwork even thoug my all did not address that. I suppose artwork can be embeded in the mp3.

When my Ipods (both 16GB) are recognized it takes a long time before it really starts working.

I think I have the direct Itunes interface almost completed. Of course Apple makes this hard.

With the flash drive you scrifice nothing from the iPod except audio books.

Any other way to play these without an iPod? I can do it with Google car play, but is is very awkward. I wonder if the Audible app supports bluetooth?

Thought of another CarPlayList feature I will add to let you delete playlists and attached songs form the USB. I am enjoying this project. But going slow weekends and nights.

[HomeBrewer]

Originally Posted by Fraxum

Agreed! My car will only sometimes recognize either my 4th gen or 7th gen Ipods.

But my 64 gb flash drive is in all the time built by CarPlayList. I have a couple of thousand songs on it. There is only a short wait for indexing and it works flawlessly. Even some of the songs have artwork even thoug my all did not address that. I suppose artwork can be embeded in the mp3.

When my Ipods (both 16GB) are recognized it takes a long time before it really starts working.

I think I have the direct Itunes interface almost completed. Of course Apple makes this hard.

With the flash drive you scrifice nothing from the iPod except audio books.

Any other way to play these without an iPod? I can do it with Google car play, but is is very awkward. I wonder if the Audible app supports bluetooth?

Thought of another CarPlayList feature I will add to let you delete playlists and attached songs form the USB. I am enjoying this project. But going slow weekends and nights.

I listen to the Audible app all the time on my Bluetooth.

[Fraxum]

Originally Posted by HomeBrewer

I listen to the Audible app all the time on my Bluetooth.

^ Cool! I will try that. Thanks.

[alaskajoel]

I am super intrigued by this. I need to try it out.

I had a first generation iPod touch in my Infiniti and GTI that worked perfectly...doesn't work worth a dang in the new Camaro...So I went out and got a new iPod touch figuring it had to work better.

Unfortunately, it is super slow, regularly lags out, Shuffle doesn't stay enabled and I get this popping / crackling noise through the audio pretty frequently. Sometimes if I unplug it and plug it back in things work better for a while, but it eventually starts degrading in quality and speed again.

I need to try the flash drive approach. Worth a shot at least. Thanks for the info!

[alaskajoel]

Thanks Fraxum for putting this info together. This appears to be WAY better than using the iPod.

For what its worth, I haven't found a drive larger than 32GB that works with the Camaro though...tried about 5 different USB drives formatted in a variety of ways (FAT32, exFAT, NTFS) and none of the 64-128gb drives were recognized. All of the 32GB drives were though. Also, the manual says only .mp3, .wma, .ogg, and .wav files are supported, but my collection of M4A files were also recognized.

Embedded album art works for most of my tracks (when embedded in the file) but it isn't working for others. At first glance, it looks like the unsupported artworks are in non-square resolutions. For example, the art shows up when it is stored as a 500 x 500 or 600 x 600 JPEG, but it does not appear to show up when in a more obscure resolution (the example for me that does not work is 713 x 659)

I'll fiddle with this some more this evening. Getting this problem sorted out leaves me only two other things that are bugging me with this awesome car

EDIT: I found a 64gb SD card + reader that works! Only when formatted as FAT32 (Not exFAT like the owners manual SAYS should work...)

[Fraxum]

Originally Posted by cardog

Can you build playlists and shuffle play within the playlists on the thumb drives?

Yes shuffle works just fine on USB drives.

I have the app all working now but I have to work on the UI a bit to reduce clutter.

The Camaro only wants Fat32 formatted drives. While CarPlayList can format USB drives I am testing to make sure it can do it with big USB drives. Windows cannot. Not sure if it will be able to do USB formatting on a Mac.

[Fraxum]

Originally Posted by alaskajoel

Thanks Fraxum for putting this info together. This appears to be WAY better than using the iPod.

For what its worth, I haven't found a drive larger than 32GB that works with the Camaro though...tried about 5 different USB drives formatted in a variety of ways (FAT32, exFAT, NTFS) and none of the 64-128gb drives were recognized. All of the 32GB drives were though. Also, the manual says only .mp3, .wma, .ogg, and .wav files are supported, but my collection of M4A files were also recognized.

Embedded album art works for most of my tracks (when embedded in the file) but it isn't working for others. At first glance, it looks like the unsupported artworks are in non-square resolutions. For example, the art shows up when it is stored as a 500 x 500 or 600 x 600 JPEG, but it does not appear to show up when in a more obscure resolution (the example for me that does not work is 713 x 659)

I'll fiddle with this some more this evening. Getting this problem sorted out leaves me only two other things that are bugging me with this awesome car

EDIT: I found a 64gb SD card + reader that works! Only when formatted as FAT32 (Not exFAT like the owners manual SAYS should work...)

I am using a Transcend 64 GB USB built by my app using the simple M3U playlist format in my SS. I had to format it with Minitool Partition wizard as Windows could not do it. I am hoping my app will do it. I tried different formats but as you said only Fat32 works on the Camaro. It is the lowest common format denominator on any car anyway I also found that the extended playlist format does not work on the Camaro. So the app buillds simple playlists but can copy extended format playlists if that has some advantage.

So far the app supports both types of Playlist files and directly extracts iTunes playlists so you don't have to export them. But you will need to turn on the xml interface in iTunes.

Are there any other popular Windows apps for organizing your music?

[Fraxum]

Any thoughts on using buttons instead of web like links?

My daughter thinks most people want buttons instead of links. I wonder. I may put some sort of button bar on it.

Opinions? I do need to clean up the clutter either way.

[alaskajoel]

Links are perfectly fine IMO. I've been using musicbee after ditching the ipod and iTunes. It allows you to download the proper album art super easy and build Playlists. I like the GUI and popup notifications better than iTunes too.

[Fraxum]

Originally Posted by alaskajoel

Links are perfectly fine IMO. I've been using musicbee after ditching the ipod and iTunes. It allows you to download the proper album art super easy and build Playlists. I like the GUI and popup notifications better than iTunes too.

Cool! I will look into it for V2. I bet it is easier to work with than iTunes.

[Fraxum]

Took my daughter's advice to heart, she is way smarter than me. So I simplified the UI my adding a toolbar and menus. Most of the functions will not be used all that often so It is better not to confuse a new user. I also think I can format big drive Fat32. Still testing.

Making Progress!