Given the number of postings on this board over the last year or so on the subject of: "How do I wire up my (insert car/hifi manufacturer's remote control interface) to my empeg?", it is pretty much apparent that there is a fairly wide, pent-up demand for some sort of adapter to the empeg to allow any type of car remote control to be successfully connected.

Although there are a lot of proprietary interfaces from both car manufacturers and from HU manufacturers, the problem of building such a unit would not be trivial; there is the additional problem that once the unit has been designed (hardware), it still has to be integrated with the player and system software of the empeg/Rio car. Hence, it would imply that the best people to do both the software and the hardware would be - the boys from empeg.

Think of the benefits: since SB is trying to push into new direct-sales markets (think of the initial tie-up with Car Toys), it would make an easier sell if you could simply plug in a harness from the car to a small box, set a jumper to match the interface type you need, plug it into the sled, and Bingo, drop-in replacement for the original HU.

Additionally, if this could be demonstrated to car manufacturers, then it should be possible to do OEM sell-ins as standard equipment.

So, my wish is for some sort of small adaptor box that can either be jumper, piggy-back or software configured to interface to the docking sled serial connector, which is detected by a device driver in the kernel of the car player at boot time in the sled, and is then utilised by the player software to allow remote control of the player from standard column, wheel or panel controls now available in cars.

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015