I'm pretty sure I've read posts from Mark about the wonderful things Hijack can help me do with this little fellow, I'm just not exactly sure how to use them.

I don't really want to do anything complicated. I want to use the AUX-in for audio and the sled serial port for basic two way control. Only need skip/rewind and pause/play, really. The 8-pin Molex on this interface will receive a custom extension harness with the required RCA jacks, DB9 serial port and tuner connecter on the empeg end for power and tuner Rx/Tx. Current Track information is on the wish list and is fully possible. Just need to connect the dots. It's all done by sending ASCII commands to the RN52 to which it will respond with either a HEX value or an ASCII string, depending on what you asked of it. I would just need to write a little userland 'thingie' to parse that information and write it to the screen, hence the difficulty for me as a non-programmer. I'll be working on that this winter, I suspect. I ordered 6 of those boards to test with, but I have a feeling that I'll be revising it once or twice before I've got a 'final' product. For what it's worth, I had a working prototype on the breadboard. The RN52 is a pretty amazing little chip. It's $25, but it's pretty much fully self contained. All I added was an i2s DAC for better sound and a level shifter for comms.



I'm also working on a microcontroller as an ADC for the 'steering wheel control' buttons. It's supposed to emulate the controller used in the original tuner to add a steering wheel interface as well. That might be somewhat challenging. I'm working with an Arduino Nano as I'm somewhat familiar with the architecture. Anyway, the 4-pin Molex connecter carries 12V/GND and the tuner Rx/Tx wires for running to the remote panel. The remote panel is basically the empeg face without the screen. Basically, I want to mount an empeg face in my center console, but leave the screen on the dash. I have two sets of display extender boards, but I don't think they're applicable here.

Name's decent. Hah. I like it.