[clarkgoble]

For whatever reason, the "SounderFeeder" isn't powerful enough. I get a "hiss" unless I physically hold it. (Presumably because of both my capacitance and then acting as an "antenna") Further the iPod/"SoundFeeder" needs to be fairly close to the car antenna, which isn't very convenient.

Now the manual said that all this was because of FCC rules. However, I wonder if anyone knew of any hacks that would let you boost the power at all. Right now it runs on just a pair of AAA batteries. Can you put more power through it? Attach an antenna of some kind?

Any ideas? At this stage I'm halfway thinking of just putting an adaptor to the headphone output that plugs directly into my stereo system. But I'm not sure how easy that is to do.

The following seems to suggest that rigging an antenna may be effective.

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=+%...com&rnum=2

[solitere]

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
For whatever reason, the "SounderFeeder" isn't powerful enough. I get a "hiss" unless I physically hold it. (Presumably because of both my capacitance and then acting as an "antenna") Further the iPod/"SoundFeeder" needs to be fairly close to the car antenna, which isn't very convenient.

Now the manual said that all this was because of FCC rules. However, I wonder if anyone knew of any hacks that would let you boost the power at all. Right now it runs on just a pair of AAA batteries. Can you put more power through it? Attach an antenna of some kind?

Any ideas? At this stage I'm halfway thinking of just putting an adaptor to the headphone output that plugs directly into my stereo system. But I'm not sure how easy that is to do.

The following seems to suggest that rigging an antenna may be effective.

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=+%...com&rnum=2

If you want to risk some soldering mayby a electronic workshop can tune up the tranciver chip for you (adding a more powerful tranciver chip)

I don´t know if it works, but I have built shortrange trancivers a long long time ago. The problem in this case is propably that the components in the SoundFeeder is propably SMD (surface mounted devices) and they are a bit hard to replace, but not impossible! You will probable need proffessional tools to do it and assistance from a proffesional!

[sray]

I realize that this doesn't help, but an alternative may be (yet to ship) a product from Griffin. It's called iTrip and it is a radio transmitter for the iPod that does not use batteries (draws power from the firewire port). No idea about quality of transmission...but will find out when it arrives.

http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/itrip/

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

I have never had much luck with products like this. They always seem to get interference.