So
it was Sunday today...
... and i didnt drink saturday night... there fore i wasnt hungover..
unfortunatly this meant i was wide awake at 7am......
soooo my mind working away as it always does was running thru various things one of which came to mind was all this illegal to use Cell While Driving..
this in turn sparked the memory of me using my Nokia E51 with the headphones while i was driving the other day.. thile this worked well i hate wearing ear phones.... so my mind started working away some how i stumbled on
.Mazda MP3.. (I have one)
..Aux Input... (hmm i have one of those too)
...Cell phone (well duh)
.... handsfree (kinda but not really)
..... Money well i didnt have alot of it this weekend... then the penny dropped..
the AUX input was a 3.5mm Stereo Jack.. which is just Line Level input...
Headphones.. are generally the same ie line level input...
so i thought ill get a old Stereo JAck cable and splice it in some how to one of the spare sets of Nokia headphones i have.....
That way i could use the car stereo to play the sound thru... while retaining a high sensitivity mic that could be put any where and pick up my voice clearly...
so started hackingup and experiemnting.. twisting cables and using a set of computer speakers to test if i was getting sound thru..
untill whamo i woked out what wired could go where and their correct polarities..
i took apart the central microphone plastic thingy..
the PCB inside was no bigger than my thumbnail.. so out my soldering iron came.. and some steady fingers and a half a pack of dunhil blues later i had all the wires solderd up and connected perfectly.. there was like a half mm gap between each contact.. it was frustrating to say the least..
but we are functional...
I made distance between the jack plug and the Mic box thingy long enough to sit in the cutaway recess in the centre glove box lid then run the balance of cable to the phone which has its proprietary 2mm Stereo and Mic Jack...
End Result.. i just leave the phone in the recess thing next to the gear shifter as i always do but have the hands free jack plugged also...
So when a call is coming thru i hit the media button and click the answer button on my phone... i can then talk and listen very clearly and resonably safly and no have to spend 100's on a dodgey bluetooth unit that works sporadically..
When the Call is finished the phone hangs itself up like it normally does... and i just click the fm button to go back to what i was doing before
i have been using this all day and so glad i did it
Its not perfect.. but it works great.. and havent had to splice or work in to any of the factory loom etc... its removable in all of about 2 seconds..
bonus is i can play mp3 tracks off my phone too...
and TBH i think the Radio tuner on my nokia gets better quality sound and signal than my car radio.. !