I've played with the Empeg's ability to accept ASCII commands via its serial port. For instance, if you send N to the Empeg, it goes to the next track.

I have a friend whose steering wheel has built-in buttons for controlling his factory CD player. He wants to get an Empeg and use those buttons for controlling it. I thought that the serial interface would be perfect for this.

Does someone already make a simple device that will take button presses and then send short pre-programmed commands to a serial port? Or will he need to make one himself?

He works at a high-tech manufacturing firm, so he has the resources to put together such a circuit if he has to. But to save him the trouble (and me, since I'm thinking of rigging up something similar), does anyone make such a circuit already?


-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

A lot of those steering wheel remote controls don't work as straight forwardly as that. Some already use a serial interface, others encode the data in different ways - some further investigation would be necessary before you would know exactly what's required.

Rob

A lot of those steering wheel remote controls don't work as straight forwardly as that. Some already use a serial interface, others encode the data in different ways - some further investigation would be necessary before you would know exactly what's required.

That's interesting. I'm not sure his qualifies as a "steering wheel remote", though, since it's built-in to the car. It's an American car (a Dodge truck), so I assumed that it was low-tech (i.e., buttons connected directly to the factory radio via a wiring harness). I figured we'd just patch our serial device directly into the control wires. But if we can't get directly to the button control wires, you're right, we'll have to find out exactly what it's doing before diving in. Thanks for the heads-up.

In the meantime, I'm thinking of rigging up my own system on my car, by making and wiring up the buttons myself. Does anyone know of an existing device that does this?


-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

You do know that the empeg supports Kenwood steering wheel infrared remotes, right? So the easiest way would be to start with one of those, and if you don't like the design or anything, use it as "back end" and replace its buttons with ones you like better.

Cheers
Daniel

Thanks, I'm looking for that Kenwood product on the web now...

For my friend, though, he'd like to use the buttons that are built into the steering wheel.



-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.