Hi yall,

Life has been busy but I finally have a little time this week to finish hooking my empeg in my car. I have it in the trunk interfaced thru a small computer to a kenwood video display using empegface. This is working great.

On the other hand my steering wheel control interface is not. I have a sony stalk converter hooked from the car to my empeg tuner. Using Mark's button display I can only receive raw stalk values from 3 of the six steering wheel buttons and the horn. What I believe is happening is the 3 non-working buttons after going thru the stalk converter have ADC values out of usable range.

My question is: is there a way to shift all of the voltage values a scale higher or lower to put all the values in range?

Thanks

If you can measure the resistance values, then possibly yes. If the 3 values are out of range by only a little bit, then you could put a resistor on the line and make all the values within range. You would have to carefully program Hijack to use a completely new set of translated values, but it sounds like you're on top of that and shouldn't have a problem figuring out how to do that.

Not sure how your stalk gets its data to the Sony interface, though, so I'm not sure if "out of range" is the reason you're having the problem. I'd be curious to know more details, because my friend Tod's stalk converter isn't working 100 percent, either, and we haven't yet cracked the dash open to work on it a second time.

Next question...

If you've got a computer in the trunk, why bother with an empeg at all? I mean, I'm impressed that you're using my EmpegFace to control the empeg in the car, but if there's a computer in there then why not just put all your MP3s on its hard disk?

Umm, best software UI ever, better sound quality, etc., etc., I imagine. You know, all the reasons we say we like the empeg to begin with.

Not sure how your stalk gets its data to the Sony interface, though, so I'm not sure if "out of range" is the reason you're having the problem. I'd be curious to know more details, because my friend Tod's stalk converter isn't working 100 percent, either, and we haven't yet cracked the dash open to work on it a second time.

My Saab uses the same idea as the empeg/sony stalk. 0-5volt ADC range with resistors on each button. The problem is it that the circuit has to stay hooked up because the values are decoded by one of the in-dash computers and includes the horn as one of the values. Therefore I bought a converter which gets tapped to the same wire that goes from the buttons to the computer. This adapter (I don't know what's inside) is made by Autoleads to control Sony headunits with Saab steering wheel buttons. As the voltage of the Saab circuit stays between 0 and 5 volts and the fact that the converter is "compatible with all Sony head units with RM-X2S or RM-X4S joystick ports" I didn't think I'd have a problem. I calculated the ADC values from a Saab stereo sight and they do not match the raw stalk values I get coming out of the converter. The values coming out start much higher which is why I think the 3 nonworking buttons have ADC values the empeg will not recognize.

As far as why I have an empeg: Me love it!!

What I was going to try to do was drop the voltage going into the converter (which gets plugged directly into the tuner). I don't know if the resistor should be added in parallel or series as the converter thing confuses me (not hard to do anyways )

From website where I purchased converter: "Sony head units must have a joystick port referred to as RM-X2S or RM-X4S and it is actually a 3,5mm Stereo head phone type socket. Only UK Spec Head units will work with our interfaces. "

Would UK spec headunits matter since I should be getting all raw codes. I guess I'll need to find more on UK Saab steering wheel specs.