Posted by: steveb
Am I glad to be here! - 07/06/2000 22:59
Hello all, greetings from Texas. I am really glad that this BBS exists. Like so many others, I am in line to receive my empeg this summer (#15066) (so no more complaining about being around 14000). I am in deep need of a community of people who understand the incredible power and overall wonderfulness of the empeg. Most of my friends/family/peers just look at me and say something to the effect of "why would you spend max bucks to get a car stereo that can't even play AM, CD's, minidisks or cassettes?" I try to explain it to them, but they just don't understand.
In about august of '97 a friend and I quit our regular jobs and formed our own electronics and software company. We got a big contract to get us off to a good start. In the beginning we has an absolute truck load of great ideas for products we could build. Amoung those projects was a hard drive based, pull out car stereo. We had some nice sketches, and we had determined that this was the first project we would begin work on as soon as we finished our initial contract. Well, my partner totally flaked out on me and just quit working on the contract, divorced his wife and moved across town to live with his new girlfriend. So my little two man business failed before it even got off the ground, and needless to say our car player project never launched either. I considered trying to make a go of it myself (I have the hardware and software skills) but alas, my ex-business-partner was the only person I knew who understood the idea, everyone else just gave me the old "Who would spend max bucks on a car stereo you made when they can just go down to Joe's Sound Shack and get a Kenwood or Alpine or something installed cheaper?" The nay sayers won and I finally just gave up the idea.
So it was with mixed feelings that I stumbled across the empeg site. Here someone had got the same idea (actually lots of people have has this idea, just most have not clued-in to the importance of the whole thing being contained inside the head unit, not just a pc mounted in the trunk) and actually ran with it, and there seems to be real interest in it. Opportunity lost.
However, the bright side is that these fellows have done an excellent job. I say this because they did exactly what I would have done (blatant vanity), and having done so, they have also done some awesom things that I had not even thought of yet (visualizations, seperate eq's for front and rear, ethernet, I could go on and on). My original design was to have a serial port and a usb port (it seems that great minds think alike . . . and ours too) But I did have a wireless idea involving a cell phone and the serial port, but it would have been too slow to be practical, and imagine the air time minutes, ouch!
In short, I can't wait for my number to come up. I am thouroughly impressed with what they have done. Since I live in (or near) Houston I figure there will be a few other owners of empegs in my area, maybe we can start a local interest group, get together and bask in our mutual admiration of our awesom car systems.
Having a deep appreciation for, and knowledge of hardware design, I am going to do my best to keep the lid on my mark 2 at least untill I can confirm that it was not dammaged in shipping across the ocean. Once thouroughly tested, the lid comes off and inside I go. I expect to download and recompile every piece I can get my hands on. I will probably create a few software doodads, and a few hardware doodads to add on to my system. I'll post anything I come up with here for all to use and enjoy (or hate) as they see fit. I will definitely go all out with the wireless ethernet. (Since I am a hardware and software developer, ALL of my computers have programmers, emulators, gizmos I have built, etc. hanging off of them with A/B switch boxes, what a mess. All I need is one more thing to plug into my system(s). No thanks, I'm going wireless!
Enough already.
Post at you later,
Steve
In about august of '97 a friend and I quit our regular jobs and formed our own electronics and software company. We got a big contract to get us off to a good start. In the beginning we has an absolute truck load of great ideas for products we could build. Amoung those projects was a hard drive based, pull out car stereo. We had some nice sketches, and we had determined that this was the first project we would begin work on as soon as we finished our initial contract. Well, my partner totally flaked out on me and just quit working on the contract, divorced his wife and moved across town to live with his new girlfriend. So my little two man business failed before it even got off the ground, and needless to say our car player project never launched either. I considered trying to make a go of it myself (I have the hardware and software skills) but alas, my ex-business-partner was the only person I knew who understood the idea, everyone else just gave me the old "Who would spend max bucks on a car stereo you made when they can just go down to Joe's Sound Shack and get a Kenwood or Alpine or something installed cheaper?" The nay sayers won and I finally just gave up the idea.
So it was with mixed feelings that I stumbled across the empeg site. Here someone had got the same idea (actually lots of people have has this idea, just most have not clued-in to the importance of the whole thing being contained inside the head unit, not just a pc mounted in the trunk) and actually ran with it, and there seems to be real interest in it. Opportunity lost.
However, the bright side is that these fellows have done an excellent job. I say this because they did exactly what I would have done (blatant vanity), and having done so, they have also done some awesom things that I had not even thought of yet (visualizations, seperate eq's for front and rear, ethernet, I could go on and on). My original design was to have a serial port and a usb port (it seems that great minds think alike . . . and ours too) But I did have a wireless idea involving a cell phone and the serial port, but it would have been too slow to be practical, and imagine the air time minutes, ouch!
In short, I can't wait for my number to come up. I am thouroughly impressed with what they have done. Since I live in (or near) Houston I figure there will be a few other owners of empegs in my area, maybe we can start a local interest group, get together and bask in our mutual admiration of our awesom car systems.
Having a deep appreciation for, and knowledge of hardware design, I am going to do my best to keep the lid on my mark 2 at least untill I can confirm that it was not dammaged in shipping across the ocean. Once thouroughly tested, the lid comes off and inside I go. I expect to download and recompile every piece I can get my hands on. I will probably create a few software doodads, and a few hardware doodads to add on to my system. I'll post anything I come up with here for all to use and enjoy (or hate) as they see fit. I will definitely go all out with the wireless ethernet. (Since I am a hardware and software developer, ALL of my computers have programmers, emulators, gizmos I have built, etc. hanging off of them with A/B switch boxes, what a mess. All I need is one more thing to plug into my system(s). No thanks, I'm going wireless!
Enough already.
Post at you later,
Steve
)
. Look at those reg#'s postet something about 15xxx