Well theres plenty of head units from almost all brands that have detachable or otherwise concealable face plates, but even with that said my immobiliser's led flashes like that on systems where the led represents an actual alarm. I'd like to think a thief is smart enough to not put a brick through the window when it looks like the car has an armed alarm system and its parked in a place with lots of people nearby.

The only problem i can think about with the flashing led in dashboard is that it might say to the thief that an alarm is gonna sound so he wont be as subtle, and might infact result to a smash and grab. so i dont leave any loose things like sunnies, cd cases, smokes and wallets on the seat. i once returned to my car to find the car that was parked beside it had all these things on the front seats, the doors were all unlocked and the drivers window was down. I wouldnt call myself a thief but i did think about it seeming there wasnt many ppl around and i was just looking at a pair of sunnies similar to the pair on the drivers seat, they were worth over $300.

either that or wire hook up 2 wires to a 2 bigarse capacitors and have it so that its active when the ignition is off now theres a thought. make it powerful enough to incapacite the theif

I got a crush on that Pioneer model:



Cheap, with all the necessary options and with GREEN lights (it matches perfectly with the dashboard lights )

More info:

http://www.pioneer.co.uk/uk/product_det ... _id=25-121

Aymat, I've mentioned it before, however not in this thread, the Traxaudio Mstation! I managed to get it installed in my car just intime for Gaydon. Anyway, now have it fine tuned and pretty near perfect for my needs.

It is essentially an IDE hard drive, standard is 10 GB, in an enclosure which can be mounted in the boot. It is then controlled by a small wired reomote, which displays song title, artist, time etc. It'll hold thousands of songs, nice to control, as you arrange the songs however you want, in directories on the HD. I've mainly got them by artist and album. You can make playlists from your songs too.

The thing I like is that you can keep your headunit, as I really like my plain standard looking Panasonic headunit, but wanted mp3. It is connected via an FM modulator, as unfortunately I didn't have any RCA input sockets on the back of the headunit.

I still have the single CD option in the headunit, the 6 disc changer in the boot, and also the MP3, so loads of choice. The MP3 is great as there's no messing about changing CD's or carrying them with you. All you do is take the unit out of the carbay and connect it to your PC via the IDE bay and update like an extra hard drive, drag and drop files.


It's currently mounted in the centre console storage area, I made a small mounting for it, so that I still have storage behind it, but I'm not 100% happy with it, as in 5th gear the display is slightly obscured, so when I get round to it I'll move it up to where the extra power sockets are and make a new casing to mount it in.

Panasonic Head Unit.

The kit, mid bottom, is the unit which can be mounted in the boot, glovebox, under the seat etc.

Anyway, there's another option when it comes to MP3 ICE.

Pete

My flatmate has that Pioneer unit - and its a fantastic model, with hugely flexible EQ, a relatively powerful onboard amp (not that HU amps are ever really powerful enough), and a nice interface. Of course I would say that - it's basically the updated of my DEH-P330!

The M-Station is a VERY neat system for its time...which is not to say that its out of date - rather that it can be bought cheaply now! I think the ultimate portable media solution will be when they can make a decent car interface for the iPod. Alpine supposedly have one on the way, but apparantly the release date keeps sliding...

You can expect some ICE news from me in a few days.....Father Christmas brought me a new toy!

cheers

James