When I had my system upgraded last year there was a conversion kit that had a wire with a plug that went directly to the I-Pod. What that did was make to I-Pod function directly from the radio controlls (Kenwwood). Ran the wire in a cabinet inside and two pieces of velcro later it was installed. The nice part is once it is plugged in you can do everything from the remote controll for the system, that is mounted at the helm. No need to use the controlls for the I-Pod at all. In fact it locks out the screen on the I-Pod so you can't even use it. it works great and it doesn't matter where the I-Pod it mounted. BZ