Posted 3/24/26
Our new car has no CD player, but I wanted one. No problem, right? Connect one to the aux input. General Motors being General Motors, there is no aux input anymore. Bluetooth transmitter? The car won't pair because it's not a phone and it can't see the pairing code. This is what I came up with.
My cousin gave me a spare head unit for this project. It has a CD player and line output. After the Bluetooth transmitter didn't work (I hate GM), I decided to run the signal through an actual phone to get it into the car. I had a really old Android phone that I had removed the battery from and hardwired to 5v for a project years ago. I was able to run that off a 12v to 5v converter, connected to the cigarette lighter plug that also powers the head unit.
To get the signal into the phone, yes, that is a composite video capture card. They're crap for video, but not too bad for audio, and it's what I had.
I stuffed it all into the center console with some dense foam glued/wedged around it to prevent it rattling around. CD skipping is surprisingly not an issue, I shook the head unit quite hard while playing music and it didn't skip at all.
When I start the car, I have to power on the phone, wait for it to boot up, and pair it to the car. The car doesn't always like that the phone powers up after it does. I recently sat in my driveway for a good 5 minutes trying to get it to pair, before giving up and plugging in my phone to Android Auto so I could get on my way to work. So it does need some improvement, but it's a start.
Also, there are some issues with audio interference, that I think I can fix with a ground loop isolator.
Anyway, I'm very happy about this project. I will not be forced into perpetual subscriptions, and if this is what it takes, I'll do it. (Yes, I am trying out self-hosted Navidrome. This is more fun.)
I understand modern cars not coming with CD players, but an aux input? That's almost as important as functional brake lights, which this car is also lacking. Did I mention I don't like General Motors?
Update a couple months later: It's been working pretty well. It is really annoying to have to turn on the phone each time I start the car, especially if I'm coming back from a short break in a long trip, and then to wait about 30 seconds for it to power up. There have been some times that Bluetooth fails to connect, and at least once I've had to pull the whole thing out to re-pair. And the audible signal issues are still there, I never installed that ground loop isolator, but it's hard to hear them.
This is all stuff I can live with, knowing that I'm enjoying CDs in a car that was never meant to have a CD player. This is far too janky to do for a client, but for myself, this is the kind of thing that I want to be super janky just to make a point of how stupid the problem is, of there not being an aux input.