Ozaki iPill Microphone

As some of you may know, in just over 2 weeks I’ll be heading to the Holiday Inn in Birmingham for Dimension Jump XV, this year Red Dwarf Convention, and as we do a Red Dwarf podcast (ScutterCast), I thought it might me a good idea to record some footage while I was there.

I’ve been looking at a number of solutions and came up with the idea of using Audioboo from my iPod touch, then picking up the Audioboo feed using WP-o-Matic, which will then post the audio on the Red Dwarf Forum homepage, which will then tweet this out.

One major downside to using the method, was that the iPod Touch doesn’t have a built in microphone, although I do have the “earbud with built in microphone”, which would be find for recording my own voice, but probably a little intrusive if I wanted to record anyone else.

After a couple of days of looking at different mic solutions, I read a review over at iLounge and they did a mic comparison, the audio from the iPill sounded awesome, so decided to go with that. After an evening of trying to buy one, it seemed that these are only available in the states, and they seemed to be out of stock, having heard the quality difference, I was adamant that this was the mic I wanted, in a bid of desperation, I decided eBay it was. Luckily, I found a company in the Republic of Ireland that had these in stock, and instantly bought.

This morning the mic turned up, and I’ve got to say, I’m really impressed. The first thing I noticed was the packaging, and the look of this thing. The plastic container is in the shape of a petri dish, with a small clip holding the pill shaped microphone in place.

The iPill itself pulls in half, to review the 3.5mm jack plug, that plugs into the bottom of the iPods headphone jack, and the other half has a small loop where you could potentially add some string so you don’t lose this thing.

So, the audio quality…what’s it like ?…pretty awesome ! I plugged it into the bottom of my iPod Touch, and it was instantly recognised, and I gave it a quick test in Apples “Voice Memos” software, and attached my recording below

So, the audio quality…what’s it like ?…pretty awesome ! I plugged it into the bottom of my iPod Touch, and it was instantly recognised, and I gave it a quick test in Apples “Voice Memos” software, and attached my recording below.

iPill Test

Final thoughts ?, granted this isn’t the same quality as my M-Audio mixer, and my condenser mic at home, but think it will do an awesome job, of getting some footage at Dimension Jump.

I can highly recommend this microphone to anybody who want to turn their iPod Touch into a decent dictating machine, and for £13 delivered, it’s worth every penny !

Tags: Apple, dimension, dwarf, ipill, ipod, jump, microphone, ozaki, red, touch

Doh, Ipod Touch broken

As mention in my post (Gear4 AirZone FM ‘Follow Me’ ), It seems my Ipod Touch can’t power external accessories.

Spent an evening googling, reading forums, restoring the Ipod to defaults, Restored via ITunes, updated to version 2.2.1, but still no joy. Decided I’d have to goto the Mecca in Leicester (Apple store in HighCross), and seek guidance. The guy ran through what I’d already done, and booked me in with a techy, unfortunately I had the option of 5.30 on the day as it was early afternoon, this was no good, so booked in for this afternoon at 1pm.

While we were there, C decided to pick up a Ipod Touch 2G 8Gb (Guess she was sick of me never putting mine down, and thought she’d get in on it).

Went back to the Apple store today, and well you get what you pay for with Apple, appointment was at 1pm, within 5 mins, the tech guy had plugged the ipod in, ran a diagnostic, and replaced it there and then ! I was shocked, I expected to be without it for a couple of weeks, while it was being repaired !

Stunning service, and only hope the service at all other Apple stores is the same

Got home, synced everything back up when I got home, and we’re all good again. The only slight snag, is that I’ve been playing the Mafia Live App for the last week or so, but all my money, and property are gone, I can only assume it works on my serial number. Oh well, could have been worse, I could have been playing for months

Tags: Apple, ipod, itunes, Mafia, touch

Gear4 AirZone FM ‘Follow Me’

As I mentioned in my previous post (Vectra SRI CDTi), I was bugged that it didn’t have an MP3 player. Well I thought, maybe I can change the head unit, or pull this one out, and see if it had any auxiliary sockets at the back, then I thought….Ooooo, why don’t I just get one of the FM transmitter thingys.

First off I bought myself a ITrip, which even though it stated on the box that it was compatible with the Ipod touch, this apparently didn’t mean the 2G. I bought it, plugged it into my ipod, sat in the car, turned on the stereo, pressed play….and nothing, no LCD display, nothing. So lucky for me, I hadn’t even left Curry’s carpark, so took it back for a refund Pretty glad I did, as it was almost double the price that is was online at other leading retailers.

That night I came home and did a little research, and found that Gear4 also did one, however this used the RDS technology to a, display the ID tags as the radio station, and b, send a signal to the headunit, if it moved stations.

This turned up on Thursday at work, ripped it out of the box, plugged it in…..nothing……

Luckily, my office seems to have been taken over by Apple in the last couple of months, it went from nothing apple to, 4 Iphone 3G’s, and 4 Ipod Touch 2G’s.

I kindly as a few people to try it in their, and it worked….DOH !

Got home that night pretty gutted, as my Ipod seemed to have a fault with it, so C decided she ought to by an Ipod Touch as it had been tested and working with several in the office.

Long story short, C bought an Ipod Touch from the shiny Mecca that is the Apple store (there are no Ipod touches anywhere…..believe me, we tried, but that’s another story), and we got to try it out.

It works, and works well.

The button on the left scans the radio waves where you are and finds the clearest frequencies, once found it sets itself to this (eg 99.9 FM seems good near me). Hit play and your away, it scrolls the ID tag along it’s own screen in a very cool blue LED font, as well as displays the frequency it’s using. Program your radio to pick this up, and all is cool.

The quality is good, I wouldn’t say is it CD quality, but around the same as a well tuned in radio station (I know, I know, obviously, however just thought I’d point that out if anybody though it was going to be as good as the MP3 dock you get is some cars, personally I don’t think it is).

We did get a little interference, however this was fixed by moving the Ipod from underneath the head unit, to a SunGlasses holder above the centre console, we realised we were actually getting interference from the windscreen wipers.

While driving from home to Leicester, it did adjust it’s frequency from 99.9 to 99.7 and with it being RDS, the Head Unit re-tuned itself (very cleaver I thought).

Conclusion, for £30, it beats buying and fitting a new head unit, the quality isn’t perfect, but very good.

Spec Below.

Tags: 4, AirZone, Apple, Clearsearch, FM, Follow, Gear, ipod, Me, RDS, touch