Hi, I just bought a Brand New Vauxhall/Opal Vectra. I want to put my Empeg Into It and have it wired up to teh steering wheel controls and if possible the dashboard display.
It is a mark 1 unit. In my previous car I had it as a primary Unit and a Kenwood 8070 stelth system as my secondary unit. The In car Cd player from teh vectra does not have any aux outputs other than to an electrical arieal. Does anyone have any idea's how I can instal my Empeg Mark 1 and get teh steering wheel controls to work. ?

Many Thanks
Simon

To pipe the stock headunit through the empegs AUX in you'd need a high level to low level converter (speaker level to line level) which takes your speaker outs and gives you RCA outs instead.

To use the steering wheel controls... For a MkI I think you need a custom bit of circuitry in the for of a small microprocessor that translates keypresses to serial commands which you can pipe to the serial connector. This has been done, but I don't recall by who - search the board... Or, possibly some sort of interface with an IR-transmitter that sends IR-commands...

/Michael

there is adapters out there that convert steering wheel remotes to IR for various head units talk to a decent car hifi place and they should be able to point you in the right direction. Then using Hijack you can get that to drive the empeg.

Also there is something somewhere that someone got a Mk1 to work with a sony remote and a puegout stalk so it is possible

As to running it through the standard head unit i think that would be most difficult i would say sod it and buy an amp and an adapter plate and run with empeg only.

There is another option for the remote it gives you an excuse to buy a Mk2 and a radio module and use an adpter to a sony stalk from vectra buttons

Disconnect the front speakers and convert them to Line Level using a convertor. Use a decent 4 channel Amp to power the speakers in the car.

You will not as far as I know be able to output the Empeg Display to the display on the Vectra.

Aren't you going to have a problem anyway, I thought Vectra's only has 1 Din rather than 2 Din dashboard ?

Most of your questions are answered in the FAQ located here.

OK so by the looks of it the easiest thing to do is sell my mark 1 and buy a mark 2. I think I have ditched the idea of having 2 units so will just install the empeg into my car. But i definately want teh steering wheel controls to work. Is it simply as easy as buying a sony stalk and that will work on teh MK2 and the Vectra steering wheel controls ?
Thanks for all your help
Simon

before you sell it go down to the nearest decent hifi shop and look at the pioneer cdr-s80 the steering wheel remote that they supply it is a very good unit and using Mlords hijack software you can get it do more than the rio remote that is what i use.

Also see if there is an adapter to go from vectra steering wheel controls to a sony stick interface cause you might get the Mk2 and still have no easy way to convert wheel controls

If you are going to get a sony stick ensure you have somewhere to put it before making the jump to a Mk2

But the Mk2a has a few improvements over the mk1

Where in the country are you cause if it is in the far north ray smiths in aberdeen is very good and he knows a little bit about empegs

The Kenwood steering wheel remote is also nice looking and people here have had good success with it (especially when MLord's hack). Of course that still leaves him running a second set of controls and not his stock wheel controls. :)

Bruno

Is it simply as easy as buying a sony stalk and that will work on teh MK2 and the Vectra steering wheel controls ?

The Sony Stalk is a third-party joystick that attaches to the side of your steering column. If you use a Sony Stalk, it will not work with the Vectra steering wheel controls, it will bypass them completely and you will use only the Sony Stalk.

If you can find a stereo shop which happens to have a Vectra-To-Sony adapter system (I do not know if such a system exists or not), then you can plug that into your Vectra, and plug the other end into the Mk2 tuner module, and it should work.

Inspired by this thread, I have updated the FAQ item about to steering-wheel adapters. I have illustrated it and clarified the text a little bit. Check out the changes here

got it

http://www.autoleads.co.uk/Cat%201/fks_intro_fset.html

Note that tms13 has problems with one of these adaptors; it just didn't work with the tuner module. Not quite sure why, the design internally looked sensible enough. It did do some funny things - eg, "overload" the buttons to get more functions out of them, which may have been fine on a sony head unit, but just confused things with the empeg in place.

If you do get one, remember to hook up the power wire and also to get an assurance from the supplier that you can return it if it doesn't work with the empeg.

Hugo

In reply to:

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Inspired by this thread, I have updated the FAQ item about to steering-wheel adapters. I have illustrated it and clarified the text a little bit. Check out the changes here

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You might want to add a pointer to the thread where I described my home-made factory-to-Sony adapter. It was very easy to make (for well under a fiver, GBP).

Thanks, I've updated the FAQ with a pointer to the resistor values in the developer section.

Hi.

I also added the values that were posted in http://empeg.comms.net/php/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=empeg_tech&Number=44183&page=&view=&sb=&o= to that part of the developer infos.

cu,
sven

Ah, thanks, that's very useful.