I wonder how the face-plate is connected to the player?
Any possibility to interconnect the face and the player with some kind of wiring, such that he player can be put under the dash / freeing up the DIN-slot??

Henno
# 00120

I think you mean more of a remote display than a detachable face.

The detachable face idea will cause problems with RF emissions from the player unit if it is operated without the faceplate attached. (In addition to being a display face, it also contains a fine mesh screen to keep all that nasty RF inside the unit.) However, a remote display might be more feasible, as there would then be opportunity to permanently shield the front of the player unit. I don't think this idea is very high on empeg's list of things to do, though.

tanstaaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Doug's right.

The circuitry that connects the display board and buttons with the rest of the unit is pretty serious stuff, and it's not designed to be detachable.

I don't know if you could hack it and rig some kind of extension cord or not. I'm not sure I'd want to try, considering the unit's cost.

However, the serial interface on the back of the unit allows you (with some fairly inexpensive circuitry) to mount it out of sight and at least control it remotely, if not see it. Look on this BBS under the heading "Projects" for descriptions of the interfaces some folks are doing for this.

There is also a product called the MP Shuttle, which is a trunk-mounted hard disk MP3 player with a LCD control/display on an extension cord. It's not as feature-complete as the Empeg, it doesn't have properly-shock-mounted drives, and I've heard one report of difficulty fitting it with large-capacity hard disks, but I think it's more along the lines of what you're talking about.

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

the serial interface ( . ) allows you ( . . ) to mount it out of sight and at least control it remotely, if not see it.

Yeh, but without an eye on the display, control of a Mark1 will be very difficult / tedious.
RF emission approvals would be blown, so I doubt if Empeg will ever support this, but has anyone looked at the display connects? Technically speaking, can the connects be extended with some 50cm (foot and a half)? Any need for additional components to control voltage, drift, noise, etc?



Henno
# 00120

I've been thinking about this problem, as the screen on my empeg is a bit low down to see when in the car (stopped or driving)

My first idea is to run a daemon on the empeg which dumps the whole screen out the serial port (probably not at full framerate though) to some other screen.

However, a neater idea would be some hooks in the player (empeg have said there will be an api for some player stuff) to dump the track title, and time to a 1 or 2 line lcd screen (like all the pc in the boot (trunk) people are using).
If the menus are being displayed, then the active menu could be shown instead of the track title..
The search boxes could be a pain, and I've not thought about controls (I can use the remote fine where it is, although I see no reason for some buttons on the new screen.)

Anyway, it's something I want to try at some point, but I've got to get my c and hardware coding up to par first... =)

Jazz
(List 112, S/N 00030, 4 gig blue)

Anyway, it's something I want to try at some point
Do drop me a line when you get ready for it.

I've not thought about controls
Big John is solving that one. Now that he is finished ripping his 500+CDs he should have his Sony based remote ready anytime



Henno
# 00120