Muting both the empeg and a headunit from a phone?

Searching the FAQ first...ok, doesn't seem to be addressed.

I've also got a Parrot CK3000. Unlike matthew, I'm wiring the empeg (mkiia) through a head unit, so I'd like the mute-line from the speakerphone to send a mute signal to *both* the empeg and the head unit.

If I wire all three wires together (empeg/headunit in parallel), the empeg never mutes, and sometimes the headunit mutes for no reason. So, right now I've just got the mute line hooked up to the headunit only.

I looked up and down on the empeg (v2.0) menus and there seems to be no setting regarding muting available.

The hijack kernel has the ability to map the mute line to other functions, but I believe the default function is mute (+pause when playing music files).

Do I need to do some custom wiring with diodes/resistors (as suggested by terry on the parrot ck3000), with relays (my idea, vague) or something else?

Should wiring in parallel have worked?

thanks,
-brendan

Make sure both units use the same polarity (ie +12V or 0V) to mute.
IIRC you can change the mute setting (high, low or ignore the line) in emplode...

/Michael

The empeg wants +12V for mute, 0 for no mute, right? I'm pretty sure the headunit (Pioneer Premier DEH-750MP) is the same (unless it detects N/C differently than 0). I suppose I should test it, if the manual doesn't say.

I'll check out the emplode settings.

The issue with all 3 wired together was that the empeg itself *never* muted, the speakerphone would always work to mute and unmute the headunit, but randomly the headunit would mute itself and require a power off in the middle of playing music when not activated by the speakerphone (when this happened, using the speakerphone worked, but it would never leave the unmuted state).

thanks again,
brendan

'nother thing I just recalled - I think I've seen reports on people needing to add a pull-up or pull-down resistor to make the mute work reliably...

/Michael

Read this post

Also read the followup by Hugo (altman) and its followup in turn by Sven (smu) again.

Michael/Bitt,

Thanks for the guidance. Good stuff!!! I've got a Riocar (which makes it a mkiia, I think), so it should already have a built in resistor. So perhaps I've got a polarity problem, or the parallel senses are interfering with eachother. I will research further.

-brendan

Also double-check that you've got the mute sense set up correctly from within emplode. It can be 0V mute, 12V mute, or mute disabled.

Yeah, I have to admit, sheepishly, that I didn't RTFM regarding the default setting of the sense line (ignore). It's now set to mute on 0 volts (grounded), but I haven't wired the line back into the harness yet.

I'm curious about one thing. The other articles indicated that the pull-up resistor is now integrated into the MkIIa model, which both of my empegs are. So, no resistor should be needed.

Would it be correct to say that a resistor is integrated into the MkIIa model and acts as a pull-up resistor when sense is set to 0V, and as a pull-down resistor when sense is set to 12V?

If so, is the resistor completely out of the circut when the sense is disabled or does it default to one of the two positions? The answer to that might explain why it interfered with the headunit/speakerphone when disabled: I seem to recall something about odd behavior with open-collectors that don't have a pull-up/down resistor. Alternately, perhaps the default resistor "position" for the mute-disabled empeg was incorrect for the sense-0-volt circuit.

-brendan

Ok, I'm seeing correct muting behavior on both the headunit and the empeg now.

I also wanted to pause the player when it was muted, so I read up on hijack/extmute and ir_translate. My original:

extmute_on=0x00b94609e
extmute_off=0x00b94609e

approach of toggling the top "play/pause" command didn't work 1/4 of the time, the empeg would stay paused after a hangup. Well, actually, the status icons would flicker between play and pause a bit, then remain on pause. I think the parrot "bounces" the mute on hangup. Something akin to this happens:

1. Call comes in.
2. Parrot grounds mute line.
3. Call ends.
4. Parrot, all within a second or so:
4a. ungrounds the mute line
4b. grounds it again
4c.then ungrounds it

You can hear the (speaker bypass?) relay clicking a few times on hang up, vs. just once on pickup, so I wouldn't be surprised if the mute line was controlled by the same logic. I theorized that this quick succession of toggles is causing extmute transitions too often for hijack to either catch them, for hijack to generate proper IR commands, or for the player to digest them.

I then tried this:

[hijack]
...
extmute_on=0x73
extmute_off=0x74
[ir_translate]
73=00b949615,00b94614,00b94609e,null
74=00b949614,00b94615,00b94609e,null

I thought maybe jiggling with the volume twice before play/pause toggle might have an effect. Nope. Problem still there, exactly the same. Huh.

Looked around some more, read up on the ir_translate docs (brain hurts) and matthew's posts. Not knowing anything about what *exactly* triggers the exmute events, and how quickly they can transition, and on a hunch that the empeg is seeing odd sequences at the on-mute-and-then-hangup point like "extmute_on, exmute_off" or "extmute_off, extmute_off" I thought I'd try some experiments with Shift. This final approach worked, not 100% sure why yet:

[hijack]
...
extmute_on=0x73
extmute_off=0x74
[ir_translate]
73.N=00b949615,00b94614,00b94609e,null.S
73.S=null
74.S=00b949614,00b94615,00b94609e,null.S
74.N=null

I probably don't need the volume twitching in there, but it's working, so I'm not touching it.

-brendan