Pioneer DEH-P680 MP3 player hook up question

[SDonkey]

Hey all,
Whats the easiest way to connect a normal nothing special mp3 unit to this head unit? I havent bought a mp3 player yet and I dont need anything special at all. I read about the ipod hook up and all that but I am trying to keep this as budget friendly as possible. I dont need it to read out on the head unit display or anything, just want it to play through my stereo. I was thinking there must be a way to do it through the front aux but I have been out of the stereo game for about 5 years, and from the looks of it that is an eternity!
Thanks all,
Zack

[slaya786]

There are two pretty easy methods for achieving this..

First:
Use a 2.5mm to 3.5mm convertor and connect it to the front of the head unit. Clumsy, and a little annoying being that the head unit has to be in the "tilted" mode in order for this method to work.

Second (preffered method):
Google the "pioneer ip-bus to 3.5mm hack", really simple to do. At that point you can either hardwire a 3.5mm jack somewhere convenient and use and use a 3.5mm cable to connect from your new jack to your mp3 player. You can purchase a 3.5mm jack and cable from radioshack for really cheap. Or, you can just hardwire a 3.5mm cable to the ip-bus, the problem with this is that not only isn't it a clean install, but when your 3.5mm cable goes bad, you're going to have to pull everything out and hard wire a new cable. Use a jack, thats going to be your *best* method.

Link to hack: http://stereophonik.com/gutterslide/IP-BUS_Hack/

good luck