OK - here's a question. I know that Hugo's been playing around w/ the wireless ethernet on the empeg, so this question is directed at him.

What exactly does the empeg do when it's in the car. Does it goto powersaving mode and wakes up when it receives a packet? One of the ideas that I had was to stream audio to my regular computer/notebook from the empeg, which would be parked in the garage... (ok, ok - i'm not organized enough to have two versions of my music:) besides, and empeg-like interface (emplode plugin?) would be cool, with the same playlists/etc...)

Would the empeg need to remain on in this case? If it does, how bad is the power draw on this thing, and exactly how does that translate to battery drain? The last thing I would want is to wake up to a dead battery:)

Any inputs?
-mark

...proud to have owned one of the first Mark I units

To reduce power consumption to an absolute minimum, the unit powers off totally, with a drain of ~1mA - just running the power control PIC. This can be programmed using ioctls on /dev/empeg_power to power up the entire system even when the accessory signal isn't present (ie, car not running) - the power up time can be set in 15 second increments up to 10 minutes. If the main cpu is powered up with ACC inactive, a different bootcode (at 0xc000 in the flash as opposed to 0xe000) is called, allowing the kernel to be called with different options.

Currently, the software doesn't do a lot with this; however the idea is to power up the main system (minus HDDs) on these watchdog powerups enough to check for presence of a wireless link & if present to do a full powerup. This way, you reduce the average current needed for the periodic wakeup (maybe 5 seconds of full-power runtime (no HDDs, so maybe 200mA) every 5 minutes). You'd use the amp control line to power up the wireless adaptor too.

It's not really designed for constant-on streaming from car to house (this would run down your battery, though less than leaving a light on!) more for periodic updates. Eg, packaged news delivery arrives via cable modem and gets downloaded to the car into a special playlist for you to listen to on the way to work.

Hugo

sys 49152

TommyE

??

sys64738

;) ;)

Calvin

Streaming from my car to my desktop player has been one of my dreams also. However the dead battery problem has been one of my nightmares. To this end I was actually thinking of adding a Gell Cell under the hood to power the empeg and wireless ethernet, while running the AMPs off switched main battery power. This way even if I run the battery down it will only be the empeg battery not the main battery. Also, when the ignition is off, even if the empeg powers up, it won't be able to power up the amps. In any case, next time I start the car, the battery will be recharged.

Steve