Noisy Pickup and No FM Instruction Transmitter, What to do.... What to do...

[cdifani]

Folks:

I'm looking for advice, personal situations, etc., regarding how anyone copes with a noisy environment, and TomTom not transmitting the instructions via their FM transmitter. Also, while I've got the "line out" cable, my stereo in this particular vehicle does not have a "line in" receptacle, or even a tape deck that can be tweaked, or anything else that would make this solution simple... or easy.

I'm guessing that using another FM transmitter, one that's designed to work with any MP3 player, would work. But I've had such varied results with these (dead out of the box, crap out of the box, and so forth), that I hesitate to go in that technical direction. I'd love something that I could actually plug into the antenna cable receptacle, a quasi FM transmitter, that would minimize the static I always seem to get.

Or is there a Bluetooth kind of device that will work with a "line out" mini-plug, and not be a horrible pain to install. My stereo is an older Pioneer in a 2004 Subaru Forester... with snow tires. Noisy vehicle.

So, does anyone have an elegant solution to my problem? Besides TomTom honoring their advertising committment to the entire world... outside of the UK. I really wonder just what kind of difficulty TomTom would have experienced if they had simply ignored the UK legislation... There's 30M people in the UK, and 330M in the US. I bet there's more TT users here than there..... but that's just a guess...

Thanks for your time,

Chris D.

 

[mikealder]

Chris, there are a number of options, an FM injection box would work very well, this plugs in between the car aerial and stereo the line out audio from the tomtom is then modulated on to the FM signal and with the car deck tuned to the correct frequency you get all the sound through the car system. Another option is the iO Play module which uses Bluetooth audio and offers a second BT connection for your phone, this is the best solution I have found to date. I am not too sure about availability in the USA but these are available in the UK for around ?60 - Mike

 

[mvl]

I use satellite radio in my car, so the FM transmitter wouldn't ever have helped me.

I just use the "auto adjust volume" setting in preferences, which increases the volume based on the microphone's pickup of background noise. Then with volume at 70%, I can always hear the instructions louder than the XM radio or road noise.

I don't blast my radio, but there is substantial road noise on highways in my car. And this setting works fine for me.

 

[canderson]

I use satellite radio in my car, so the FM transmitter wouldn't ever have helped me.

Fortunately, mine is a combo satellite AM/FM, so no problems with the antenna in-line modulator. I wasn't sure what I would think of the Audiovox FMM100A, but it's worked out very well indeed -- far better than the usual FM modulator. I had one that worked OK until I changed vehicles, but the new one has a high mounted stubby antenna on the rear roof of the vehicle, and no regular modulator was getting it done, including the one inside the TomTom.

The FMM100A provides an aux-in that can be tied to the aux-out of the TomTom. In my case, I had other gear to install as well, so they're both plugged into a Y jack, and both have ground loop isolators. The sound from the TomTom was too hot, though, and for some reason I can't fathom, TomTom killed the volume adjustment on the line out.

Properly installed (between the antenna and AM/FM section) and switched on, it kills AM, and seriously attenuates FM to the point that local interference isn't an issue. Good thing, too, since it doesn't exactly have a wealth of frequency choices (you choose from either 89.1 or 88.7). It also has a trim for the input volume so that you can whack back the TomTom's output a bit so there's no distortion.

Anyway, this "direct" RF solution has worked VASTLY better than any of the "remote" RF solutions I've tried to date.