From looking at the Mark I pictures, not all of the external connectors seem to be mounted on the docking brackets.
Is this correct ? If so a great feature would be have all connectors available on the brackets for ease of switching
unit bewteen car and home.

Ger.

I take it you don't own an Empeg yet. In practice, it works fine to have the in-house connections be separate from the docking sleeve. It makes the Empeg become a portable "drop-it-on-the-shelf-and-plug-it-in" solution. If you needed a docking sleeve for in the house, then you'd have to A) buy another sleeve, and B) build a box to mount the sleeve in. Someone actually did this anyway- made home-stereo component box with an Empeg sleeve in it. But that's going to WAY too much trouble. It works fine (and is very easy) to plug it in at home without the docking sleeve.

Plus, as it stands right now, there are a BUNCH of connectors coming out of the back of that sleeve. Way more than most car stereos. Too many connectors can be a problem for stereo installers. Adding more would just make things worse.

FYI, here are the only connections that are not replicated on the docking sleeve:

- 1v in-home-only stereo outputs.
- USB connector.
- AC power.

Note that the unit currently knows the difference when it's plugged in at home vs. when it's plugged into the car. There are some features it implements because of this. If you rig an in-house docking sleeve, you don't get those features.


-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

Everything apart from USB and Ethernet runs over the docking connector. Docking those two would a) screw up the confirmity with the standard and b) use up too many pins. The Mk.2 has a larger docking connector (more pins, not physically larger) but it's packed full, what with the external tuner, headlight signal input, cellphone mute input, microphone input and so forth.

Rob

"headlight signal input" What is this? For automatic dimming?

I was thinking the other day that the trouble i have with the empeg not restarting after the engine has cranked could be due to especially low voltages as i always have my headlights on...

The headlight signal input can be used to automatically dim the display for night driving.

If you are running a recent version of the player software, and you are getting problems with startup on cranking, then you must have VERY low battery voltage. We fixed all those problems several releases ago, and feedback indicated that startup was almost universally reliable now.

Rob

The headlight signal input can be used to automatically dim the display for night driving.

I hope Mark II retains capability of manually dimming the display. Even better would be a light sensor for autodiming (could one of existing IR sensors be used for that?)

The headlight input autodim would not work for me, since I have my headlights always on.

Cheers!


Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
#5196

I hope Mark II retains capability of manually dimming the display.

This seems to hint that there's currently a way to dim the display on Mark 1's. If there is, I haven't found it yet. Is this a feature I don't know about yet?



-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

I agree. I always drive with my headlights on for the safety benefits, and my current alpine unit dims away, in daylight, and having a convertible makes it completely unreadable. Oh well. If a dimming mechanism is in there, I'd rather it be done by time of day, if a RTC is in the Mark II or by a light sensor. This would at least make sense, as the headlights is a rather imprecise way of judging how bright it is out.

This seems to hint that there's currently a way to dim the display on Mark 1's.

Er, actually no. I was just affraid the guys were going to delete manual dimming they promised for MarkII, now that they have headlight input. My Twing dims instrument display when headlights are on, which makes it almost invisible when driving on sunny day with canvas roof open (and headlights on, as allways).

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
#5196

> I hope Mark II retains capability of manually dimming the display.

The Mk.2 has 256 levels of brightness selectable from software. I doubt we'll offer quite that degree of resolution on the front end though :-)

By the way, it's not a case of retaining functionality - this is new, you can't dim the Mk.1 at all (not in hardware anyway).

Rob

Although it'll be autodim, the dim levels will be selectable - so you can make them both full brightness if you want.

Hugo

fine, but for us that lives in scandinavia it wout be nice if it wout be posible to use the clock to controle the dimmmer setting
(because we must by LAW have the ligth on 24h)
as an ekstra fratur for the clock mode posiblity to define cordination for use in calculation of sunset :-) as whe have huge diffrent betwen daylight houer winter 0-5 hours, summer 18-24 hours

Mark
wait for mk III with a USB Host/slave
(USB->Ethernet)(USB->COM 1-8)(USB->You name it)

(delurk)
Hey, here's my first post...

I assume that the dimmer works on a +12V trigger. It's no problem to get a few resistors, a photoresistor or a pot resistor and perhaps a transistor to do this for you. Heck, even a simple toggle switch will get the dimmer switching in and out. The only drawback I can think of is that there might be a problem with hysteresis. From memory, a small capacitor and a little feedback would fix that. Just ask your local tech head to cook up a circuit, it would fit inside a matchbox. I'm sorry, don't ask me though, it's been a lonnnng time since I did that kind of stuff ;-)

Cheers
Jon
(/delurk)

YES !! that is yust the gadget I need.
That way I can have the display shift betwen night and day (tunnel) automatic.
COOL this will work for all radio's not just empeg

Mark
wait for mk III with a USB Host/slave
(USB->Ethernet)(USB->COM 1-8)(USB->You name it)