My $10 Home-Made iPod Remote Control

AirTunes is great. You can use Apple’s AirPort Express to provide music to your stereo, if you have a wireless network. But the drawback is that you need to run the music from your computer in order to stream it to the AirPort Express. If your computer isn’t near your stereo, then you’ll have to go somewhere else to make changes to your music – to change tracks, pause, or change volume. If you have a laptop, that’s fine, but it’s still a bit of a hassle, and frankly, if you have to have the computer near your stereo, then what’s the point of using AirTunes?

I have two 40 GB iPods that I use for my music, both at home and elsewhere. When I’m home, I don’t use CDs any more; I just take one or both of my iPods in the living room and play my music from them. At first, I would connect the iPod to a short cable that ran into my amp, but I found it annoying to have to get up all the time when I wanted to change the volume, skip tracks, or listen to something different. So I made my own remote control.First, let’s get the definition clear: a remote control is a device that lets you control another device from a distance. While we’re used to thinking of remote controls as wireless devices that you point at another machine to send commands, this doesn’t have to be the case.

I’m stretching things a bit, since it’s the iPod itself that serves as a remote control for the stereo; sort of… So, here’s my $10 iPod remote control:

Yep, that’s it – just a cable that connects from my iPod to my stereo. But the difference with my initial use is that this cable is longer. At first, I had a 3-foot cable, that was long enough to put my iPod on a shelf near the stereo. So I bought a longer cable, one that’s about 8 feet (2.5 m) long. I then run the cable to my iPod, which sits comfortably on my coffee table. (The above image is a Griffin cable that lists for $13, but you can find similar cables at any audio store. This one has the advantage of matching the iPod.)

Sometimes, it’s best to look for simple solutions. Would it really make a difference if the iPod had a WiFi Dock that could stream music to the AirPort Express, or a Bluetooth adapter that would send music to an adapter connected to the stereo? Sure, with my $10 solution, I have a cable running from the stereo to the coffee table. But I don’t walk in that area very often, and when I’m finished using the cable, I roll it up and put it out of the way.

The real advantage of this solution is the flexibility it gives me in allowing my iPods to serve as my total music sources. While I only have 80 GB available for now – which is not enough for my CD collection – I’ll probably get another, larger-capacity iPod soon, and together, I’ll have enough space for most of my music. I only need take one of my iPods to the living room and connect it to have hundreds of hours of music at my fingertips.

Technology can be pretty satisfying at times…

Read more articles in this category: iPod & iTunes