True gadget gurus alert! Rockford Corp. announced this week that its Omnifi mobile audio wireless digital transfer system is now shipping, which lets users transfer their music collection to their car wirelessly over an 802.11b connection.
The system has three components – the DMP1 car digital media player, a compact hard drive (holds 20G bytes of data) that connects to a hard casing inside your car, but can be removed and connected to a PC as an external hard drive; the DMS1 home digital streamer, which connects to a home stereo to listen to files stored on a computer; and the D-Link DWL-121 wireless receiver, which connects to the DMS1 or the DMP1 to let you receive wireless transfer of the digital files (you will need a wireless router / network already).
So a user can transfer their music collection via PC onto the DMP1 hard drive, and then pop it into their car stereo system. Or they could leave the hard drive in the car, and wirelessly stream updates to the car while it’s sitting in the garage. The SimpleWare software includes a scheduling application that lets users download information to the car (such as local weather, news and traffic reports) at specific times. So while you sleep, you can get new content shipped to the car before you leave for work the next morning.
For more information on the product, go to the Rockford Corp. Web site, the Omnifi Web site or Simple Devices Web site. Crutchfield’s Web site was selling the device for $599.99.
Bonus photos: (opens in new window)
Do you have an agent for this product in Norway?
If not, what does it take to be your agent?
Exactly what I was waiting for!
Just wondering though, how much does this consume from your car's battery? Do you need to take the car on a spin each day to recharge, or will for instance once every couple of weeks do just fine?.. I can imagine keeping a wireless connection alive most of the time will consume lotts more energy than the memory for your preferred radio stations in conventional car audio systems...
I'm assuming that the receiver that's in the car will drain power from the car battery, but probably at very tiny levels as to not be noticeable.
I suppose if you leave the car in the same spot for several weeks it might drain, but you might have other issues if you're not driving your car every few days, at least, right?
Posted by: Keith on November 6, 2003 12:49 PMPost a comment
