How to synchronise your Go 910 with an iTunes playlist

[pugwash]

Personally I think the TomTom Home 910 music sync leaves a bit to be desired. Because you can only pick files and folders it means raking through looking for the ones you wanted.

So... I have knocked up an alternative. I'm now using a script to synchronise an iTunes playlist with the Go. Be warned - this is not something you can just use out of the box, and it's not perfect. It's something I did for myself that you can use too, with a few modifications.

First, download the script from http://chrisae.com/hosting/tomtomplaylist.vbs and save it somewhere handy (I put mine on the desktop). Now, go into iTunes, select your chosen playlist, do "File..Export" and save it as a .txt file somewhere. I called mine "tomtom.txt".

Now, open the VBS script file in notepad - do not just run it. You will have to edit the first three lines, which are:

itf - Your iTunes library folder
ituneslib - The file name of your exported playlist
TomTomMusic - The folder your music appears in when the TomTom is connected. The most important part of this is the drive letter - find this out by just connecting it to the computer and seeing what drive letter it ends up with. I imagine they all put music into the "mp3" folder so you can leave that

Now run the script! Here's what it does:

1. Clear the "archive", "hidden" and "system" attributes on any files in your music folder
2. Set the "archive" flag on all the files which are in your exported playlist
3. Delete all the MP3s currently on your TomTom
4. Run XCOPY and put any files in your music library with the "archive" attribute set onto your TomTom

There are a few improvements I'd like to make. Firstly, it would be handy if it didn't delete everything on the TomTom, and instead just copy anything which was new. I have an idea for how to do this using Microsoft's RoboCopy program, but perhaps other people have a better idea. Secondly, it would be nice not to have to export the iTunes playlist, but I don't know how iTunes stores playlists internally.

Have fun with this but please be careful - as I say, I just did it for my own use so it's not exactly a shrink-wrapped product. If anyone has improvements, please post them in this thread.

Enjoy,

Chris

[pugwash]

Oops. Link was supposed to be http://chrisrae.com/hosting/tomtomplaylist.vbs.

Chris

[pugwash]

I've now got a 90%-finished app to do this out of the box - if anyone's interested then I'll post it here.

Chris

[Belgarath]

I'd be interested so see what you've done.

At the moment I export a playlist from iTunes, convert to a TomTom friendly one via a website, then get TomTom Home to upload it and get it to upload any new tunes.

It's all a bit of a palaver, anything simpler would be most welcome.

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