[Technical] Which iPods are supported by iPod adapter?

[Klaus_K]

I have just bought a brand new Civic 1.8EX and paid an extra £225 for the iPod upgrade.

Unfortunately, nothing seems to play!! The iPod displays the Honda logo, and the Civic dashboard displays the dummy CD's numbered 8 and 9 - it even allows me to step between them and step through the tracks.

But there is no music or sound!

The radio works fine and the iPod seems to work with my son's older iPod. Mine is an iPod Classic - which I think makes it 6th Generation (Apple are not very good on this versioning game).

What I'd like to know is should my iPod work, or have I got to buy another iPod, on top of all of the other expense??

Note that I have the Honda documentation, which says that it should support Gen 4 and Gen 5 - plus Nano. My garage also say they have no record of anybody else having problems - so I'm really looking for a bit more detailed information.

[Pottsy]

Yes, it should work. It sounds like the dealer may have not wired it up correctly though.

More info on how to use it: Honda supplied iPod link - Civinfo Wiki

[Klaus_K]

...in that case, how does it manage to play my son's iPod??

[SluffGuy]

Have you updated the firmware on your iPod Classic ?

What iPod does your son have ?

To cut through the murkiness, is there anyway you and he could swap iPods to get around the issue if all else fails ?

[Klaus_K]

Firmware and iTunes are at the latest release.

My iPod is quite new and in pristine (almost) condition); my son's is older and rather tatty. At the end of the day it'd be easier to just buy a new iPod - rather bizarrely, it'll be cheaper than the car adapter! Mind you, I'd still like to know which 'new' iPods will be supported, assuming my current one isn't.

It just seems like a dumb thing to have to do, esp. if it's a fault with the car that can be fixed by the dealer.

[SluffGuy]

The handbook does list the supported iPods IIRC. I don't have it to hand so can't tell you which they are. I have an old iPod mini which I'm using and it works fine.

Ultimately I'd say your recourse is the dealer - they've fitted something which doesn't work. If your iPod is a supported model then go back to them.

Incidentally, to find out exactly which iPod model you have, Apple have a very comprehensive facility which allows you to do this

Identifying iPod models

[Parky]

It should work.
Have you tried resetting the iPod?
To do that press and hold the Centre and Menu buttons until the Apple Logo appears on the iPod screen. Do this without it connected to the car and make sure the the hold switch on the iPod is not in the locked position.

Ian

[thunt]

Probably an obvious question, but have you made sure the playlists called Honda1, Honda2, etc have been synced to your Ipod?

[Klaus_K]

As I already noted, the Honda doc says it supports Gen 4 and Gen 5 plus Nano (I think); no mention of Classic - and I'm not sure if this 'matches' either of the supported versions.

I have tried resetting it, and also restoring to factory settings from within iTunes.

I was hoping that somebody might have an inside track to Honda on which models it supports in detail. It seems dumb to me that at that price it can't support all models with the matching connector - the logic can't be all that complex, can it?

[Klaus_K]

Originally Posted by thunt

Probably an obvious question, but have you made sure the playlists called Honda1, Honda2, etc have been synced to your Ipod?

Initially I have been trying the 'CD-8' option - i.e. the 'random' playlist. Until I get get at least one song out of the blasted thing, there doesn't seem much point in creating playlists...

[thunt]

I have the ipod adaptor and I thought the only way it would play was by creating the play lists. They were quite specific about the names, being case sensitive as well.

It might be worth creating a playlist called Honda1 to eliminate that line of thinking.

[paul_b]

Having Honda1 etc. playlists is optional, you should be able to play CD-8 and CD-9 without any other playlists in place.

I have an iPod Classic 160GB, with the latest iTunes and latest firmware, and it works fine 99% of the time.

On a couple of occasions (with an older, buggy firmware), the iPod stopped responding to the car controls. The display indicated the tracks were playing, but there was no sound. A quick iPod reset, and the problem went for a couple of days. I've not had the problem on the current firmware.

Another quirk it has is when playing CD-8, and leaving it for a few hours, it starts playing the songs alphabetically from the song playing when I switched off.

[19 milano]

I have the 80gb classic and also no problems. Will play on playlists 8 & 9, but I tend to use the Honda1-6 playlists.
Never had any problems with previous firmware either (have had a few problems with ipod out of car, but thats another topic entirely!)

About the cost- it may be £225 + £160 for the ipod, but this is still ~£200 cheaper than the factory auto changer and holds alot more music than even 8 MP3 disks. Oh and you can use it out of the car . So expensive, maybe, but relatively cheap compared to stealers (of all marques) auto changers.

[Klaus_K]

I took my car to the dealer who tested the adapter with another iPod, which worked fine (I already knew this though). They then rang Honda who confirmed that the adapter should work with all iPods, assuming the connector was the same - this was news to me (pleasant news, that is).

They suggested that my iPod was faulty and that I should go to Apple and get a replacement, which seemed a bit unlikely. The iPod works fine with my PC and with my Bose docking station etc.

I had already done a 'restore to factory settings' from iTunes and thought that was about the end of it. However, heading home I had the bright idea of performing a hard reset of the thing, by pressing the middle and top of the dial simultaneously (as detailed on the Apple site). Suddenly I got music coming out of my sound system which sounded strangely familiar!

Initially, I couldn't believe that it was the iPod, but skipping through a few tracks proved that it was! I have now added half a dozen playlists and it's working perfectly.

Just goes to show - the iTunes reset isn't as thorough as I thought it was!

All's well that ends well - I am now very happy with the result - despite all of the complaints on this forum!