Since discovering this project, my install plans have gotten a bit simpler, but also a lot more complicated. Simpler in the sense that I might not have to worry about finding a physical location for the empeg display panel, but more complicated in that it involves adding some more components, doing some hardware hacking, and a lot of additional software bits.

Attached is a rough picture of what I'm considering doing:


My first cut is going to be with the empeg as an aux-in device using the Lockpick C8 to add an auxiliary video input. The empeg display buffer will be sent to a RaspberryPi as per the project linked above, with the RPi pushing the empeg display (possibly along with some other stuff) to the aux video input on the Lockpick.

For empeg input, I'm looking at hacking together a custom switch panel that will be placed in the cubbyhole underneath the climate controls. The input will be read by an Arduino board with a CAN bus shield, which will also monitor the CAN bus for relevant activities in the factory A/V system (so it pauses the empeg when switching to another input, responds to steering wheel remote presses for next/previous track, etc.)

(I looked into trying to do all of the input and CAN stuff on the RPi so there are fewer moving parts, but CAN support on the RPi seems to be somewhere between totally absent and experimental at this point, whereas the Arduino CAN shield purports to be pretty much plug-and-play with a pretty robust set of library calls and some easy-to-follow example code.)

Of course, with such an ambitious project, there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip, so I'll probably do everything in stages, starting with getting the Lockpick installed and feeding in the empeg as an aux device. If I hit any dead ends, I can always try to go the "conventional" display extender route instead.

I'll post updates here when/if I make any progress on any of this.