That's a good idea, but how would you detect top up/down?

Oh, Calvin -- that's such a trivial question, I'm ashamed of you.

It's simple -- you take a rubber ducky and glue it to the inside of the top, right below the rear window. Now, when you retract the top, it folds up, squeezing the ducky which then makes a "quaaacckk" sound. (I do not advocate using a live duck for this purpose, or the PETA folks will be all over you.) Next, install a microphone in the vicnity of the ducky. This microphone is connected to the Voice Recognition input of the empeg. We all know that the empeg will be able to recognize voice commands Real Soon Now (tm), and it shouldn't be too difficult to have the "quaaacckk" command allocated to switching the equalizer preset, unless Rob or Hugo have already allocated that command for some other purpose. If that's the case, perhaps you could investigate connecting the pull-ring of a Talking Barbie to the top retraction mechanism, although complications will arise due to the variety of commands that would be issued randomly as opposed to a simple, uncomplicated "quaaacckk". Perhaps, though, a random assignment of different EQ presets would prove entertaining to some people.

I'm still working on how to detect when the top goes back up again, because while "quaaacckk" is a perfectly acceptable VR command, the "kkccaaauq" sound generated as the duck gets un-squeezed leaves something to be desired in terms of pronuncibility, not to mention phoneme recognition by the VR circuitry. Possibly something to do with a photocell to detect the diminished luminence inside the car would work if it were tied into the display dimmer circuit, but that idea loses appeal if you do any night time driving.

So there's at least half the problem solved. As you can see, simple solutions are usually the best.

tanstaafl.






"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"