Hello all,

I have recently bought a new car, the old one was on its last leg and as much as I loved it, it was time to move on. Of course, my empeg stayed with me. My new car is a 2010 BMW 3 series with iDrive & Nav. The iDrive system plays Digital Audio (USB, etc), but compared to the empeg, it really sucks - It can't even handle gapless playback! So I'm looking for some way to integrate the empeg into my system. There is no good place to put the empeg in the dash, so here are a few ideas:

1. Mount the empeg on the ceiling - hard to see and control - may not even fit well, would probably look bad.

2. Use the Display extender and mount the display/controller below the DVD/CD disk interface - make it a custom fit. Mount the empeg in the rear and make all connections there. The face may stick out a little much and it would be pretty low to see.

3. Integrate with iDrive: This is probably more work than it's worth - but imagine: The iDrive has the best rotary controller I've ever used and it has all of the empeg input functioanly in one controller. The screen is in the right place. If the input of the iDrive monitor could be switched as well as the controller (like with a specialized kvm switch), this would work pertty well.

Last I heard, the visual output of the empeg was difficult to convert to other video formats. Also, not sure what needs to be done with the controller - if the iDrive system is picky about a kvm switch.

Anybody else think about this?

Wouldn't it be cool to be able to control your empeg via your smartphone?
I'm thinking of something like surfing to weblite from your home network, but in your car via a car-network.

I guess there's not an app for that. I don't have a smartphone or a car network, but this would be a perfect application for empegs with display issues.

Sort of like an iPhone version of the EmpegFace app? That would be awesome.

I think good results could be obtained by writing a smartphone-focused version of the empeg web lite stylesheet. The refresh rate of the display could be an issue, but it's hard to say for sure. I've got an in-car network but haven't had time to play around with this idea yet (presumably anything I developed for the Pre would work pretty well on an iPhone as well.)

For those not in the know, iDrive has nothing to do with phones or iPods. It is an onboard computer in BMW's that control the audio system, Nav, etc. The only exception is that one can connect an iPhone (and other devices) to it.

Does it still run Windows Mobile? iDrive is the main reason I doubt I will ever buy a BMW again.

Folks here can speak to some of the particulars of options #1 and #2, but to know what's involved with option #3, you'd probably need to talk to people on BMW forums who've tried similar things with other components. The empeg limitations are only part of the puzzle, in other words.

Doesn't iDrive have some kind of web browser built into it? Can it connect to Wifi at all?

It seems to run a version of QNX, but I'm not completely certain. The file system looks to be a specialized QNX or RF11 filesystem - I can't read it with the linux qnx module. The iDrive this year is much better - but still lacking - than previous years. It uses an 80 GB drive for storage of Nav/Digital Audio - it rips your CD's onto its internal drive - even has a GraceNote internal cddb for ripped CD's.

I don't expect the car manuafactures to ever be up to spead on in-car computing - it's not their focus. I was wrong to get my hopes up. If there is to be anything cutting esdge, we have to do it ourselves.

It doesn't have internet yet - I think that is coming, but not in my model. I have no wifi access, although I've heard rumors that it will be released in Europe before the US. The e90post forum doesn't have much in the way of information regarding the iDrive - it is still pretty advanced. I was the first to even partition table of the drive with fdisk.

Edit after more research: Actually, these cars have cellular phones (I believe EVDO) in them which allow them to communicate with BMW Assist and also to request more CD info for new CD's not in the internal GraceNote database.

My ideas are not so much a software hack to iDrive as that is beyond my resources to reverse-engineer. I'm thinking more along the lines of a hardware hack like an alternate input to the screen and some sort of KVM-style switch for the controller.

I'm only vaguely familiar with the Sony Stalk integration, but I'm thinking that the connection to the empeg would be somthing like that. The KVM question still depends on the way the controller itself works.

For the screen, there is a LVDS connection. This may be the more difficult task - to convert the LED panel to to that format. I have seen some LVDS converters for other video formats, but my knowledge of LVDS is rather limited so far. That screen is great in the direct sunlight.

Well, I realize that most aspects of this mod are far from easy, but seeing the slowness of car companies to make a decent car Media player make me inclined to look into it.

Who knows, maybe years down the road, someone can get their hands on more information on the iDrive system and hijack it like The Lord did.

Going back to this, I am still convinced that i can use the iDrive controller to control the empeg, but the LVDS connection is definately a waste of time.

There are thrid party addons (like NavVideo) for the BMW Nav screen that let you input composite and VGA signals. If I can get one of those types of signals, I can just use one of those.

For gtetting that signal, my thoughts first went to the Composite Video Out thread (http://empegbbs.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/292681) but that is too hard (if only it were available for sale. It was definately done before it's time).

Maybe the CCD camera idea would work - but it seems a bit too clunky. Any new ideas on this?