Connecting to car headunit problems

[altacool]

I wanted to know if anyone had problems connecting their droid phone to their head unit. I have a Alpine IVA-W505 that has a line in and usb connection. Currently I use it for my Ipod and it happily sits in my glove box, but I wanted to try hooking up my phone to the radio to see how it works. So here is my problem:

1. Having two wires come out of my glove box and connected to my phone seems pretty cheesy. I don't want to keep my phone in the glove box. I understand there may be a bluetooth solution for this, but that would require buying a separate module from Alpine that may or may not work.

2. In order for my radio to connect to my phone I have to go to the "USB connected" notification and then select to dock the phone.

3. As soon as I so much as breath on my phone, the physical usb connection seems to reset causing me to have to re-dock the phone. The line out connection seems stable but the physical usb connection does not.

Has anyone else had this problem? Constantly redocking the phone while I'm driving is not an option. Once the usb cable moves, then that's it, I'm not re-docking the phone unless I'm stopped, but that is a huge pain.

Any suggestions?

 

[Martin030908]

Your USB shouldn't be so sensitive.

but since it is... have you tried using a male/male 3.5mm plug and connecting it to your aux input on your receiver and to the jack on the DROID?

 

[altacool]

Right now (without taking the headunit out) the only way I can input any audio/video to my head unit is through the usb and line-in connection. If I just plug my phone into the line-in, my headunit does not detect the audio. Not through the "aux" source or any other source. I'm pretty sure I can take out the head unit and put the male/male 3.5mm plug adapter, but I don't really want to do that right now.

This would be a good solution, but it would still require interaction with my phone every once in a while to skip a song or search for other audio on the phone, etc.

I'm thinking it might have to do with the usb cable itself because when I charge my phone (using a different cable altogether) the charging doesn't stop if I move it, but come to think of it, I didn't have problems with that particular cable when it was connected to my computer...sorry just thinking (rambling) out loud.

 

[Martin030908]

Might just be as simple as replacing the cable. Start small. Always easier then busting your arse for a day setting something up only to find out it was a 5 min fix! I'm guilty of that often. LOL

I didn't think about having the controls thru the head unit when I mentioned just connecting the audio out to your receiver.

 

[altacool]

Thanks a lot for your help Martin. I'm starting to think there is a "DOH!" moment coming up soon.

I was trying my usb cable at my desktop computer and initially I was having the usb "sensitivity" problems that I spoke of earlier, but then I did something quite magical. I tried pushing the connector in more and then played around with it and no problems, so far. Now, I'm off to test it out in the car again. Hopefully I will be posting "I'm an idiot" soon.

 

[altacool]

Ok, so I'm an idiot...but in my defense, the usb connector needed a little extra push to stop it from being so sensitive. But now on to different problems:

I noticed this problem yesterday when I first tried to hook my phone to the head unit, but didn't think much of it until I hooked it up again today. The 3g connection completely vanished. No icon on the notification bar saying "3G" no nothing. Just to make sure, I tried the web and it said not internet connection. Now powering the phone off and powering back on does bring the internet connection back, but... really?!

Anyone know what might be going on? All I did was hook it up to my headunit through the usb and line-in connection, nothing more.