Thread: MP3 player pretending to be a cd multichanger

Well.. if you know how to program hard-and-software you could do this...
But this would be very, very difficult..

Like how are you gonna tell your computer knows what cd 3 is.. (which playlist is cd#3).

Sorry to say, but I think you'd be better of with a 'normal' mp3-setup as we use here. This means that you need an AUX-input on your headunit. (or an FM-Transmitter)

Go ahead and read some off the old posts.
Also have a look at www.mp3car.com/searchexamples.asp
and look what the other guys in here have created..

Greetz

Well I could probably handle the software side, though I may struggle on the hardware

As for the playlists, CD1 would be the first playlist when sorted alphanumerically, CD2 would be the second, and so on.

I'll do some research onto the pinout of the multichanger connector, and try and find out how complex its protocol actually is (Though I'm sure you're correct on assuming that it'll be nightmarishly complex)

I'd rip the stereo out in a millisecond and replace it with a dedicated mp3 box ideally, but it's a brand new car, and I fought the salesman to get the cd player I got (just out of priciple, since I was promised a CD player, and eventually got a casette player when the car was handed over)

Couldn't you somehow hook the differen pins on the cd changer to your parallel port? It might take a little hacking/reverse engineering to figure it out in the end. Cool idea nonetheless....

Originally posted by benjymous:
<STRONG>As for the playlists, CD1 would be the first playlist when sorted alphanumerically, CD2 would be the second, and so on.
</STRONG>

And if you go with a 'normal mp3 setup' and run under linux you can do great stuff.
For instance, building automaticly playlists.

if ($cdlabel == "this_label"){
get_playlist();
} else {
put_this_cd_in_db();
}

Just a thought.

Raymond.

Yeah.. I always thought this would be a great.. if for nothing more than having song titles on the LCD of the radio (using the CD-TEXT function of the unit)

I thought about doing something like this. I was going to use the COMControl plugin for Winamp. This plugin allow you to connect up to four buttons to a serail port and then assign functions to these buttons in winamp. If you could figure out which wire does what on the changer control comming out of your head unit, then you could connect these wires to a serial port and use this plugin. Voila - winamp controlled via the buttons on your stereo!

I did this with my Blaupunkt Heidelberg head unit. I hooked the changer interface to my RS232 port, and wrote some software in Visual Basic to make it work with WinAmp. It scrolled the song title in the head unit display and let me change tracks and CDs from the head unit. It was kind of hard software wise because the head unit used 9-bit serial instead of 8-bit.

Presslab

I was wondering how you knew what pin does what on the head unit. I have a panasonic head unit and would like to make it so I choose cd changer so I can input my sound throught the rcas. Do you have any idea how I would go about doing this. I dont care to control the computer with it or anything but would like it so I can choose cd chager. I am trying to look for a broken cd changer to be able to get it but have not found one yet.

PressLab: Would you mind sharing the pinout and software you used to accomplish this? I'm very interested in trying this, and it would definately get me off to a good start.

Thanks!
Mike.