Filed under: iPod Family, Hacks
iTrip Antenna Hack
In the summer of 2002, me, my best friend Geoff, the Incredible Hulk and Hong Kong Phoeey went on a roadtrip across the United States. We had with us a first-generation Griffin iTrip, and I was excited to try out how well it worked. Unfortunately, I discovered as had many others, that the Griffin iTrip worked fine in a sparsely-populated area of the country where there are fewer radio stations, but anytime we neared a decent-sized city, its relatively weak transmitter would be overpowered by the powerful radio station broadcasts around us.Trevor Shannon has come up with an interesting solution. He's hacked his new iTrip LCD so the antenna is on the outside of the unit and claims a significant performance and range increase. I'll definitely have to try this on my next road trip (the next time I'll be using my iTrip for a long period of time). Now, if only I can keep Hulk from smashing it.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Mark said 2:40PM on 11-29-2005
I have done this to my iTrip Mini and can verify that the reception is FAR better than with the antenna inside the body of the unit.
at least with the iTrip Mini i didn't have to crack open the casing. the antenna is held down by that little sticker on tip. just remove the sticker and you're good to go!
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Ryan said 3:36PM on 11-29-2005
I did this with my tunecast. It just required unscrewing one screw and drilling a small hole in the case. I then disconnected the old antennae and added a new six-foot antennae. It will now overpower even the strongest radio station in the car (which I'm not quite sure is legal but what the hey.)
Pictures are here:
http://photo.killergerbil.com/main.php?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=209
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Thomas said 6:20PM on 11-29-2005
Great top, but I'm afraid ;)
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jjvw said 6:38PM on 11-29-2005
I've done this to the last two iTrip releases. It works quite well even in downtown Chicago. My trick is to set the iTripLCD to the INTL range and tune the radio as low as it will go. Every vehicle I've used it in recently can tune down to at least 87.7FM, some go even lower.
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Nate MC said 7:45PM on 11-29-2005
I tried that with my iTrip2 and it did jack squat for increasing signal strength or broadcast distances.
course now the sucker is obsolete to me since the iTrip won't work with the 5th gen, at least not without some soldering
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calhobbes said 11:03AM on 11-30-2005
Is it me, or is the font on the iPod smaller than usual (or at least not bold)? If so, anyone know how this is done?
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