Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada

This little tip comes to you via my friend Jeremy Eaton who performs at AirJair. He showed up to perform at the PNE 10 days ago and introduced me to a very slick iPod remote that he was using. The remote seems to work best when teamed with an iPod Nano and the Nike + iPod Sports Kit. The sports kit was originally designed for runners who wanted to track their work outs and have their shoes talk to their iPod… The watch was an extension of this concept so that runners could control their iPods via a wrist band remote/watch.

I had been wanting to figure out a way to control my music remotely for the Hot Dog Show and had previously talked to Rob Torres about the MP3Tech that he uses. It’s an awesome system which is a bit more robust in terms of range and features than the Nike + iPod watch remote, but it also comes with a price tag of almost US$1000.00, and I wasn’t quite sure whether I wanted to spend that kind of money on a remote systems just yet…

Next I was looking at the Apple remote and Universal Dock for the iPod, but I wasn’t overly impressed by the range of the system that seemed to cut out around 12 feet. To me this didn’t quite seem like enough range. Also the fact that the remote was something that I’d have to hold in my pocket, pull out to control music and put back seemed like a few more steps that I was really after.

This watch solution seemed like a good intermediate solution to my situation. Also the fact that I had about 2 weeks of shows left at the PNE to play with it seemed like a great chance to test it out. I couldn’t track one of the watches down in Vancouver, so I enlisted the assistance of my friend Todd Strong who ordered one for me and had it sent to his place in Point Roberts, Washington. I then got the Sports Kit at a local running shop and tested it all out on my iPod touch… The remote didn’t work as well with my iPod touch as it did with Jeremy’s iPod Nano, so I bit the bullet and picked up an iPod Nano as well…

With all of the piece in place I started using this combination a few days ago and am very pleased to report that it’s working flawlessly. Compared to the MP3Tech at US1000.00 I think all in the final bill for the watch, iPod and Sports Kit came in at less than CAN$300.00 and had I not been in a rush to get things ASAP I could likely have gotten that down to closer to $200.00 had I bought things off of eBay.

The biggest stumbling block at this point is me fumbling through my new show and trying to remember to hit the music cues when I need them – ENTIRELY user error… The system is great though and I have no problem suggesting that you check it out as it’s been a great solution for me.