I currently have an Alpine CVA-1005 head unit in my car. For those that are not familiar with this head unit, it has a motorized slide/fold 6.5 inch color LCD screen for video applications. Once the empeg comes (reg #144) I will be running the audio from the alpine to the aux input on the empeg. I would like to get some song information on that screen from the empeg through the video inputs. The empeg guys have already stated there will be no TV output implemented on the empeg itself :( I realize that the exact display the empeg uses would not make a good TV display.

My question is: (finally) Is it possible to output the song info and maybe next song to the serial line? If possible, how difficult is it and who knows how? Is this something the guys at empeg could impliment since they know the most about it?
Once the info is out on the serial line I can take over and get that to a character generator or other hardware to put up on the screen.
Does anyone want to team up with me on this project?
My electrical knowledge, your software knowledge!
Are simple visualizations through the serial line too much for real time screen updates?

I can also see this desired by people that would like to plug it into a TV at home.

Thanks,

Alex Lear

There would be a lot of advantages to having the Empeg output the song information to the serial port. For instance, there's a remote-control applet that you can run on your PC that remote-controls the Empeg from the serial port. This applet requires you to export your song database to the hard disk so it can display song titles- but it wouldn't need this step if the Empeg just output the song data on the serial port.

There are probably dozens of applications for such a capability. I think that making a character generator interface for your Alpine TV screen would be a LOT of work for very little benefit, but I like the idea of putting the song data out on the serial port for other reasons. It could be enabled/disabled in config.ini or something.

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Tony Fabris

Actually Tony I think it would be incredibly simple with devices like the BOB-II from here http://www.decadenet.com

I'm glad you see the advantages to it though :)

Thanks for the feedback,

Alex Lear

I guess I didn't really mention why I wanted to do this. The idea is to make the display bigger than the empegs. It would be a small increase in the car but it would help if a friend was controlling it from the back seat. And it would be a huge increase for use at home on a regular TV.
Even though I use my glasses for driving, those people with poor eyesight know how frustrating small displays can be.

Alex Lear

There was a similar question to this before in this thread.

OK - the output is different than your's but there's the same problem to be fed from the empeg.



TeeMcBee

Alex,
I'm in exactly the same boat. Well, I don't have an Alpine - mine is a Kenwood LCD monitor (which gives me the additional fun of having two devices reacting to the same remote ), but that's the only difference. So, yes, I'd like to join you building something to make some empeg output appear on the LCD through the video in. The BOB-II you mentioned seems like a very good starting point. I'm an electronics engineer, but I really only worked on the software side of projects (but very close to hardware there), so as you said: your hardware know-how, my software know-how!
While I have your attention, and as you seem to know about hardware products, let me ask you about another idea I had. The empeg's StrongARM integrates a standard LCD interface, IIRC, and it's used in the empeg. So, if we could somehow get access to this interface, then all we'd need is some sort-of-standard LCD-to-Video-converter. Does such a thing exist? If so, and if we could find a way to connect it internlly, then it'd be really easy to get the empeg output (including visuals!) on our LCDs... . So again, does such an LCD-to-Video converter exist?

Daniel

Daniel,
It's great that there is someone else with a similar idea. Seems like there is also a lot of support for sending the song info out on the serial line. You guys at empeg could impliment this fairly easy.
As for the LCD to video converter, I am not aware of anyone producing this because there probably isn't high demand for it but it could be made. I have been messing around with sampling an RS170 video signal (like NTSC w/o color) and pulling the data into a microcontroller. Then I modify it and send it back out. I am using a sync pulse extracter for good timing. However, going this route would require the empeg to be opened (which would void the warranty). Since I intend to keep my warranty I will probably just try to get the signals out the serial line. I can make the display as fancy as I want but I will probably keep it simple at first. There probably isn't much chance of me figuring out how to get the visualization info out the serial connection. So to get a visualization on the external screen I will probably impliment my own DSP and make at least a basic spectrum analyzer. Probably just do an FFT on the audio output. I have experience with the analog devices SHARC DSP and the AD1847 Serial-Port 16-Bit SoundPort Stereo Codec. I realize I am reinventing the wheel here because the empeg is capable of so much more but this is how I know how to do it.

If more people are interested in a TV output please leave a message or email me so I know how much interest there is!

Alex Lear
[email protected]

Using the LCD output of the strongarm for video is a bad idea, simply because you'd have to disconnect the VFD; we run very strange timings and have things like 200Hz refresh, no retrace time, etc. It'd be pretty hard to get that into a standard video frame!

Hugo

from what i can see, your best option might be this:

1) create a plugin prog to send the song details over the serial (customizable in Emplode of course)

2) create a box to house a serial buffer/interpreter which has these connections:
- power
- serial in
- seral thru
- video in
- video out

This would let you do overlays onto standard vid signals but there may be more than meets the eye to this scal of project.

how about a box that has a VFD like in Hugo's mp3_mobile prototype?

this can then be mounted in useful places like on the dash to relfect off the windscreen - giving a HUD kind of thing.

This way other apps can call strings to it and it shows the text.

Just another use for track output over serial

Murray 06000047
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The problem with the VFD like I used on the mp3mobile is this: it can't be top-bottom inverted and so might be hard to use as a HUD (unless you're happy with reading things upsidedown :) )

We already have simple track output, which outputs the FID and timecode of the current song; this was done for a user who had his empeg hooked to a web interface for a conference somewhere - he did the name lookup from the CSV exported track list. We can send the name out too, without a lot of hassle - but it's not the highest priority thing on the list at the moment.

Hugo