Hi. The empeg is installed in my 3000GT and I really like it, but there are a couple of minor things that are a little annoying. I'll discuss one of them:

The riocar/empeg is eurocentric!

You know what I am talking about. All (or most) of the stereos here in the western hemisphere have volume on left and controls on right. It is counter-intuitive to have them swapped. I propose a solution, but since I am unfamilliar with the internals / API of the unit I am not sure how feasible it is.

Turn it upside down.

The only two things that would need to be changed are:

1) The up/down/left/right buttons. My guess is that this would be relatively easy to change in the drivers as there should be some level of abstraction in which the messages can be swapped on the fly.

2) The screen would need to be rotated 180. However if the API allows the programmer to write directly to the hardware buffer then there may be complications.

As I stated, I don't know if these are easily implementable on this unit. My guess would be that it can be done fairly easily in the OS. I have not really looked into it, so maybe it has already been proposed or implemented? Could someone point me to a related thread if it has? If not could someone make sure this gets to a developer?

Thanks!

There already is code in the kernel to display the image upside down. It's not compiled in by default though, but if you do want to try then turn on "display is upside-down" in the kernel config and recompile. I don't think there is existing code for the buttons but it shouldn't be too hard... (famous last words)

Mounting the empeg upside down been discussed before and I think the general result was that it is possible but the shock mounting for the harddisks was never designed to be mounted upside down so it's not advised. Can't quite find the thread at the moment but you can search for it.

- Trevor

The riocar/empeg is eurocentric!

Actually, it's the other way around. The original player had just 4 buttons on the front, all in the left hand side just as it is now. Considering most of the time I am using the buttons and not the knob, I much prefer the existing layout.

And as tman stated, it's all easially feasable, but you have to deal with an upside down facia design, and the fact that the drives will be worse off then when mounted properly.

Not only will the drives be worse off when mounted upside down, but the rubber mounts won't be able to take the weight and the tray will end up floating around inside the player.

Would be better to turn the display board 180, rotate the display image and build a custom facia.

All (or most) of the stereos here in the western hemisphere have volume on left and controls on right.

Since the prime meridian runs slightly to the west of Cambridge, it turns out that we're in the Eastern hemisphere. You'll have to talk to our western friends in Bedford about which way round their stereos go .

The guy in off topics who is coming to London this week could add going to Greenwich and standing bestriding the meridian to his itinerary!
It's an interesting point, if water goes down the plughole anti-clockwise in the southern hemisphere, do hard disks spin up the other way round?

Plugholes: http://www.abc.net.au/science/louts/coriolis.htm

And if the Coriolis effect has little to do with plugholes, I suspect that it's got even less to do with harddisks .

And I thought he was a bloke in a flowing robe in Shakespeare.
Thanks for that, I must have really believed it these last 50 years - now I'll have to check out the rest of my store of useless information: A can of Coke sinks, a can of Diet Coke floats.

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Since the prime meridian runs slightly to the west of Cambridge, it turns out that we're in the Eastern hemisphere. You'll have to talk to our western friends in Bedford about which way round their stereos go .

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Well, I'm in Oxford in the Western hemisphere, and it seems to work pretty well here. I have once ventured East since getting the Empeg and it seemed to work OK there too :-)

I wouldn't say that the Empeg is Eurocentric. I believe that it is only the UK that have this figured out - the rest of Europe all seem to drive on the wrong side of the road too...

Is it not a useless bit of information that the US only started driving on the wrong side of the road in the 20's!

A can of Coke sinks, a can of Diet Coke floats.

This one appears to be true: http://whyfiles.org/071questions/5.html

You guys are having a busy day then.

I think I'm going to have to add a DNS entry for askjeeves.com to point here for all my trivia needs

I'm off in my Empeg equipped motorhome in about 40 minutes, the time is hanging heavy. You US guys can't imagine the thrill of getting out on the endless highway in a big country like the UK.

Maybe they don't fill the cans as full. More airspace hence it floats.

Careful, I didn't get this info. from any old website, it came from the CEO of Coca Cola Enterprises - person to person!

From what I remember, all of my cans have 330ml written on the side so they should have the same amount in each.

- Trevor

It's like heavy coke - more cola particles in each atom, so the density goes up. We can probably build a cola-fusion reactor with them too.

Roger's link explains it, with several other interesting issues as well.

How about we get somebody to weigh those big packs of coke concentrate that you get in soft drink fountains?

I know somebody who for a bet actually drank some of the concentrate. To say he had a bit of a sugar and caffeine high afterwards is an understatement...

- Trevor

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How about we get somebody to weigh those big packs of coke concentrate that you get in soft drink fountains?

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You all realize that posts concerning the weight of bags of coke is going to attract the authorities.

You'd have to be really desperate to snort a can of coca cola I see your point though

- Trevor

Okay, so I tried the Coke experiment (because I'm bored), and confirmed this fact.

However, I dicovered on other interesting thing. I actually placed a can of Coke and a can of Diet Coke in the sink and filled it up. Initially, they both floated, but when I pushed them down into the water, the Coke sank and the Diet Coke came back up.

Upon further investigation, I found that the Coke would float until I filled up the area created by the upper lip of the can with water.

Now, I don't know if that's a weight issue or a surface tension issue, but it's interesting nonetheless. Well, at least as interesting as this topic is to begin with.

If the density explanation is accurate, then your experiment should prove that the densities are very close.

Not really. If I'd compared a can of non-diet Coke with a beach ball, I'd have gotten the same results. It would seem to indicate that the density of a can of Coke is very close to that of water, though.

I find the empeg controls perfectly placed despite being in the Western Hemisphere . Besides, it would be a pain having to swap things over every time I go into our Cambridge office

Likewise, I don't want to have to change my player controls twice every working day (I live in the East but work in the West).

While the controls are different than most head units, I find the setup better not worse. The current config allows you to change playlists or other settings without leaning to reach the knob. Also, I didn't ever think of this since its just so much easier to use the remote. Instead of flipping the unit why not just purchase a steering wheel mounted remote? The only reason I can see for having the knob closer to you is to play Sokoban while your driving, which is unadvisable.

Here's a link that has the numbers on relative densities of sugar sweetened drinks and diet drinks. Sweet

Aluminum has a specific gravity of 2.7 as compared to water of 1.0.

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The only reason I can see for having the knob closer to you is to play Sokoban while your driving, which is unadvisable.

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Or at traffic lights. You can get a fair bit done in 25-30 seconds and it stops you getting bored with that red light.

Of course turning the empeg off gives you that cool and sexy blue light. Mmmmm - hypnotism.

Has anyone actually weighed the difference between the weight of regular vs diet? Take it one step further and check volume too.

Both easy to do with standard kitchen stuff. I'd do it, weren't it for the fact that I don't drink either coke or the diet variety so don't have any (nor does my fascination go as far as feeling compelled to buy the cans ).

That wouldn't be too terribly hard. Just design the face in CAD and have it send to a prototyper to create an SLA model. That model could be dyed any color and probably painted flat black. It wouldn't look perfect, but it would get the job done in a week or two. Since there's probably not a huge need for it, SLA would be a good way to make one or two.

I also recently found a process called FDM which can create prototypes in ABS and, if the machine is new enough (a Stratasys Titan machine), polycarbonate. From what I've heard talking to prototype companies, the results don't look as good as SLA, but you can get them done in colors. Or, do it in white, sand it down if it's rough, and paint it flat black.

What I really want is a backwards version of the face I have. But... no dice.

There is a very very very remote chance that I could try and hack this CAD into a backward fascia and create an FDM or SLA prototype. It would be fun, but I wouldn't have time until at least January. If you want to remind me then, I could try; or maybe contact some of the others who have the fascia CAD (or their own fascia CAD, like Mach and speedy67? (who bought 303's design??)).

I used to complain about the volume knob being on the right, but now, I prefer it that way. I used the menu buttons far more than I do the volume knob, so it's handy to have them closer. Whenever I'm in my passanger seat and want to play with the empeg, I get annoyed that the menu keys are so far away.

I use the remote. It just looks wrong.