Author: wes

Now that I have a 16GB Android phone, I have put all my music in it so I have no use for my old iPod touch anymore that I got on November 30, 2009, which I recently sold for $110 on Craigslist. However, I have no way to play the music from my phone through the car speakers. My car doesn’t have bluetooth, and it doesn’t have an aux input. So on September 20th, I ordered a “1.0″ LCD Car MP3 Player FM Transmitter with IR Remote Controller” from DealExtreme for only $5.50. Finally, after 22 days, it arrived today! I will be connecting my phone via USB to this gadget and playing my music through an unused radio frequency like 88.1 FM.

EDIT: This FM transmitter isn’t detecting my phone as a USB mass storage device… so it doesn’t see my mp3’s. 🙁

EDIT 2: Actually, in USB mode, it can detect songs from my phone’s internal memory, but not from the microSD card. However, it takes about 20 seconds to load each song before it can be played… so I’m just using an aux cable now because it’s a lot faster. The downside is that my phone doesn’t get charged now while playing the music.

   

So my micro SIM card cutter came today and I used it to cut my mini SIM card. It does the job good enough; it works but doesn’t make clean enough cuts. I had to scratch off some edges of the cut SIM card to make it more smooth.

The reason I got this was because I bought a cheap used Samsung Galaxy S3 with a bad IMEI and I just wanted to pop my SIM in it to see what would happen, and see if I could make it work. Sadly, I didn’t have any luck so I’m going to resell the phone on craigslist for a little more than what I paid for. 🙂

Just bought a Micro Sim Card Cutter+4 Sim Adapter from eForCity on Amazon for $4.16. I can’t believe people on craigslist are charging $5-$10 do one cut! Anyway, I need this to cut my standard mini sim card to a micro sim card, for something secret. 🙂

I received my Soliport ELM 327 Bluetooth OBD2 Diagnostic Scanner that I got for $14.90 from Amazon today. This device can be plugged into cars with the OBD2 port and connect to my Android phone with bluetooth. Using an app like Torque, I can view the Check Engine Light codes, and a whole bunch of other information… here, I’ll copy and paste the Torque app features:

* Dyno / Dynomometer and Horsepower/HP & Torque
* Can read Transmission Temperatures (vehicle dependant)
* 0-60 speed timings – more accurate than just using plain old GPS – see how fast your car is (or truck )
* CO2 emissions readout
* Customisable dashboard & profiles
* Video your journey using the Track Recorder plugin with onscreen OBDII data overlay – a black box for your car/truck!
* Automatically send GPS tagged tweets directly to twitter (for example if you are going on a road trip)
* Massive fault code database for lookup of fault codes from different manufacturers
* Theme support (choose from different themes to change the look of your dashboard)
* Send logging information to web or email CSV/KML for analysis via excel / openoffice reader
* Heads up display / HUD mode for night time driving
* Compass (GPS Based) that won’t suffer magnetic interference
* GPS Speedometer/Tracking and realtime web upload capability – see what you were doing and your engine, at a point in time
* Turbo boost feature for vehicles that support MAP and MAF sensors (VW & Golf / Audi / Seat etc supported)
* Alarms and warnings (for example if your coolant temperature goes over 120C whilst driving) with voice/speech overlay
* Car dock support
* Graph data
* MPG
* Able to share screenshots to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Email, etc
* AIDL API for third party apps, A simple Telnet interface for developers to talk to the adapter, and an OBD scanner.
* Works on tablet devices like the Motorola Xoom, Dell Streak, Samsung Galaxy Tab and Nook

I ordered a C-T Clear Soft TPU Gel Grip Skin Case Cover for AT&T Samsung Galaxy S2 Skyrocket from SF Planet on Amazon for $2.99 on Monday, and it came today! It’s really nice and well worth the price.