Has anyone connected his or her empeg to the steering wheel remote of a modern Chrysler or does anyone have a suitable schematic to do so?

I am lucky enough to have a tuner module and want to connect directly, ideally without using any interface. I put a volt and ohmmeter on the wire, which I think, comes from the steering wheel but nothing registered when pushing the buttons. A search of the web shows PAC have an interface to go to IR and I found another schematic which suggested Chrysler use a digital interface instead of a resistors like Sony. This seems a bit over the top for a car manufacture but I would guess its possible they transmit IR signals over a cable like Sony’s S-Link interface.

Can anyone clarify or provide help?

The vehicle is a modern Jeep Grand Cherokee if that makes a difference.

As stated here in the FAQ, Soundgate makes one for GM and Chrysler vehicles.

This assumes that you've got the tuner module to work as a Sony interface. If you don't, then the PAC unit with IR capability is what you need.

I don't have any experience with the Soundgate unit, and I'm interested in seeing if it works for you because I have a friend with a Dodge Durango who would like to make his steering wheel controls work.

My buddy bought one for his Trans-am. It went to a Kenwood deck. At first he had many problems with it, but after soundgate finally decided to replace it(after a year!), it's been working just fine. He loves having those controls functional. Now I just have to talk him into an empeg!

Going by soundgates web site this unit only works with older Jeeps. And to be honest, if possible, I don't want any more boxes as there is no room behind the dash.

PS the FAQ's are great. I thought I had read all of them but some of that one was new to me.

Ok, it's a bummer.

I put a scope on the connection and it is a pulsed digital signal as suggested on the web and is does look very like baseband IR. Not being put off by that fact and after reading the FAQ, I had a look at Hijack which allows IR translation. A couple of hours later and with a small circuit to insert between the IR receiver on the front panel and the the Empeg, allowing me to invert and 'inject' my baseband signal directly into the Empeg I was ready to do some tests.
I loaded up Hijack and tried the 'button display code' but to no avail. Try as I might the Empeg just would not see the signal.

So my options look like creating my own interface to connect to the sony port using a PIC microprocessor and a digital pot or use one of the PIC circuits on the net to create unique serial data stream for each signal and then find a way to use serial commands to control the Empeg (I think that has already been done?).

Anyway after spending the past two/three hours on this I have become depressed. The fact it's nearly 1am has nothing to do with it!

Starting to make progress, I found that by following instructions at http://www.logjamelectronics.com/swixinstall3.html, I was able to get a voltage level of between 0 & 5V from the steering harness. If you plan on trying this, DONNOT CUT THE WIRE as per the instructions. The 22K resistor in the tuner module is too high a value to match the resistors in the steering wheel. The wire is already carring 0-5V which is perfect for the tuner, so just splice it.

Please be carefull not to trigger the airbag!.

Now to my next problem, configuring the ini file for the correct voltage levels. I tried the hijack 'stalk_debug=1' command tonight, but could not get that to work. But using the hijack 'show buttons' did allow me to see three of the six possible buttons when pressed.

Things are looking up!