Has anyone ever thought about driving a Kenwood CD-Changer bus from the empeg. (and not the othe way around)

The reason I ask is that Kenwood makes Sirius Tuners (and probably XM, but I'm a Sirius subscriber) that live on the changer bus. They have the advantage of being cheap, ($50) and having a relatively well-known interface. There are lots of interface boxes that go from OEM head units to the Kenwood bus, just not the one I really want: RS-232.

TimeTrax has announced a USB interface, but that doesn't quite help either.

The Kenwood bus is sync. serial, but I don't know if this is something that could reasonably be implemented in a PIC, or if this ia a more major project.

Any thoughts/wisdom/laughter/interest?

-Z

Zandr, you know better than that.

Unless an RS-232-to-Sirius-or-XM controller circuit already exists somewhere in the Real World, I don't see anyone in the Empeg group rushing to build one...

I see your point about Empeg-to-CDchanger-cum-Sirius could be SLIGHTLY more likely, but still on the very unlikely side of things...

Tony,

There are several examples of PC <> Satellite radio interfaces. I've been digging a bit further, and the XM Direct tuner interfaces appear to be straight serial interface, and several folks on the mp3car.com forums have software support for in-car PCs.

On the Sirius side of the fence, it appears that there's a serial interface between the display and tuner boards in many of the plug-n-play receivers.

So, I'm hammering out the hardware, I think this will soon be just a software problem.

And the thought of a serial-to-Kenwood bus adaptor isn't unreasonable. The Sirius version of the TimeTrax is basically a USB<>Kenwood adaptor. As soon as they start shipping, I'm sure someone will tear it apart...if there's a USB<>serial chip, we should be able to reach in with level shifters and get a serial interface.

I'll gather up some links tomorrow; I've got an early morning.

-Z

Forget the changer bus. It turns out that the Sirius Starbase uses a normal async. serial interface between the display and the tuner box.

Only level shifters are required, like the XMDirect.

So, I'm going to pile on to the XM on Empeg thread over in Technical.

-Z