Hello all,

I read about the existence of a waiting/preorder list for possible Tuner modules for the empeg, but can't find it... Does anyone know where I could add my name? ;-)

I'm certainly not interested in looking for it on eBay... but would be an important add to my coming unit... Not only for traffic information, but for news in general...

Thank you,

Alberto (waiting for his Mk2.a)

There is no waiting list. The guys at empeg are in discussion with the orgininal factory about having another batch made and funded either by SonicBlue or more likely a third party. Nothing has been decided yet though.

Does anyone know the current realistic demand level for the tuners?

The crazy people will pay over $300, the rest of us would probably pay $100. Even though I have a tuner in my car, I have not used it once in the last month.

Sell it to me for $150 then, and we both win!

in the last unofficial poll, it was over 200 people at least.

Does anyone have a realistic idea of what a run of 200 would cost? I had heard SonicBlue had made essentially zero dollars at $100. I have no idea what their production run was. Also, does anyone know what the status of the (I am assuming) outside manufacturing firm is regarding the boxes, boards chips, harnasses, small parts, etc.?

I believe I read that the CarPlayer (is this correct) route might not happen at all.

When I said demand, I should have specified # not $. Is 200 a good #?

If you have a search through Rob's posts over the last three weeks you should find one with details on the likely cost of a production run of ther tuners.

I offered to put up the cash for another run. No reply from Rob. Perhaps this is a sign that something is underway...

You're not the only one. I know of some very affluent geeks (with empegs and tuners) that have expressed interested in backing a run if in the end they stand a chance of breaking even or making a small return - no desire to gouge empeg owners. On a small run like we are talking about, that's not always that easy.

I've seen in in person, but only the outside. Is there anything special inside? Is this something that could be made with some parts from Radio Shack? I know it's not THAT easy, but if someone was to source and order all the parts, could they get a breadboard and spend a weekend making their own tuner?

Theres a high quality oem tuner module inside. I doubt you could make one out of radio shack parts, or thats what would have been done in the first place. Dont let me discourage you though, im sure someone here could come up with something that works!!!

Sean

So who's willing to crack open a tuner module and have a peek inside?

Cracking open the tuner module wouldn't do you a lot of good. It's not something you can build from Radio Shack parts. There are some expensive parts in there which aren't available just anywhere. Also, there is som custom firmware programming which goes into the chips on the Tuner board, and you can't duplicate that programming without some serious work.

OK Well that finishes that idea I guess. I didn't realise that the tuner module had any "brains". I though it would be a dumb module driven by the empeg and that the modules although not impossible to get would have been easier to get than a tuner at the moment.

..You could certainly take a cheapo tuner and hook it to the AUX ports though, but it's not going to be controllable by the Empeg...

It would take some work, but it is possible to make one from parts bought from different places.
1) Controller (PIC?)
2) Radio receiver (for instance from phillips)
3) RDS decoder

The Radio receiver must have an "audio-out" that is compatible with the audio in to the empeg. (This was discussed here some time ago). (Where it my philips
components catalogue?)

The the PIC would have to take care of the protocols, RDS decoding, tuning of the frequency etc.

This probably wouldn't give us all the functionality of the current empeg tuner, like for instance signal strength. I don't know how accurate the frequency reading would be either.

Marius

There is no RDS decoder in the tuner, it's built into the empeg's DSP in the main box. It's really not worth trying to replicate the design - it'd cost more and take a lot of your time!

We're still working on having another batch made by whatever means we can. Things are looking quite promising at the moment, fingers crossed & wait for an announcement...

Hugo

Cool!
I think you'll make a lot of people happy if you do...
The DSP in the empeg player must be designed to work with
some Radio circuit like the Phillips TEA6824T (The first one I could find while browsing my 1996 Philips semiconductor CD).

But as you say... It will take too much of my time to be worth the trouble. I could probably achieve the same in a shorter time with some standard radio connedcted to AUX in and the serial port, and do all the work by hacking the kernel...

(Or maybe I should take on the challenge, just to show I have a master's degree in digital system design (Including VLSI and microelectronics) ;-)

Marius (Escort Cab + Mark II)

Could we set up a poll on this list and send them the results (i.e. how many units and what we would pay). maybe this would help influence them to move on it!!!

A poll has been suggested (and even tried here) many times. When the time is right, Rob will use official channels to get an accurate count.

You mean like this poll:

http://empeg.comms.net/php/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=empeg_general&Number=50908&page=&view=&sb=&o=

We don't need to be influenced.