iPod Breakout Dock

Man, I was about to finish this comment when the power went out. (And my POS Belkin UPS did nothing but angrily beep.) So here I go again: The blog entry was really more about my excitement in finding a cheap heat gun. By hooking up a microcontroller, one can easily read info from the iPod, such as what's playing, what songs are available, etc. ipodlinux.org lists the serial commands needed to do this, they deserve the credit. (Linux on the iPod is not needed to do this though!) The breakout box makes it much easier to hook things up to the pod for testing. Working directly with the 30-pin dock connector is a pain, the breadboard allows me to plug things in for evaluation a breeze. As well, one could make their own dock connector that does much more than the available ones, throw in s-video, charging, microphone pre-amp, a photo card reader (using the Apple dongle), IR remote...someone should make a dock that has "the works" and market it. I'm developing an iPod attachment that I hope to get some VC for putting into production. But other uses would be to use the microcontroller as a simple protocol translator so that one could hook up an iPod into a vehicle (or whatever) and use things like steering column radio controls to run the iPod. And FYI, it looks like serial communication with the iPod at 9600bps works relaibly, so a fast microcontroller is not mandatory.