In their infinite wisdom, NISSAN's design department - presumably located in some other parallel universe! - decided to omit any cabled connector to their factory-installed, high-end BOSE audio system (i.e. NO 'AUX' input socket and NO USB port) from one of their top models, in this case my 2007 350Z. The only cabled connection is the hands-free mobile phone connector (see attached picture). They did however provide BlueTooth connectivity which I am vehemently resisting. The majority of the FM/Bluetooth audio adaptors do not review very well in terms of audio quality. The only dongles that rank well use plugged connections. Worse, only a few are capable of playing MP3 music files from a USB memory stick which is what I want to do. If you do want to go down the BlueTooth route, you can down-load an App onto your phone which ingeniously allows it to simulate an incoming call to the car's hands-free phone system but cunningly, streams audio files - from any source - through the vehicle's audio system. There are however, two big problems with this; 1) it's not free - there's call charges! and 2) it ties up your phone effectively diverting all your incoming calls to your phone's messaging system (which on my plan, also cost). Let's face it, the BlueTooth connection is just a proxy for a hard-connection cable plug/socket but since this App proves the point it should therefore be possible to directly connect some sort of media-player via the socket shown in the picture probably via some sort of dongle whose purpose would be to simulate an incoming call in order to connect the audio feed to the car's audio system via the hands-free phone system.
So my question is; is such a conversion dongle commercially available? or, if not, how straight forward would it be to make one? This project would be a little above my pay grade but would it appeal to someone clever who likes a bit of a challenge and might be interested to take it on in a collaboration? Given the number of used cars on the market with this type of hands-free connection I well imagine there may be quite a bit of interest.
So my question is; is such a conversion dongle commercially available? or, if not, how straight forward would it be to make one? This project would be a little above my pay grade but would it appeal to someone clever who likes a bit of a challenge and might be interested to take it on in a collaboration? Given the number of used cars on the market with this type of hands-free connection I well imagine there may be quite a bit of interest.
