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#230573 - 13/08/2004 03:21 European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!!
Derek
addict

Registered: 16/08/1999
Posts: 453
Loc: NRW, Germany
Hi Guys!

last night I banged a 1k ohm resistor across the reference resistor for the Sony stalk interface in my tuner. Now the steering wheel remote in my Focus works perfectly!

Thanks for the tip at the meet Hugo and Patrick!

Come on Rodger, get yours going

More details for you guys that want them when I get back from my weekend away

Cheers
Derek
_________________________
(list 6284, Mk1 S/N 00299 4GB blue [sold]. Mk2 S/N 080000094 20GB blue)

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#230574 - 13/08/2004 15:47 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: Derek]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31563
Loc: Seattle, WA
Quote:
More details for you guys that want them when I get back from my weekend away

Yes, I would like many more details please- Tod's steering wheel interface hasn't been working properly at all since the day it was installed...
_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#230575 - 13/08/2004 16:54 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: tfabris]
andym
carpal tunnel

Registered: 17/01/2002
Posts: 3995
Loc: Manchester UK
I'm not too sure of all the issues involved but I think the ford europe resistive ladder remotes never worked before this. So if your remote is intermittant, or works via an adaptor (like mine) then this probably won't fix it.
_________________________
Cheers,

Andy M

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#230576 - 19/08/2004 15:59 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: andym]
Derek
addict

Registered: 16/08/1999
Posts: 453
Loc: NRW, Germany
Hi Andy,

my factory remote didn't work properly after I hooked up way back because the Ford resistor ladder has completely different resistance values to the Sony remote.
The empeg tuner expects resistances from the Sony remote in the range:
1400 - 54000 ohm
whereas the Ford remote reisistances are in the range:
53.0 to 5108 ohm
and 5108 ohm is the "open circuit" resistance of the Ford remote (i.e. where no buttons are pressed). Only one button on the Ford remote lies even close to the range that the tuner is set up to detect.

What I did by changing the reference resistance in the remote detect circuit is to shift the range that the tuner will detect. It works pretty darn well, if I must say so myself
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(list 6284, Mk1 S/N 00299 4GB blue [sold]. Mk2 S/N 080000094 20GB blue)

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#230577 - 19/08/2004 16:28 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: Derek]
andym
carpal tunnel

Registered: 17/01/2002
Posts: 3995
Loc: Manchester UK
What I mean is, the Ford Steering Wheel control was probably never designed to interface directly to a Sony Stereo. Sure, its a resistive ladder system but I doubt it was designed with aftermarket stereos in mind. Hence the resistance values.

If Tony's friend uses an aftermarket stalk adaptor, like i do. Then problem probably won't go away with a resistor as all these adaptors are designed for Sony HU's which is what the empeg tuner is supposed to support too.

My stalk problems are only prevalent when the headlights are on. I think the issue lies in the fact they are gas discharge units. They require an alternating current to strike and light. I imagine the invertor unit that chops the cars DC is causing some kind of interference.
_________________________
Cheers,

Andy M

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#230578 - 19/08/2004 19:59 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: Derek]
Derek
addict

Registered: 16/08/1999
Posts: 453
Loc: NRW, Germany
OK, finally some details

it's pretty simple really. You open up you tuner and bang a 1k ohm resistor across R2, the 22k ohm reference resistor for the ADC that measures the resistance on the remote. On Patricks tuner it sits really close to the remote cable, and on his one you could actually replace the 22k ohm resistor with the 1k ohm one. On the original tuner this is just a little tricky!! The resistor is about the size of a grain of salt. Although I chose the finest tip on the soldering iron that I had, it still looked like a fence post next to the SMD resistor on the original tuner board. Make sure you check the resistance of the resistor you are replacing/bridging just to make sure you have the right one. If the boards were done consistantly it is also labelled as R2 on both tuners and you can double check that in Patricks installation guide.

I used a thru-hole resistor. Since the resistances in the Ford remote are reasonably low the new sense/reference resistor will disapate a reasonable amount of heat (relatively speaking). According to the experts (Hugo and Patrick) anyway. In my case it's basically just stuck on top or the original resistor with solder. I tried to get as much solder down the side of the original resistor and onto the pad as possible, but it wasn't very easy with the "fence post".

Details on the Sony stalk wiring - you need to make up a cable with 3.5mm cinch connector from the original wiring loom - can be found in the FAQ, and Half_Geek has some useful info (such as pin numbers on the factory connecor) here .

If there is anything else I've forgotten to tell you feel free to ask.

Cheers
Derek
_________________________
(list 6284, Mk1 S/N 00299 4GB blue [sold]. Mk2 S/N 080000094 20GB blue)

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#230579 - 19/08/2004 20:05 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: andym]
Derek
addict

Registered: 16/08/1999
Posts: 453
Loc: NRW, Germany
No, the Ford remote was never designed to connect to aftermarket stereos, and definitely not to Sony stereos (although interestingly Ford is now selling cars in Europe with Sony branded stereos).

You don't need a any sort of adaptor to get the Ford remote working, just a cable from the wiring loom that ends in a 3.5mm cinch plug so that you can plug it into the tuner. Then you change/bridge the sense resistor in the tuner and all is hunky dory :-)
_________________________
(list 6284, Mk1 S/N 00299 4GB blue [sold]. Mk2 S/N 080000094 20GB blue)

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#230580 - 19/08/2004 20:11 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: Derek]
andym
carpal tunnel

Registered: 17/01/2002
Posts: 3995
Loc: Manchester UK
Quote:
You don't need a any sort of adaptor to get the Ford remote working, just a cable from the wiring loom that ends in a 3.5mm cinch plug so that you can plug it into the tuner. Then you change/bridge the sense resistor in the tuner and all is hunky dory :-)


Which is good, I intended to pull the Clio apart and investigate exactly what the native Renault system is. Although judging by the number of wires. I think it's some scary pulse-timed system.
_________________________
Cheers,

Andy M

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#230581 - 20/08/2004 05:31 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: andym]
sn00p
addict

Registered: 24/07/2002
Posts: 618
Loc: South London
Andy,

I thought this too, but it's actually resistances on the clio too, in dialogys there's a diagram of it and it shows the connector along with the actual resistance values.

Adrian

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#230582 - 20/08/2004 08:19 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: sn00p]
andym
carpal tunnel

Registered: 17/01/2002
Posts: 3995
Loc: Manchester UK
Quote:
in dialogys there's a diagram of it and it shows the connector along with the actual resistance values.



Sorry, what is dialogys?
_________________________
Cheers,

Andy M

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#230583 - 20/08/2004 12:21 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: andym]
smu
old hand

Registered: 30/07/2000
Posts: 879
Loc: Germany (Ruhrgebiet)
As far as I know, Dialogys is a publisher for technical manuals.
_________________________
proud owner of MkII 40GB & MkIIa 60GB both lit by God and HiJacked by Lord

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#230584 - 20/08/2004 13:35 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: andym]
sn00p
addict

Registered: 24/07/2002
Posts: 618
Loc: South London
it's the renault technical software, details virtually everything about the car so that the monkeys at the garage can fix it.

Adrian

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#230585 - 22/08/2004 15:35 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: sn00p]
andym
carpal tunnel

Registered: 17/01/2002
Posts: 3995
Loc: Manchester UK
Where can I get a copy it?
_________________________
Cheers,

Andy M

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#230586 - 23/08/2004 07:29 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: Derek]
Roger
carpal tunnel

Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5680
Loc: London, UK
Quote:
Come on Rodger, get yours going


That means I'll have to talk to Hugo or someone about getting it done -- I don't have either a soldering iron, or sufficient skill to use one.

It's good news, though.
_________________________
-- roger

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#230587 - 23/08/2004 19:44 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: Roger]
Derek
addict

Registered: 16/08/1999
Posts: 453
Loc: NRW, Germany
and you think I'm skilled with one of those things? I know just enough to get it to heat up ;-) If you could get your hands on one you'd manage it, but then you wouldn't have an excuse for a scrumpy or 2 with Hugo would you :-)

It's really great having the steering wheel remote! Don't muck about, you'll love it!
_________________________
(list 6284, Mk1 S/N 00299 4GB blue [sold]. Mk2 S/N 080000094 20GB blue)

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#230588 - 24/08/2004 10:01 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: Derek]
andym
carpal tunnel

Registered: 17/01/2002
Posts: 3995
Loc: Manchester UK
Quote:
It's really great having the steering wheel remote! Don't muck about, you'll love it!


I can attest to that, very useful.
_________________________
Cheers,

Andy M

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#230589 - 25/08/2004 09:00 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: Derek]
Roger
carpal tunnel

Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5680
Loc: London, UK
Finally got it installed.

Quote:
You open up you tuner and bang a 1k ohm resistor across R2, the 22k ohm reference resistor for the ADC that measures the resistance on the remote.


Got Hugo to do that yesterday. Thanks Hugo!

Quote:
If the boards were done consistantly it is also labelled as R2 on both tuners and you can double check that in Patricks installation guide.


On Patrick's tuner, it doesn't appear to be labelled. Use the installation guide to find it, I guess. Presumably the label's under the existing resistor.

Quote:
Details on the Sony stalk wiring - you need to make up a cable with 3.5mm cinch connector


This turned out to be quite hard in my Focus -- there's not a lot of play in the cable, and no room to work behind the dash. Hugo made me up a 3.5mm connector with a pair of wires hanging off -- in the end I had to connect it by poking the wires into the 17-way connector and wrapping it in a lot of electrical tape. I just couldn't get in behind the dash with wire cutters.

Quote:
If there is anything else I've forgotten to tell you feel free to ask.


I've played with the Hijack button display screen, and the Mode button on my remote doesn't do anything -- with the 1k bridged on the 22k, the effective resistance is something like 950ohm, so the mode button (just over 1k) is still just outside the range. I can live with this, though.

Also, the buttons don't map directly to the normal buttons. Seek up resolves to 'mark track'. Seek down appears to work though. Presumably you had to do some Hijack magic to make it work? Do you have details of that?
_________________________
-- roger

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#230590 - 25/08/2004 10:32 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: Roger]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
Stalk programming info is linked to from here.

And also in detail here.


Edited by mlord (25/08/2004 10:34)

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#230591 - 25/08/2004 11:01 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: mlord]
Roger
carpal tunnel

Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5680
Loc: London, UK
Quote:
Stalk programming info is linked to


The details at the bottom of http://empeg-hijack.sourceforge.net/stalk.html could use updating -- it doesn't specify the 0x, for example.

For example, I've got mine set to:

stalk_lhs=0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff,
0x3c,0x3e,0x5d,0x5f,0x21,0x23,0x0c,0x0e,
0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff


(ignore the line breaks)
_________________________
-- roger

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#230592 - 25/08/2004 11:13 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: Roger]
altman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 19/05/1999
Posts: 3457
Loc: Palo Alto, CA
Quote:
I've played with the Hijack button display screen, and the Mode button on my remote doesn't do anything -- with the 1k bridged on the 22k, the effective resistance is something like 950ohm, so the mode button (just over 1k) is still just outside the range. I can live with this, though.


It should be within the range: if the pullup resistance is the same as the external resistance, you'd read halfway on the 8-bit ADC (ie, ~128).

Hmmm.

Hugo

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#230593 - 25/08/2004 11:39 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: altman]
Roger
carpal tunnel

Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5680
Loc: London, UK
Quote:
It should be within the range: if the pullup resistance is the same as the external resistance, you'd read halfway on the 8-bit ADC (ie, ~128).


Yeah, I remember that now -- my memory of electronics is a bit rusty, at best.

Anyway, the other 4 buttons work fine, which will do for now

For reference, on open circuit (5k), I'm getting 0xD7 (84%), and on Vol+ (145ohm), I'm getting 0x22 (13%).

More completely, I'm seeing the following values:

Vol- (53.0 to 55.2 ohm): 0x0d
Vol+ (145.2 - 149.2 ohm): 0x22
Seek up (297.6 - 304.8 ohm): 0x3d
Seek down (556.0 - 568.4 ohm): 0x5e
Mode (1026.3 - 1048.1 ohm): no reading
Open circuit (5006.1 - 5107.3 ohm): 0xd7

I did get a reading for Mode on my multimeter before I connected it all to the tuner, but it's a crappy old analogue multimeter, so I couldn't tell you exactly what I got.

Quote:
Hmmm.


Quite.
_________________________
-- roger

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#230594 - 25/08/2004 12:27 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: Roger]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
The 0x is only needed if you're entering the values in hex rather than in base-10. But the true sin is that the button code display omits the 0x when displaying the hex stalk values.. I'll fix that, and the html page also.

Cheers

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#230595 - 25/08/2004 12:40 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: Roger]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
Mmm.. I wondered at first if your Mode button is reading *exactly* 127 (0x7f) and triggering some kind of weird bug in Hijack... but a quick peek at the code shows that the Button Display just nabs the third byte of the stalk packet and displays it raw, with very little logic around it all. The only value that is ignored (for the display) is 0xff.

Cheers

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#230596 - 26/08/2004 19:12 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: Roger]
Derek
addict

Registered: 16/08/1999
Posts: 453
Loc: NRW, Germany
Hi Roger,

I get the same readings, except that for seek down I get 0x5f instead of 0x5e. My Mode button works fine. I get a value of 0x85 for it.

As far as connecting the cable to the 17 pin connector goes, I found a header that fitted not too bad and soldered the cable to that. Mind you it wasn't a perfect fit - there is still a bit of tape in there somewhere :-)
_________________________
(list 6284, Mk1 S/N 00299 4GB blue [sold]. Mk2 S/N 080000094 20GB blue)

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#230597 - 27/08/2004 05:46 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: Derek]
Roger
carpal tunnel

Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5680
Loc: London, UK
Quote:
I get the same readings, except that for seek down I get 0x5f instead of 0x5e. My Mode button works fine. I get a value of 0x85 for it.


Well, that'd make sense -- they are only ranges anyway. I just put +/- 0x01 on each of the pairs.

As for the Mode button, I'll try your 0x85 value and see what happens. I should just get the multimeter back out and measure the actual resistance -- to make sure that the button's still working.

Of course, I can't actually decide what to configure the mode button to do. Play/Pause maybe. I don't use the tuner enough to use it for that.

Oh, and how do I get the vol+/- buttons to work a bit faster?
_________________________
-- roger

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#230598 - 27/08/2004 17:01 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: Roger]
Derek
addict

Registered: 16/08/1999
Posts: 453
Loc: NRW, Germany
I have the values +/- 0x03 - evidently this is fine with the latest software.

I use the Mode button for a source toggle - just put the values in under KSource. The only slightly annoying thing is that AM seems to come up twice and I'd like to take AUX out of the loop as I have nothing connected to it. Might have to work some IRTranslate magic on it when I get time :-)
Oh, hitting the Mode button also cuts Traffic Announcements off if you decide you don't want to listen to the one that has just interrupted your listening pleasure.

You could also get the Vol. Buttons working faster using IRTranslate I reckon - make one push send 5 pushes to the empeg or something like that.
_________________________
(list 6284, Mk1 S/N 00299 4GB blue [sold]. Mk2 S/N 080000094 20GB blue)

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#348115 - 16/10/2011 06:48 Re: European Ford Steering Wheel Remote works!!!! [Re: Roger]
Roger
carpal tunnel

Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5680
Loc: London, UK
Originally Posted By: Roger
For example, I've got mine set to:


Having just rebuilt my mk2a, I discover that the values have drifted. I'm just about to go out to the car to test with the following values:

stalk_lhs=0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff,0x39,0x42,0x59,0x62,0x20,0x28,0x0b,0x14,0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff
_________________________
-- roger

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