OK, thinking about taking the plunge with the stock steering wheel buttons on my jeep. This link

http://www.wjjeeps.com/steering_btn_3c.jpg

shows what they look like, and as you see there are simple resistors in series with each switch. I have (5) functions available, up, down, center btn on left switch. And Up, down on the right one.

Question: can the resistance values the sony stalk interface looks for be set, or is it hard coded? I dont want to rip the steering wheel apart if I dont have to, but either way, anyone have thoughts on how to best map functions? Having not used the tuner yet, Im not sure what buttons do what in tuner mode.

I'm thinking right rocker = vol up/vol down (knob turn?)
Left rocker = <<, >> and the round button. I loose the down arrow, but for most things I could live with that. Radio mode?

Thanks-
Jeff

I think the best place to start is here:

http://www.riocar.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Developer_Info&file=index&myfaq=yes&id_cat=14&categories=Mk2+Hardware

and

http://empeg-hijack.sourceforge.net/stalk.html

Oh, and:

http://www.riocar.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=FAQ&file=index&myfaq=yes&id_cat=11&categories=Hijack+Kernel+Questions

You can supposedly set the stalk resistor values that Hijack recognises:

[hijack]
;; Min/max A/D pairs for all ten buttons on a Stalk
;; Button order is: KOff,KSource,KAtt,KFront,KNext,KPrev,KVolUp,KVolDown,KRear,KBottom
stalk_lhs=0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0x40,0x4f,0x53,0x62,0x66,0x7a,0x7c,0x90,0x90,0x90,0xa0,0xa0
stalk_rhs=0x00,0x07,0x10,0x1c,0x24,0x30,0x34,0x40,0x42,0x4e,0x54,0x60,0x68,0x74,0x7e,0x8a,0x94,0xa0,0xa0,0xb5

(I say "supposedly" as I haven't tested it myself.)

You'll need to calculate (edit: or measure) the A/D values based on the resistors your buttons have - relevant info is in the Developer section of RioCar.Org.

Yes it definitely works and works well. Had my Denali steering wheel remote "custom" matched to the Soundgate adapter/tuner and it worked flawlessly (once I had it wired correctly ).

This is very interesting info. I wish there were a way to get Hijack to display the resistor values that the tuner module is seeing, without having to open up the dash and measure. Is that a limitation of the tuner module, or can it be done in software somehow?

You can get it to spit the values out on the serial port, if you set the debug setting in config.ini.

You can get it to spit the values out on the serial port, if you set the debug setting in config.ini.

Thanks for that information. Useless, though, since my goal is to retrieve the information without ripping open the dash and hauling a computer out to the car to plug into the serial port. Can't bring the stalk equipment into the house because one critical part of the equipment is the car's steering wheel. (We're using a factory button interface.)

Good news is that the values are software-accessible, it's just a question of making the software.

Hmmm. Wonder if The Lord could be convinced to pipe that information to an optional Hijack screen?

The first thing you could do is use "button codes display" to see if any of the steering controls actually work already. Who knows you may get lucky.

Right. First thing we did. Some of the controls work intermittently. So the next step I wanted to try was to see if there were any other resistor values being sent to the controller which were out-of-range.

If it is a simple case of out-of-range values, then simply programming the player to interpret proper in-range values is all we'd need to do.

But until we can see those values in the car, we'll never know.

In reply to:

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Can't bring the stalk equipment into the house because one critical part of the equipment is the car's steering wheel. (We're using a factory button interface.)

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Same problem here, but luckily I have a laptop!

Wonder if The Lord could be convinced to pipe that information to an optional Hijack screen?

This would rock. I'm going to help Ryan install his empeg into his S2000 (as posted in the install forum) and try and wire up the dash controls, and this would make life a bit easier.

Yeah, unfortunately, according to this thread, Mark and his SWMBO are otherwise occupied at the moment and won't be compiling any kernels for a while.

hm. Well, first i've gotta sorce a 4 or 5 way switch... like a joystick with a pushbutton. Sorta like the one V99 is using but without the rotary encoder. Can't find one after half an hour of searching.

You could cannibalize one out of a Karma...

hahah =] as soon as dell ships it!

first i've gotta sorce a 4 or 5 way switch... like a joystick with a pushbutton

If you don't find a joystick with pushbutton, there was a small & cheap joystick linked in this post.

/Michael

There shouldn't be a problem getting Hijack to display the ADC values it's seeing (more useful than the resistances) with an interface like the Button Codes Display. It's just a matter of writing the code...

You could write a player replacement that does nothing except listen to the tuner port (/dev/ttyS1, I think) for stalk command packets, and display the values it receives - there's sufficient documentation in the Developer section. I think there's an incantation for /bin/od to print out stalk packets - we just need to adapt that to dump them to the player screen. (Then you bring the empeg back indoors and move the real /usr/bin/player back into its rightful place).