Today’s article is a bit outside of our usual niche of IT, but it does have to do with technology.
One of our team members recently went through the process of equipping his 2004 Honda Accord with Bluetooth capability and we decided to share his experience to hopefully help out those of our readers who maybe in the same situation. This article is for you if you own a vehicle that is over 10 years old an want to be able to listen to music (that’s not on a CD or over a radio station) or answer calls hands-free without a headset.
The solution to working around the limitations posed by many older vehicles not having native Bluetooth capability or auxiliary ports is actually quite simple, and much less costly than replacing your whole car stereo. What you need in this case is an FM Transmitter.
Going over the specifications of FM transmitters products is outside the scope of this article, if you end up having to decide on a particular FM transmitter, you can refer to this bluetooth fm transmitter review for the technical details as well as price comparison.
Lets talk about what a Bluetooth FM transmitter allows you to do.
A Bluetooth FM transmitter allows you to play whatever is playing on your phone, over your car’s speakers. The transmitter also allows you to talk on your phone, hands-free, with your phone call audio coming over your car speakers (keep in mind that will still be using your phone’s microphone). The sound quality in both cases is very good.
Setting up a Bluetooth FM Transmitter in your vehicle is quite simple:
1) Tune your FM Transmitter to an unused FM signal (a station with nothing but static coming through).
2) Tune your car radio to the same signal.
3) You’re done.
You can plug in the FM Transmitter anywhere in the car where you have where you have a cigarette lighter jack. Just like that you have made a significant upgrade to your car’s audio capabilities.
Hope those of you with older vehicles found this useful. Now back to our regularly scheduled IT programming.