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Using Phone as Mass Storage in Car Stereo

Hi,
I have been using my phone as a mass storage device for my USB car stereo for a while. I have other applications on the internal storage (Diamond) which have mp3s.
Does anyone have any solutions for hiding non-music mp3s from the stereo (other than deleting!). I am getting fed up listening to ringtones etc...
Cheers
Aidan

buy a cheap usb flash disk

bukhariwaheed111 said:
buy a cheap usb flash disk
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While some might see this as a bit pointless post since it doesn't really solve the problem, I think it's good advice, not only will you be able to leave it plugged in and not have to worry about having your USB cable floating around, but it would only cost a few quid, give you more storage and solve the problem.

I suppose, if you didnt fancy buying a new usb stick, you could try setting any non music mp3 files to being hidden. I have no idea how a car stereo would react, and it may still pick them up, but its worth a try.
Your ppc will still find them, you just wont be able to see them in file explorer & im hoping that your stereo might ignore them or something.

Thanks for the suggestions. I will have a look at hiding the files.
I really like the ability to download podcasts on the move so wont be able to do that with a USB stick.
Cheers
Aidan

me too. im using my car stereo to play mp3s in my pda via usb.
but i put all songs in memory card to avoid stereo from playing phone's ringtones.
btw, car stereo with a usb input is an instant charger!

Play SR on Kenwood car stereo via USB?

Hey all - tried to search for this but didn't find anything... I have a Kenwood car stereo that plays iphone via usb port, but I wasn't able to see how to get it to work by seeing the SR as a media device. On my captivate, you could choose 'media player' as a usb mode, but that wouldn't work either. Any ideas? I like the idea of playing music while being able to charge the phone at the same time. It does charge off of the deck via usb, but just can't get it to find the music on the SR.

That is such a coincidence, I just put in probably the same (or similar) Kenwood stereo into my car (KDC-248U). I was looking around on the website and under the KDC-252U they list an Android app "Kenwood Music Control" it's in the Market. I am going to give that a try later today.
*** EDIT
Apparently the app analyzes your music or something and then puts a file on your device to make it readable, worth looking into.
Also check here http://androidforums.com/android-media/167502-kewood-car-deck-problem-solving.html

Nice call! You have to have the music on the external SD though, in case anyone else has a problem getting it running Then choose 'auto output' in preferences. Also appears that the program stays active all the time... which I'm not crazy about, but it does work!

Ozark_8125 said:
Nice call! You have to have the music on the external SD though, in case anyone else has a problem getting it running Then choose 'auto output' in preferences. Also appears that the program stays active all the time... which I'm not crazy about, but it does work!
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That's great news! I gave it the ol college try but came up empty. Maybe you can help me out.
First what model stereo do you have and second, how do you store your media on your external SD , in a folder "music" or under a second level folder? Lastly, how did you get it to recognize did you plug it in and quickly choose USB storage or did you plug it in, choose USB storage and then cycle sources till you landed back on USB?
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So I've been playing around with it and now I can get it to play all the time. First plug USB into phone then into Head unit. When head switches to "Reading" change source to something else (Radio, Portable, etc.). Now enable USB storage and open Kenwood App, while doing this switch to "USB" on the source and it will play.
Now I am having lots of issues getting new music to read, I have tried manually analyzing to no such luck. What options do you have on? I noticed that at one time on reboot it re-did the scan.
It's not very elegant but it works. I wish I didn't have to use an app running all the time.
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I first scanned the music so it was all recognized by the app. Plug it in, and while the stereo is showing 'reading's then turn on the PC storage (and assuming you have auto output enabled). Then it worked. Clunky, but better than nothing for linger car trips. My stereo is the x695 excelon deck.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using XDA App

I first scanned the music so it was all recognized by the app. Plug it in, and while the stereo is showing 'reading's then turn on the PC storage (and assuming you have auto output enabled). Then it worked. Clunky, but better than nothing for linger car trips. My stereo is the x695 excelon deck.

Kenwood Music Editor Light
After playing around a bit it seems really clunky and I don't like the idea of the app running all the time. However I did find a solution, the Kenwood Music Editor (Light Edition).
http://www.kenwood.com/cs/ce/music_editor_light/english/download.html
You are still limited to music on your external SD card but it does not require the Kenwood app to be running or present to work. It was meant to make music playable on any USB device so it can be used for flash cards as well if you are having issues reading them. You plug your device into a computer (Windows only) and then run a scan and you should be good to go.
After doing this it's the same situation to play for me, plug in and turn on USB storage (it takes long for my phone to get into USB storage so that is why I have to cycle the Sources after it's connected to get the stereo to play). It remembers track position and everything.

promiseofcake said:
After playing around a bit it seems really clunky and I don't like the idea of the app running all the time. However I did find a solution, the Kenwood Music Editor (Light Edition).
You are still limited to music on your external SD card but it does not require the Kenwood app to be running or present to work. It was meant to make music playable on any USB device so it can be used for flash cards as well if you are having issues reading them. You plug your device into a computer (Windows only) and then run a scan and you should be good to go.
After doing this it's the same situation to play for me, plug in and turn on USB storage (it takes long for my phone to get into USB storage so that is why I have to cycle the Sources after it's connected to get the stereo to play). It remembers track position and everything.
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newer car-stereos usualy suport any file when you put the phone in "storage-device"-mode.
im looking to get controll over the phone from my stereo, yther use the player in the phone or spotify. works great whit an iphone, but cant find any solution to get the same controll from my htc desire hd...
im guessing its not the stereo itself but the phones software thats the problem, not allowing audio out or controlls in from the microUSB
id love a solution to this though

Check out the other apps like kenwood music control for android:
http://www.kenwood.com/cs/ce/

How do I play audio in my car through USB?

I know it works via an auxiliary cable but I'd like to get it working with USB. Is this possible?

it won't work. However if you have the cable from ibolt you can use the micro usb out on the phone. you cannot simply connect a usb cable for audio.

So there's no way to see the artist/track name of what i'm playing through my phone other than connecting via bluetooth.. awesome.

You can and you can't.
Kenwood and Pioneer car stereos (have tested on both) read flat file structures (NOT iTunes or WMP playlists, but the individual mp3 files and to a limit of 255 folders), but they will only read on your phone storage and ONLY if you have a Mass Storage option. They do not support MTP. This is a real pain in the butt. There was an application that let you swap storage and another app I saw someone make to allow you to mount storage so this could be done. I did this for a while until it became dumb and just ended up using Bluetooth.
sidn3y said:
So there's no way to see the artist/track name of what i'm playing through my phone other than connecting via bluetooth.. awesome.
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Moto G 4G - playing music on USB OTG intermittently stops/starts/stutters

Hi.
A few weeks ago I bought a 128GB usb 3.0 stick with fairly decent read/write speeds. I put ~60GB of music and I regularly use it while driving to listen to music through the car stereo.
Unfortunately, every few minutes (sometimes twice a minute, sometimes not for 10 minutes or so) it'll have a moment where it pauses for about half a second and starts again. It seems as if it's buffering.
I use Poweramp on my phone and an auxiliary cable. I've also tried playing music through the phone speakers while it was read/writing another task to the USB stick, and I noticed the same effect, but more like every 2 seconds.
Any ideas how I can fix this? It's very annoying.
Is there maybe a way I could make it download the ~6-8MB MP3 from the USB stick to the phone's memory before the song starts playing, so there wasn't this latency/stop-start effect when playing content?

Buy a more well built otg cable or a micro SD card reader...
I have one from eBay (70 pence) and it does what you explain..
Although 1080p films and videos play a charm... The music loses quality while being sent.. Don't know why but a mehova micro SD card reader works good
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[Q] Looking for Bluetooth file browser with media player

I'm trying to find an app that will do what I'm looking to do. Here's my story.
I picked up an android 4.4.4 headunit for my car. I'm looking for a way to sync my galaxy s4 over Bluetooth, and have the stereo see the songs that are on my s4's micro SD cards, and allow me to play whichever track I want without having to touch or look at my phone.
Does anyone know of an app that will do this, or any method I can use to have the music stored on my phone be accessible through my android stereo?
I'm currently using Plex media player/server running to let my android stereo stream music from my home computer, but I need to tether my phone to my stereo for data.
Any advise will be greatly appreciated.

No need...
xxcrashxx said:
I'm trying to find an app that will do what I'm looking to do. Here's my story.
I picked up an android 4.4.4 headunit for my car. I'm looking for a way to sync my galaxy s4 over Bluetooth, and have the stereo see the songs that are on my s4's micro SD cards, and allow me to play whichever track I want without having to touch or look at my phone.
Does anyone know of an app that will do this, or any method I can use to have the music stored on my phone be accessible through my android stereo?
I'm currently using Plex media player/server running to let my android stereo stream music from my home computer, but I need to tether my phone to my stereo for data.
Any advise will be greatly appreciated.
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Android supports file browsing and playing files remotely via bluetooth. You need car radio which supports this. If you want to you can use an app calles Bluetooth File Transfer. It has many features such as bluetooth ftp servers and such but it's avery old app.

My stereo does play music from the phone, however the stereo just shows the Play/Next/Previous buttons on it's display, and I need to start the music on the phone manually.
I'm looking for something that will display the song data on the stereo, so that I don't need to look at my phone when I'm driving to see what's playing. BTW, I have about 50 gigs of music, quite a large collection, and the stereo only supports up to 32gb microsd.
I looked into Bluetooth File Transfer, not exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks for the suggestion though.

No support
xxcrashxx said:
My stereo does play music from the phone, however the stereo just shows the Play/Next/Previous buttons on it's display, and I need to start the music on the phone manually.
I'm looking for something that will display the song data on the stereo, so that I don't need to look at my phone when I'm driving to see what's playing. BTW, I have about 50 gigs of music, quite a large collection, and the stereo only supports up to 32gb microsd.
I looked into Bluetooth File Transfer, not exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks for the suggestion though.
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If your stereo doesn't display songs, than it can't. I connected my phone to a stereo in a (modern) car and it could select any song.
And if it supports up to 32 GB sdcards, split your library onto 2 cards? Maybe?