iPod Car Charger
Posted: January 17, 2007

Description

Introduction

Basically this device takes a car’s electrical socket and gives you a firewire port. Since all iPods have the ability to charge from a firewire connection this is ideal. Also the iPod can take an input voltage on the firewire input from like 7-30 something volts.

Project

So I had one of these laying around from god knows what. You could find one on any old cellphone car plug or other such device.

I also found a Firewire jack in my spare parts drawer. I am sure these can be found on any old firewire card or front panel header.

Next I hollowed out the plug, mine had no circuitry, but if yours does just remove it.

Next is to mill out the hole at the end to let the jack fit inside. This is a mockup of what it should turn out like.

Next it was time to solder on some wires to my Firewire jack. Red for +12v and black for ground or common.

Here is the plug all soldered to the contacts in the car plug.

I then Superglued the contacts back in the plug.

I then superglued the firewire jack onto one half of the plug.

Picture of the iPod firewire cable all plugged into the new adapter.

I hooked it up to a 12v source just to test, and all was good. I even kept the fuse in the adapter just in case something went wrong.