Feasibility of MyFord Touch and Sync upgrades

[Droid]

So pretty much every time I'd get in the truck, my iPhone 4 would kick into iPod mode and start playing whatever it felt like. Even though I had hard closed the iPod app and had never ever been listening to it.

Pretty much all radio here sucks. I'm OK with Sirius but it leaves a lot to be desired. So Slacker.com cached radio stations are pretty much my godsend. So yesterday I deleted all the iPod music from my iPhone...that solved that problem. Now when I hop in, Slacker fires up and starts playing via BT streaming. As soon as I leave with the phone, the app goes to pause and all is good.

Thought I'd love the Ford Sync...definitely do not.

Nearest weather available is 85 miles away and 1400 feet higher in elevation. I can input the zip code on syncmyride and all looks like it will be good...but can't load the gd updates to the truck. aaagh!

Sent syncmyride an appropriately sarcastic rant yesterday...we'll see what they have to say?

Rant off...

In my opinion, don't use an iPhone/iPod as your music storage system. Go buy a 32GB USB thumb flash drive or a larger external USB SSD drive. Do the USB 2 mod (trivial) and put it in the glovebox.

Make sure your Sync is updated to the latest version as well (there's a thread on that here), or it'll take forever to "generate voice commands" each time the truck is started.

I've been running this setup since day one and really enjoy it.

 

[Phyguy]

I have an old IPod that I re-purposed and put in my glove compartment on USB2. It pretty much stays there all the time.

My normal phone is an Iphone 3G. I have it set to pair with sync, but I usually don't play music on it in my truck.

Works for me. I had a problem with a 16Gb thumb drive i used to use in USB2. It just wasn't reliable like the ipod. Occasionally I had to restart the songs, etc.

Just my .02.

MDU

 

[Humvee21]

I have an old IPod that I re-purposed and put in my glove compartment on USB2. It pretty much stays there all the time.

My normal phone is an Iphone 3G. I have it set to pair with sync, but I usually don't play music on it in my truck.

Works for me. I had a problem with a 16Gb thumb drive i used to use in USB2. It just wasn't reliable like the ipod. Occasionally I had to restart the songs, etc.

Just my .02.

MDU

Where's the thread for the USB 2 mod? Something I'd like to bookmark when my Raptor arrives.

 

[Bad Rap]

Where's the thread for the USB 2 mod? Something I'd like to bookmark when my Raptor arrives.

X2 What he said!

 

[Droid]

I have an old IPod that I re-purposed and put in my glove compartment on USB2. It pretty much stays there all the time.

My normal phone is an Iphone 3G. I have it set to pair with sync, but I usually don't play music on it in my truck.

Works for me. I had a problem with a 16Gb thumb drive i used to use in USB2. It just wasn't reliable like the ipod. Occasionally I had to restart the songs, etc.

Just my .02.

MDU

Interesting, have never seen an issue on mine. I'm running a Kingston 64GB SSD there. I purchased the drive specifically for the Raptor so it had 0 miles on it when I started though, and I think SSDs have better write-leveling code in them than Flash drives for improved reliability (not sure on this though). Brother has a 32GB thumb drive in his, pretty sure he hasn't had a problem either.

 

[Droid]

Where's the thread for the USB 2 mod? Something I'd like to bookmark when my Raptor arrives.

How to add a second USB port to SYNC - Ford Truck Technical Articles

I bought all the stuff I needed at Fry's. Think my setup consists of a USB-miniUSB cable and a full-size USB A female-female gender changer. There are other ways to get it done, but I wanted an actual standard USB A port in the glovebox.

My truck has a Nav, there's no difference if you have Nav or not.

 

[Humvee21]

Droid, thanks!

 

[tango68]

Raptor Sync

I have upgraded the sync on my Raptor twice since new - March 2011. It never has a problem and works real well, my son (Ford Service Manager) informs me that there will be a new Sync program in the new year and it should be available as an upgrade. I will have to wait and see.

 

[bfr]

Well I see isabelB is now banned...surely not for the input here...but anyway. What she said is totally not applicable to the Raptor, we DO NOT have MyFord Touch systems. The features of that system are a generation ahead of the Raptor's Sync system.

As for an update to this thread: if I am not listening to Sirius (mostly only for ESPN and a couple decent stations) I am always listening to streaming Bluetooth from my iPhone running either (in order of use) Rhapsody, Slacker or Pandora. Always get new music that I would never have if I went with a thumb drive or hard drive setup. And with caching and download features of those apps I do not need connectivity on the road. For a modest fee I have all the music I could ever imagine, with me and constantly updated.

RE: Sync upgrades...I've now learned to download and install and report the installations on the SyncMyRide website. The latest version is Gen1 - v3.2.2. It was an upgrade from v3.2 and fixed a lot of the voice command issues with it not recognizing anything you said.

 

[CineSLR]

BFR,
I have seen a few Sync updates that are headed our way. One is app integration. The ones I have seen demo'd are the new NPR and Destinations apps. Looks promising!

Hands-on with new NPR and SYNC Destinations via AppLink -- Engadget



---------- Post added at 11:04 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:59 AM ----------

Having a Motorola Razr,
Moto has come up with something called "smart actions". This allows you to make rules depending on different triggers. For instance, when I connect to my home wifi network, I put the screen to dim, turn the gps off and ringer at 35%. When connected to the Raptor, I change the background (to a picture featuring the truck), screen brightness to 100%, Ringer to 100% and automatically start GrooveShark (my music server). Works like a charm!