Doepfer

I had an idea for a wacky module yesterday and thought I would share it. Maybe a person 
with better electronic chops than me can make one. 
I offten play with ambient sound backgrounds. I used to use a reel-to-reel with custom 
tape loops, then a Tascam Porastudio, and now a retired iPod. I have a bunch of them that 
were given to me by co-workers when they broke. A new hard drive and they work fine. My 
girlfriend just got a iPod Nano and the thing is so small and compact that I thought one 
would be great mounted to a panel on my modular. Connect the dock cable to give it 
power and get the audio from it. Then the good part - control it through the connector 
too. I see having just the basic controls made CV-able. Have a trigger in that does the 
previous song selection, a trigger for the next song selection, and both a trigger that 
toggles play/pause and a gate in that plays on the gate high. The iPod controls are serial 
in the latest units so that's the circuitry I can't hack but I have an older iPod from when 
they used the remote control/headphone connector and I may try just "pushing it's 
buttons" via a electronic switch module. Worth a try. The older hard drive iPods don't react 
super fast but the flash based units are pretty snappy. it would be fun for timed sound 
effects or ambient noises. I'm sure Doepfer would not be interested in making one, but I 
sure would love to have one. 
For those with the chops here is a site that has the pinouts for the connector and a brief 
discription of the serial protocol used in the remotes:
http://pinouts.ru/PortableDevices/ipod_pinout.shtml
I can see it as a panel with the nano clipped to it and a connector cable rinning into the 
panel and 6 jacks below - 4 control ins and 2 audio outs.
-James