Several boomboxes have been made recently that have an Ipod
dock,
and a line-in for other players. the Ipod dock charges the Ipod
while
playing. However, if you have a different MP3 player it won't
charge
it, because the line-in only recieves the signal, and does not power
the device. Also,
most Ipod boomboxes cannot charge the ipod
when
running on batteries- which is bogus because several battery
extended packs for the Ipod are nothing more than a few AA/AAA
batteries in a box with a dock connector. Basically what this
means
is that if your Ipod batteries do not hold a charge any more (it's a
real pain to replace them yourself and expensive to have it done
professionally) your "portable" boombox is then rendered unusable
until the ipod is fixed.
This "charge-all" MP3 boombox will solve these problems! Picture
this- a boombox that's about the size of your average CD/radio
boombox (not one that has a cassette player AND cd those are
bigger) but instead of a CD slot, there is a compartment, about as
wide as a CD walkman, the depth of 3 CD jewel cases stacked on
top
of each other, with a line in cable inside AND a USB connector.
This
boombox *comes with* standard mini-usb, female normal USB (for
those players that are designed like a thumb drive) and several
other
not-so-common MP3 player connectors (such as Ipod, zune and
other
kinds of "oddball" connectors)
Since not all MP3 players can be controlled by the USB port in
terms
of actually playing music, in order to be more universally
compatible
(kind of the whole point of this idea) this boombox would probably
have to omit such things as player control via remote control- but
one could be present for volume and power on/off. If no signal is
present in the line in for more than 10 minutes, the power
automatically turns off.
This USB port behaves like a USB mains adaptor for devices that
are
charged via USB. The boombox has the ability to run on batteries
AND will charge a player plugged into the USB connector
reguardless
of whether the boombox is running from AC or batteries. If the
player is already fully charged, or you want to save power, you can
simply stop the charge function by unplugging the USB from the
player OR turning off a "CHG ON/OFF" switch. This machine can
also
be used for devices that take AA or AAA batteries, but most of
these
won't charge the batteries when plugged into USB-so in this case
you
would just use the line in. In this case, the machine functions as a
normal pair of speakers.
If the batteries are low in the boombox, a red light will come on
and
flash before it actually goes dead. The boombox will not cease to
provide player power unless the CHG switch is manually turned
off.
Yeah, as the batteries die there will be LESS power to the player,
but
by this point the speakers probably won't work too well anyhow.
Finally, although this function is baked in some boomboxes, this
will
also have the ability to play music stored on an SD card or a USB
jump drive plugged into a different USB port on the boombox,
there
will be a "data port" seperate from the "charge port" inside the
compartment, clearly labeled. If a remote is present it should be
able to control this function as well.