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Posts Tagged ‘cars’

Bluetooth hands-free kit that goes in your car’s cassette tape thing

March 21st, 2009 2 comments

Problem: Not allowed to talk on the phone in the car any more. Those spoilsports.

Solution: Chris Rae’s patented (well, not patented) Bluetooth hands-free kit that goes in your car’s cassette tape thing. Much like those things that go in your tape deck and have a normal audio jack on them so you can listen to CDs in the car, this one goes in the tape deck and has a Bluetooth thing in it so that it can talk to your mobile phone. Instead of an audio jack hanging out of the front on a piece of wire, this fine device has a microphone on a piece of wire so you can affix it somewhere in the car. The device is powered by generating electricity from the tape deck spindles turning.

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Internal iPod dock for car stereo

March 14th, 2009 3 comments

Problem: Currently the two ways of playing an iPod (or similar type of thing) in a car are either to purchase a car with an inbuild iPod dock, or to have wires dangling all over the place connecting stereo equipment and/or power sources.

Solution: A car stereo with an internal iPod dock. You put the iPod in a slot on the front of the stereo, just like you would have ten years ago with a cassette tape. The iPod slides into the stereo, and a nice door closes behind it. The stereo then charges the iPod and gives you buttons from which you can control it (the usual sort of remote iPod control stuff). You can leave it all in the car without worrying about it being stolen; you don’t have a tangle of wires everywhere and when iPods eventually go out of date you don’t have to buy a new car.

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Cruise control that guides you towards a speed rather than setting it absolutely

March 10th, 2009 2 comments

Problem: Cruise control in cars is a switch. It’s awkward and jerky to reduce speed or get back up to cruise speed.

Solution: A cruise control that doesn’t actually set speed, but instead makes the accelerator pedal stiffer or looser such that leaving a foot resting on the pedal will cause the car to go at cruise speed. When at the right speed, the pedal is stiff to push down but very light to release. When above cruise speed the pedal starts to push back, and when below it the pedal becomes easier to press further down. You can now get a feel for the cruise speed you set, without that car controlling the throttle.

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