In reading the Dev info in the config.ini section, there is mention of a notify parameter. It says that a value of 2 will send the song / artist / genre / etc. on the serial port. What format does it do this in. Is this done with a few pulses in certain pins?

I ask because I want to interface it with the information panel in my Saab to which the stock radio used to print its data. I was going to run a prog that sent the new song name to it, but if the player already does it, would I be able to redirect that to a script to reformat the pulses so they are compatible with the Saab interface?

It says that a value of 2 will send the song / artist / genre / etc. on the serial port.

It doesn't mean to say 2.

The author of that document used the HTML "numbered list" tag to put the value in that table instead of just typing the numbers into the text. So the HTML is rendering differently on some browsers. On some browsers, the table properly shows "0." and "1.", on other browsers, it shows "1." and "2.".

The table, correctly rendered, should say that a value of 1 will send the song/artist/genre to the serial port, not 2.

I would correct the table, but that section of riocar.org isn't my monkey.


What format does it do this in.

RS-232 serial ASCII terminal output. To see it in action, configure the notify=1 entry, fully reboot the player, then watch it on your PC's serial port as described here in the FAQ.

would I be able to redirect that to a script to reformat the pulses so they are compatible with the Saab interface?

The real question is: what the Saab interface is. We don't know about the Saab interface. If we're lucky, it might happen to be RS-232 serial ASCII already. Then you might be able to do it in software somehow.

But if the Saab doesn't speak standard serial, then you will be stuck reverse-engineering it and making a ASCII-to-Saab hardware interface.

I'm *guessing* that the Saab interface is CAN. That wouldn't be impossible to interface - but it would need a cicuit built to convert serial <-> CAN. Maybe if we ever get a serial multiplexer designed, we could include a CAN interface too.

[edit] wouldn't...not would.

a CAN interface would be a VERY good idea. Then we could listen to all sorts of things flying round on the CAN bus. Things such as the instrument panel, a/c controls, radio (if you still have the factory radio in there), navigation system, central locking/alarm, ABS/ESP/TCS, airbag system, motor contoller, ... are connected via CAN bus in many modern vehicles. You can get to all sorts of information if you know how :-) Mind you, if you start writing back you have to be pretty careful. Sometimes the really critical stuff is password protected though, which is a really good thing :-)

Hmmm, will have to deal with some of this stuff when I start at Ford next month. Wonder if I will be allowed to pass any of it on ...

Argh, I forgot to actually go fix that. I did however start a mini holy war on the Mozilla bug page about it, and came to the conclusion that no current web spec states what to do if an ordered list starts at 0 or a negative number.

Thanks for the clarification ont eh LI items - I thought that was a little weird. (I use Mozilla 1.0 BTW)
When I first thought of this, I wa thinking that I would have to send the dat to the display pixel by pixel, but a friend told me that the display may already have some sort of ASCII chip in it so I just have to send the ASCII code from the empeg. If this is CAN (this is the first time I've heard of this) where can I get more info on it?
The reverse engineering sounds like a fun project.

http://www.interfacebus.com/Design_Connector_CAN.html is as good as I've seen for a starting point.

Bear in mind that your car might *not* be CAN. But most Euro manufacturers are moving to CAN - and Bosch gmbh have been a driving influence in the development of CAN.

I took another look at this thread and was wondering if you ever found out anything at Ford that you could share Also, did you ever hear of any CAN -> Serial interface out there?

Just got a little bored and searched around on this topic. I found these adapter and decided to put links to them here for posterity:

http://www.squarell.com/6632.htm
http://www.equinox-tech.com/products/details.asp?ID=190

Looks like some possible solutions exist.

http://www.bba-reman.com/content.aspx?co...motive_industry

Found this product that is supposed to interface with CAN plus it runs Linux and they will rovide the API's. Imagine having full access to the CAN bus to script your car!

http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT7679125282.html

Edit: Fixed link -wfaulk

That would be cool. It'd be even cooler to have it as a peripheral instead of as a separate computer, but not by a lot.