I'm getting tired of always reaching over to the empeg to adjust volume, and the like. I have long arms, so the reach isn't really a problem, I'm just lazy. Anyway, my truck has factory controls on the steering wheel, so I'd like to regain my use of them. I looked at the PAC Audio SWI-X, but I don't really want to deal with finding a good spot to put the IR transmitter, much less pulling the headliner down in order to wire it. Another problem with SWI-X, I think, is that it doesn't send press/release signals (I've sent them email to find out for sure, but haven't yet heard back in reply).

While looking at the SWI-X install procedure for my truck, I see that my controls operate on the same sort of principle as the Sony Stalk, so with the correct resistor values, I could wire them up to the stalk interface on my tuner. (I believe the SWI-X can be modified to do this, as well.) However, the stalk interface on my pca tuner has issues, so I don't really want to use that, and open myself up to the those problems, again.

My next thought was using the serial port. I'm not a hardware hacker, but I'm interested in giving it a go. I've found John Lambon's website, so I think with a bit of reading up, I should be able to build a similar project (though it would probably involve lots of question asking). I know I've seen other, similar, projects posted -- I recall one using a joystick, in particular.

From the reading I've done, the downside to using the serial port is that all of the commands sent to the player are hard-coded in the firmware on the microcontroller. Since I don't know exactly how I want my buttons to operate, I'd like the ability to play with their configuration without having to re-flash firmware. I know there are a specific set of inputs that the player listens for via the serial port -- does it ignore all others? I'm wondering about the possibility of just choosing a small set of commands that the player otherwise ignores (say, the vowels), and having hijack remap these serial commands in the same way it does ir_translate -- that would also allow me to macro-ize them.

Thoughts and pointers welcome.