OK, I'm thinking about finally ditching my stock Jeep Infinity "gold" radio in favor of the empeg. I finally got my tuner kit, and once it's built I really have no excuse anymore.

However... The one thing stopping me is steering wheel controls. I have the stock jeep ones, and I know I can use one of those PAC converters to do IR control of the empeg.

However, I'm like one button short of what I feel I need.

The jeep has on the right side of the wheel a momentary up-down toggle, this is used for volume in the stock system.

On the left it has an up down toggle, with a single button in the center. This is used for seek up-down, and the single button toggles presets.

How can I map these to the empeg to get the most functionality? Keep in mind Ive not used the radio yet, so help in how that works in would be great.

One thought I had was: The way the jeep buttons work, from what I understand, is by triggering a series of resistors. The signal is sent over a single twisted pair to the vehicle computer, which controls the radio. The PAC splices in before the computer, and reads the resistances and interprets them for IR commands.

WIth a systm like this, I wonder if I could use that oddball "preset" button like a SHIFT key, and double my button count... Other thoughts are to hack two more buttons into the left hand side, and have a full 4-button layout like on the empeg. (This would be hard)

Thoughts on how to use the existing buttons best if none of the above are possible are greatly appreciated.

Jeff

The way the jeep buttons work, from what I understand, is by triggering a series of resistors. The signal is sent over a single twisted pair to the vehicle computer

If true, and if you can find those two wires, you might be able to connect those to the tuner "Sony" connector plug directly, then use Hijack translation to turn those commands into anything you wanted them to be. Details here.