DIY

Sylfex AuxMod

2 Replies

Happiness is having an auxiliary input in the car for the iPod.

The factory installed deck in the Mazda Protege5 was fine for my needs, until my iPod suggested I wasn’t considering it as well. Sadly, there was no good way to patch in audio from the iPod: FM transmitters offered extremely poor signals, the cassette adapter requires a cassette deck, and other options involved disabling use of the CD. Fortunately, Sylfex created the AuxMod, which easily inserts into the Mini-Disc/Tape interface, fakes the tape input with a stereo line-in for the factory deck.

The AuxMod installation was simple.

Getting my factory stereo out of the Protege5 was not. Largely due to my own ignorance. If you’ve come here looking for answers, you may ignore the next paragraph, but it doesn’t hurt to read the whole bit

I first mistakenly read online that deck removal could be done with a set of Ford/Mazda stereo removal keys, or one could simply make their own with an uncoated wire hanger. Eager to get my iPod in the car, I grabbed one from the closet and immediately began trying to free the deck. What I didn’t realize was that I was reading information for a single DIN deck, despite my car holding a double DIN stereo. This should have been more apparent when looking at the 4-ish holes on each side. In my defense, the two middle holes were joined to look like a single entry point, and I thought that gap was just for the trim inserts. I bent my hanger to fit the top and bottom holes on each side, about 5 inches apart. After wasting too much time (despite freeing one side, but getting the hanger stuck), I was unable to unlock and remove the deck. I went to AutoZone for the keys I read would cost 14 bucks. They were 4. I bought them. Went home, but still had no luck. I put it away, planned tried again the next day when it was a little cooler and I was less easily frustrated.

Returning to the Internet for answers, I finally found Stephen’s Quick and Easy Radio Removal which I will also link as Mazda Double DIN Factory Stereo Removal. Here I got a good look at what the retaining springs I was jabbing at looked like, and what I could expect after getting it out the right way. Thank you Stephen, your pictures of the process meant success for me, and allowed me to rationalize not photo-documenting my own experience :-)

The key to my success (yea, bad pun, cope) was not exactly the official removal keys, but the retaining springs position. You should only have to insert the key or wire about an inch to rest between the outside of the spring and the mount, but you have to be sure you’re on the *outside* of it. I had been pushing the wire under the spring, further forcing the spring to secure the deck in the mount. Inserting the factory keys with the smaller barbed ends in at an angle to get around those springs were necessary to unlock the deck. Removal involved pulling on the keys *and* pulling outward to press the springs against the deck to clear the mount. After that, no problem.

The AuxMod slid into place easily, secured with the provided adhesive, and I was good to go.

Except for the fact that I blew a fuse during the process somewhere, preventing interior lights or the radio from getting power. After I replaced that, *then* all was well.

Sylfex is also working on an “Advanced” version that I will probably desire when they’ve completed work on it. Improvements include:

  • Surface mount parts are now extensively used wherever possible for reduced manufacturing costs.
  • The circuit board outline has been designed to either use a customized bracket, or to fit directly into the factory Tape Module housing.
  • The Audio-Input jack has been changed to a 3.5mm Stereo mini plug to eliminate the need for a RCA to mini-plug adapter. For those who still want RCA plugs, a mini-plug to RCA adapter can be used.
  • A new power supply control has been implemented to allow the device to send out a special status message to indicate that ignition has been turned off. The enables control for automatic stopping of external mp3 playback.

World-building for Computer Games

Leave a reply

My senior year of college, I lived with Casey and Kelly in the “penthouse” apartment of Lindell Towers across the street from SLU. The penthouse got its name because it sat at the top floor of the building, was adjacent to the roof patio, and was as wide as the apartment building itself. Five windows on the front face of the building looked south above SLU’s campus, two windows west across the patio down Lindell Ave, and the bathroom and two bedroom windows on the east just looked into the adjacent building, which was more or less exciting, depending on what the neighbors were up to.

It was a good place to spend my last year of school. The proximity to campus made the last minute dash from bed to class pretty efficient, but when not at class or work, it was a good place to crash with plenty of room for friends.

But this post isn’t about the apartment physically; more virtually I suppose.

At some point it occurred to me to create our apartment with the mapping software I had to create levels for a computer game (the Action mod to Quake2), possibly while contemplating jumping from 14 floors. Not in a suicidal way, I just wondered what the free fall would be like.

The apartment design wasn’t too complicated, with the exception of the curved vaulted ceiling in the main room that took some time to properly fit. Once I completed the interior, I decided to fill out the other areas we could access physically on that floor and walled in (and floored and ceilinged) the hallway, elevator shaft, and began the stairwell that connected to the patio. Not wanting to create the rooms for each apartment on our floor, I just gave the neighbors locked doors. Since the stairwell had patio access, I had to add the patio, as well as an empty 13th floor apartment below ours since the patio was between floors and could see them both. I couldn’t very well leave empty spaces, which lead me to just fill in the area below our two floors for all 14 stories. This made the apartment building look more like a building, but it lacked a street. It was just floating in space, and I wouldn’t have a place to land if I jumped out the window, so I paved the block between my newly created apartment building and the empty void where SLU’s campus would be (is?).

To keep from roaming around the dark, light sources had to be placed in this new world. I wasn’t content with just placing some magic ambient light in random places as it didn’t seem very natural, so I created a few light-emitting lamps and ceiling fans inside and some light posts outside. The main room in the apartment was furnished with a couch and two chairs to provide some additional reference for scale. I created the counters and appliances in the kitchen, because it was the smallest room and I figured it was the fastest to complete. But then I decided to made the fan blades spin, which took more time than all the furnishing.

I wanted to build out more areas, like the entire street, ultimately creating sections of SLU’s campus also, but I was realizing that the computer hardware and game software didn’t really support large expansive open worlds with far lines of sight. Instead, it was more capable of handling enclosed spaces connected to each other, which is not what I wanted to do. So the grand plan that could have been was quickly halted before I wasted too much (more) time.

in game apartmentWhile the map I created of our apartment wasn’t very large, it was pretty close to accurate, which made roaming around the floor eerie. Especially since the game I made it for is a first person shooter, so I was walking around the place I lived armed with a gun painting the walls with a laser sight. An experience I didn’t anticipate having, ever. Speaking of anticipated experiences, jumping off the 14th floor is a little anti-climactic. You jump, experience a second or two of freefall, and your body unceremoniously crunches on impact with the street. Or the light post, depending on your aim. It occurs to me now I could have made some driving cars as targets, or simply painted a big bulls-eye on the ground if I really wanted to play with my jumping from the roof game, but now I’m just sounding more disturbed.

I bring all of this up now because last night I found the apartment map files and loaded this up again, after presuming it all lost from the last time I switched computers. Walking around the apartment was creepy then, it still is now.

But now is several years later, and the software and hardware support the worlds I want to create, as was evident last night while Sean and I played UT2K4 on wide open maps with lots of detail. I want the mapping software for UT so I can do some more world-building again.