Posted by angrycamel at December 30th, 2007

With Dave’s help, the video switcher relay circuit is setup and working. I have not yet hooked up the actual wires that control the video toggling on Dom’s unit to the relay because its all pretty well installed in the car. I would do it tonight but its raining outside. For now (testing), the relay is hooked to an LED and will toggle on or off for each touch of the cancel button on the dashboard. That is working perfectly, so when the normal toggle switch for Dom’s unit is removed and the two wires are instead hooked into the relay (replacing the led), I see no reason why it would not work to switch the video over.

Going forward, I am thinking of making the button that causes the relay to flip, programmable on the circuit. I could modify IEBus Studio to handle talking to the unit to program the button sequence and write it to the internal EEPROM. Maybe even putting in a couple more relays that are controlled the same way. So basically you would program a button sequence into the module that will flip a relay to do whatever you want.

Hopefully this nasty weather and the cold I caught from it will subside soon and I can move forward with some more testing. I need to get a working PCB, this breadboard is a huge pain in the ass to lug around.

Anyways, thats all I have for an update right now. I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays!

Posted by angrycamel at December 16th, 2007

Well its been a long time coming but when I finally received the ‘C’ connectors this week, I made a harness from them to gain access to the ACC for starters. I had installed the PC in the trunk already but was waiting on these parts so that I could hook up the ACC line to have the PC start when I turn the key.

Once it was all hooked up, I connected the IEBus development board, started the Mouse Control test application on the carpc, started up Media Engine (a carpc front end application) and got my wife to test it out with me while I rolled the video camera.

Needless to say, everything is working well together. The firmware is translating the IEBus signals to text and transmitting over serial to the PC, the DLL (built from event discoveries in IEBus Studio) catches those signals and makes them available as software events. The Mouse Control test application has defined event handlers that will move the mouse and click on the location that came over the IEBus when I touch the screen.

Here are a couple pics of the setup:

I have put together a quick video of it that you can see here:

Posted by angrycamel at December 6th, 2007

I decided to go ahead and place the order for the C connectors. Due to a request I received in email, I will be selling both a harness that will terminate to a DB9 connector (just like the AH-20 harness) as well as a DIY kit that will come with a plug, cap, DB9 connector and 10 of the special metal connectors needed for assembly of the 8 pin plug (two extras).

I have also decided to offer a DIY kit for the AH20 harness. It will include both the plug and the cap connectors, the DB9 connector and 25 of the special metal connectors needed for assembly of the 20 pin plug (5 extras).

Contact me via, robbienewton [aT] gmail [d0t] com to place an order!

Posted by angrycamel at December 5th, 2007

I may be able to get some of the C connectors (8 pin) for the back of the navigation unit. Would anyone be interested in a harness to gain access to the wires on that plug without damaging anything?

So far I have had one person request it and have been thinking about doing it for myself to get to ACC, Power, and Diagnostics in the trunk. With a simple little harness for this you could make any solution involving those wires, plug n’ playable.

Let me know if it would be worth it for me to order some. It has to be a bulk order, therefore it would be quite an investment on my part, so if you care, please leave some feedback.

The reference to the “C” connector is from my 2006 ETM. Click on the thumbnail below to see a PDF with an image of the connector.

Connector C (8-Pin Navigation)