Just off the top of my head how much would I have to spend to con one of your Tech-No Gods to Remote the 4 buttons and dial on an empeg and add some sort of video out Even if it is Mono-chrome. Seeing I am Not William Gates III could I afford it ?


HUmm after reading this Post maybe It can be done

http://empeg.comms.net/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=empeg_tech&Number=180046&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&fpart=

While that post might seen promising, this one seems more promising:

http://empeg.comms.net/php/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=prodject&Number=159611&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&vc=1

Matthew

By remote the buttons I mean a wired shallow 1/2 Din face with the four buttons and a knob the face plate isn't needed if it has video out put

Remote buttons are doable.. I did it with a little joystick that has all 7 empeg actions (up/down/left/right, knob cw/ccw/push) on one stick, but you just need 7 things that act as switches and a way to convert that into a serial signal. I could possibly put something together for you if you want to email me, vincent@applesolutions.com

I think there was someone else who had component video out working, don't see the thread after a quick search though. Displaying over serial to a VFD like I have and foxtrot is working on is also doable.

This is what I've done (the cig lighter knob is the joystick, the other buttons are for garage doors, display power, and 6 software buttons sent to the Empeg to do whatever with; Display software is set to only use 1/4 of the 256x64 VFD right now):

Whoot half way there now where is that Video out Person
{Looks around)
I could just wait for tony he normally posts the links about 2 seconds after someone tells me about them.\

V99... that is... amazing!

Just need to find a Empeg with a busted VFD and I am 2/3 of the way there,

So did you just use the switch and plug it into the serial connections with a few hacks or did you wire it to the buttons on the front of the unit /

Where did you find the joy stick ??

As far as video out, here Tony FAQ'ed someone else with these links:

Link 1

Link2

So the short answer for video out, no. Go with the serial output like V99 and foxtrot_xray.

There's lots more info in the VFD thread in Projects, and more pictures here...

The short version is that I have a Basic Stamp that reads inputs from the joystick and buttons on its I/O pins and sends out serial characters to the Empeg.. Some simple software runs on the player to read the commands coming in on the serial and send the appropriate button code to Hijack for it to inject to the Player.

There's a bunch of components on the board to convert the joystick's interface into 7 separate signals, and the rest of the board is a switching power supply to regulate car voltage to +5 for the display and circuitry.

The display is just connected to the serial out of the player, a different app sends drawing commands to replicate the Empeg's bitmap. The display I chose is relatively slow (38.4kbps) so some software optimization (beyond "send whatever pixels have changed") is needed to get it to run fast, but it hasn't really bothered me using it in the current state for a several weeks.

I picked this display because it has 4 Empeg screens worth of pixels (to say run 4 apps at once in separate virtual displays), but there are several different size & resolution choices, all of which are faster or at least the same "speed" (baudrate/pixel count). foxtrot_xray chose the tiny one, I also have a medium sized (a little smaller than the Empeg's IIRC) fast (115.2kbps) 140x32 one around here somewhere. There's other ones too, and maybe LCDs.. any graphic module driven by serial can potentially be used.

The joystick is from Grayhill.. It's neat and perfect for this use, but quite expensive (something like $80, and you have to buy many, or annoy them into selling you a sample).

Regarding the second FAQ link above, at least my software is all userland (and gets starved for a couple seconds whenever the player feels like spinning up the drives... need to do something about that). There's still some software to be improved, but it all basically works at an acceptable level for my daily use right now, so I think I'm well beyond preliminary .

Some simple software runs on the player to read the commands coming in on the serial and send the appropriate button code to Hijack for it to inject to the Player.

V99 that's great!

Could you give us more info about the software you created? I'd like to try and adapt it to recognize button pushes from my stock stereo which is converted to serial output using an obd-2 to serial converter.

Could you give us more info about the software you created?

There's really almost nothing to it. I just open the serial port (you could borrow the serial code from gpsapp) and wait for data, then decide what to inject based on what letter I received. All the button code constants are defined in hijack.h. I wrote the basic stamp code to send capital letters for press and the same letter lowercase for release; If you don't handle presses and releases separately then you can't do long presses. U/D/L/R/K for the 5 fascia buttons, + - for knob rotation, and Z/X/C/V/B/N/M for the 7 (only ended up using 6) 'soft' buttons.

The only problem is that the app runs as just another application, so the Player can take all the CPU time and starve it whenever it wants. This usually happens when it spins up the disks, which is usually you're pushing buttons. Then keypresses get queued up in the serial buffer and when the app gets processor time again the actions all get blasted out. It should be possible to give it the same priority as the Player since the button listener app needs virtually no processor time to check for input every once in a long (to the CPU) while, but I don't know how to go about doing that in a way that doesn't stick it in the kernel.. anybody?

unsigned long buttons[2] = { 2, 0 };



serial_open();

displayFD = open("/dev/display",O_WRONLY);



while(1)

{

	got = serial_read(&buf,1);

	

	if ( got > 0 )

	{

		switch ( buf )

		{

		case 'U':	// Up

			buttons[1] = IR_TOP_BUTTON_PRESSED;

			break;

		case 'u':

			buttons[1] = IR_TOP_BUTTON_RELEASED;

			break;

		...

		}

			

		ioctl(displayFD, EMPEG_HIJACK_INJECTBUTTONS, &buttons);

	}



	usleep(10000);

}

Oh, and this doesn't work for bringing up the Hijack menu.. Haven't found a solution to that yet (or really looked...).

This might be a suitable joystick here.

Not the same as V99's but small and cheap.

BTW, V99, NICE job!

-Rex.

If you write the button codes to /proc/empeg_notify, then they will receive full Hijack processing.. menu and all.

The player sets itself to Real-Time priorirty at startup, which is why it runs and your app doesn't run when things are really busy. You may be able to use strace to see exactly how it accomplishes that.

Cheers

I am not a programmer or a electronics (truth be told when I took my electronics courses in school Nixon was still in office) so forgive me if I say something stupid.

Why does it have to be an app is it possible to remove the vfd/face plate and just attach to the same connection points the normal buttons and dial attach to ?

is it possible to remove the vfd/face plate and just attach to the same connection points the normal buttons and dial attach to ?

Please click here.

You could do that if you really wanted to... The display board PIC probably wouldn't like you having long wires though.
Also if you botch it and break the display board then it's going to be expensive to fix and nearly impossible to replace.

This should answer your question:

http://www.riocar.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=FAQ&file=index&myfaq=yes&id_cat=3&categories=Car+installation+questions&faqent=11#11

The pebble remains, Grasshopper.

This might be a suitable joystick here.
Not the same as V99's but small and cheap.

While small, nifty and quite useful for another project I have in mind (thank you for the link!), that one only provides the up/down/left/right buttons, while the $80 one also provides knob press and rotary encoder - all in the same package.

/Michael

SO in a nut shell what I want can't be done for less then the cost of buying a new SUV ?

Well, IIRC I believe PCA said something about presenting three different ways of doing the video out to the client. The one he implemented was the most expensive, but also best, option. No idea as to on what level the other two options would have landed.

/Michael

I also wonder how Hugo made out with his installment of a remote display into his gauge unit?

As was alluded to, it can't be done for less than the price of an SUV if you want it to be contained within the empeg. Buying a tiny pc with video out and having it run VNC to the empeg would be much cheaper, but would take up more room and take a bit more time to boot up.

Matthew

The pebble remains, Grasshopper

Yes, faqmaster, I am not yet worthy to travel the world alone.

The pebble was already gone!

This one time even I, a mortal, beat our amazing FAQ Master to the punch!

"As was alluded to, it can't be done for less than the price of an SUV if you want it to be contained within the empeg. Buying a tiny pc with video out and having it run VNC to the empeg would be much cheaper, but would take up more room and take a bit more time to boot up. "

As for this statement I would gladly Pay 500-1000 to get this done Plug parts I don't really care if it fits inside the empeg or not.



HUmmm if I had a Empeg with a broken Screen and NO sled I could use VNC and get the video out from this
http://www.ibuypower.com/product-pc/pocket-epc2.htm
or one of the other Micro_pc I have seen.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3433281919&category=1244

Kind of defeats the purpose Maybe the best laid Plans of Mice and Men can not full in my order.. its just too spendy to add video out to a empeg and if you are going to the trouble of installing a PC you might as well just use the PC in the first Place.

Which Brings us to my next questions anyone got a (shivers at the thoought) a Empeg Like software that runs on MS platform or Redhat Suse I think everyone will agree the empge Player software is much better then Musicmatch or Winamp for ease of use.

Woohoo! He's back!

...And really, guys. I'm almost finished! I won't get into details (new house, trip cross country coming up), I've been way too freakin' busy..

In a nutshell, the (my project) display is powered BY the Empeg (or external PSU), and accepts serial (RS-232) input. No processing is done on the Empeg side (except for what to display) - the VFD accepts straight-forward commands to draw/erase/write to it.

No software's been written for it - I tried, and just don't have the knowledge.

Me.

No software's been written for it - I tried, and just don't have the knowledge.

I can put together something using one of the obvious drawing algorithms and playing tag back and forth with you testing it.. For anything more complicated I would definitely need one to work with.

Kind of defeats the purpose Maybe the best laid Plans of Mice and Men can not full in my order

Are you sure you can't use one of the VFDs? They're available in a wide range of sizes, from bigger than the Empeg's (the one I'm using) to really tiny (the one foxtrot's using).. you could put the tiny one almost anywhere (in your instrument cluster perhaps), it's something like the size of a pack of gum. Something like what I've done can easily be done for < $500.