What timing
Searched around last night and saw some discussions about scripted or app based options. There appeared to be mixed amount of success when setting up symlinks. Thinking that someone in the Android community has probably already run into this I found references to FolderMount on XDA and other tech sites. Set it up last night and this morning tried a few times. No success.
I believe that FolderMount is working as I can see the music on /storage/sdcard0/Music and I know for certain that those same files only exist on /storage/exSdCard/Music. The one thing I did not do when setting up the folder pair is to copy content from internal to external SD card since the content already existed on the external card. I pinned the folder pair and after reboot see the app successfully mount and bind the pair.
There's one possible unknown at the moment though. Prior to installing and configuring FolderMount, if I connected to the stereo via USB, the only media playback was for the Google+ Hangout sound. Now this sound is not found. This makes me think that the stereo only "sees" the external card, but is not able to read. It also leads me to believe that the stereo may only be able to search and read from an internal media source, say sdcard0. The stereo was designed to natively support iPods, and iPhones. That combination works perfectly. Likely the stereo firmware or whatever its running, only has the ability to "see" and read from sdcard0. Even though FolderMount is presenting music to /storage/sdcard0/Music correctly, I think the stereo is looking for media via a different mount point or method.
I know that the Music plays as the two media players I have installed - the default Music and additional app Rocket Player - both can "see" and play the music files on /storage/extSdCard/Music.
One option is to use Auxilliary, and likely a limitation with my stereo, sound playback quality is less and I have to crank up the volume way more than with the USB connection. I also loose ability to flip through songs from the stereo controls with Auxilliary. As for Bluetooth, my stereo/vehicle is old enough that no Bluetooth exists.
Another option is to just move a smaller playlist back to /storage/sdcard0. The challenge I have there is that my playlist is 7.5GB. Unfortunately due to how much space TouchWiz based ROMs consume, I only have 6.68GB free space. I have less than 20 apps (no games or other apps that consume large storage chunks) and those take up 532MB, with Pictures at 1.94GB. Downloads are negligible.
Yet another option is to move pictures to the /storage/extSdCard. Unfortunately I have a SANDisk 64GB card that may be in the batch with quality problems. Haven't had any problems that i know of, but don't want to risk putting photos on there as the primary location. Even if I move photos to external storage, I don't have much room to add more music.
For now I'll grab an old iPod or iPhone and just keep it in the truck full time.
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