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.
-- Dickcheney6, Aug 13 2009

Using the link, the computer reduces to one sentence

" the Ipod dock charges the Ipod while playing."
-- DenholmRicshaw, Aug 13 2009


Hidden iPod; Charging Boombox
-- hippo, Aug 13 2009



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