Anyone care to talk about the nuvi's connectivity to the car stereo? I want to connect my 350 to the aux connector of the HK HU. How difficult is it to get to the aux connector? What type of connector is it?

I haven't received my nuvi yet, so I was wondering if there is a jack on the mount or do I need to plug into the headphone jack of the unit itself?

I was told by Garmin support that (in spite of certain customer reviews) playlists are possible for mP3. Anyone have any experience with setting these up?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Hi. I have the Nuvi 350 connected to the AUX port on my oem HK head unit (they are the same as the regular HU.)

It connects via a 1/8" mini plug at both ends and works great. Yes there is a 1/8 inch jack on the Nuvi Body as well

You should be able to get the AUX connector harness for about $40 and do it yourself as it just plugs into a socket on the rear of the HU....

There are threads on NAM about the HU AUX connector....very easy Hookup but a dealer will chg you a bunch!

Good luck and enjoy the Nuvi...great unit. I have also recorded a bunch of MP3's onto an SD card and use it instead of my Ipod now. YOU WILL BE VERY HAPPY WITH IT!

 

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Thanks....I just got mine out of the box so I can see now that the mount only connects power. I'm going to have to find out a way to get it hot wired to keep my cig lighter open.

I saw a thread in here on mounting the unit in the lower cup holder. I like that.

BTW...were you able to make playlists using your SD Card???

 

I have made several SD MP3 cards for our NUVI 350 - but not one with playlists. Seems to me that all you would need to do is make several folders on your SD card, drag the tracks you want to the appropriate folder, and then select the folder you want when you are doing playback. I'll try this tomorrow.

An additional caution, if you are using car power when you have your NUVI plugged into the aux-in jack to the factory radio, it will operate for 10 minutes or so and then cut out. This is a well documented problem with using any external source through the aux input. Fix is to get a ground loop isolator from Radio Shack (RCA Plugs) or the one from Crutchfield that has minijacks.

 

What I found....and I could be wrong...is that if the Title, artist, genre, etc. are part of the mp3 file, AND you drag the files into the mp3 folder, the nuvi arranges them for you. Now that is on the unit itself. I haven't gotten a card yet. That's next

As for the power issue. I saw a thread in here and I'm going to have to go digging for it again. People are saying that if you hot wire the unit to the fuse box, that will take care of the ground loop problem. I have to go back and look for this thread as I may not be remembering correctly. What I'm not sure about though, If they are 'hotwiring' the nuvi to the fuse box, did they have to cut into the provided cig liter adapter to do this? Or is there another cable I have to buy?

Can you shed any light on this?

 

I have had the Nuvi 350 for some time now.... BE CAREFUL! The provided cig lighter cord also steps the voltage down from 12v to 4.9-5.2v. If you hotwire the cord without the plug you'll fry the Nuvi!

 

Well, I just tried setting up folders with different tracks on an SD card and the NUVI does not recognize folders - it just shows all the tracks together in one list. Looks like Playlists are not supported by the NUVI.

 

That's good to know....thanks.

 

Don't give up yet. Their tech support says it can be done. They pointed me to google to do a search on M3U. Somewhere in the results is a site that talks generically about how to manually create playlists. The support guy said it was out of his area of expertise. But he checked with his higher level support and came back and said it could be done.

I just sort of browsed such a site. Looks like there is a little more to it than just creating a folder. Like I said...I didn't have much time to study it. I'd be curious to check the 'properties' of the folders that are in the nuvi. Maybe there is a clue in there somewhere. I'll keep you posted.


LATER THAT SAME DAY....I looked at that M3U stuff and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. But here's the good news:

Ok...I just threw in an SD card. I already have about ten songs on the nuvi internal memory (All Alice in Chains). I loaded one song on the SD card (Joe Walsh). The nuvi created a new artist (Joe Walsh) along with the other artist (AIC) and I now have two playlists based on artists. Go over to 'genre'...there is Hard Rock (AIC) and 'classic rock' (Joe Walsh). Now since there are so many AIC songs from various albums, I never bothered to name the album for each song. They come up as 'unknown' album. The Joe Walsh song came from the album 'So What' and it is listed as such.

So the nuvi is helping to create playlists. But the files must be properly tagged...as I have already done in iTunes. You basically have 3 categories in which you can make sub playlists (for lack of a better term). But ya gotta get into iTunes or another tagging program and fill in the fields (Genre, Artist, and Album) so the nuvi can do the sorting. And I think if you got a little creative with the tagging, you can get some more user specific playlists.

Let's say you wanted to handpick 10 songs from your library as your all time favorites. And they are of various artists, and genres. Take each one of those songs in iTunes, and name the album by filling in the 'album field', "10 Favorites". Then after you copy them to the nuvi press 'Album' , the album '10 Favorites' will be there with your ten favorite songs.

Now, there are some limitations to this and it is kind of a hokey way to make a playlist....but after all...it is a GPS unit.

 

does the nuvi 350/360 provide voice directions? If so, can they play out of the HU speakers. Do you use an Aux Port Cable for this? TIA Michael

 

It does do text to speech out of the unit itself. I recently borrowed one (Nuvi 350) for use on a long weekend trip to Chicago. It performed well.

Not sure how to pipe it into the MINI HU but I can confirm it does have speech synth.

-Randy

 

Yes..it does text to speech in a bunch of voices and languages and it has a mini jack (3.5mm) just like an ipod. I'm going to connect mine through an aux jack for the hk head unit

 

I'm going to order one of these http://www.newministuff.com/new/shop...uctshow&id=188 to plug my our Nuvi 350 in. We have the iPod hooked up with a DICE and we could use the AUX input but then we wouldn't have the music at the same time.

 

I just purchased the Nuvi 360 for my MCS (will pick up on Friday). I had been using a much larger version with my other car and wanted something that would fit better in my new space. The 360 (if works as advertised and as most customer reviews claim) will also allow me to not add an additional BT system. I was using the Parrot 3200 LS in my previous car. It arrives the night before I go out of town, I will fly close to the dealership and drive my MCS home on Friday using my new nuvi 360.