Steering Wheel Controls

**CrzyOne01** · 01-04-2005, 01:25 AM

Yeah that does make it simpler although I am not entirely sure on what kind of resistors to go with and I shoud not need a diode since there was no voltage when I tested it...as far as the ohm ratings of the buttons mine are as follows if someone could help me in the right direction of what kind of resistors I may need and placed where
I have 6 buttons, Button 1=128, Button 2=52, Button 3=229, Button 4=354, Button 5=497, Button 6=647. And like I had mentioned in my last post was I had tried your exact setup there with only button 6 getting any reading at all which leads me to believe I just need some lower resistors?

- Phil

**Curiosity** · 01-04-2005, 02:42 AM

Yep. Lower resistors. Change both 10K to 1K and see if that works. You should get most, if not all the buttons then. That's more like what god shows in the original diagram. He also went down to 500 ohms, but that seems like it may be too much drain when it's taking 5V to ground through 500 + 52 + 500 ohms. Here's a little more info on mine (I'm working with higher resistances):

1.3K = Volume up
1.6K = Volume down
1.9K = Play
2.4K = Mute
3.1K = Seek up
4.3K = Seek down
6.7K = AM/FM
13.6K = Preset

If I change both resistors to 1K then volume up / volume down / play work and are really stable, and if I change the 5V->axis one to 15K (and leave the other at 10K) then seek up / seek down / amfm / preset works. It's confusing to say the least. The radioshack adaptor is probably just designed bad or something.

**clean customs** · 01-06-2005, 03:00 PM

Anyone ever hacked into the steering wheel volume controls on an Acura RL. I plan on taking the master volume knob from a sound blaster platinum setup, and running it up front. i first thought about mounting the knob on the dash, but hooking it up to the existing controls, would be much nicer.
thanks,
K

**teedty1** · 01-10-2005, 11:30 PM

I've been workin on this for a few days on my 03 Celica. I'm actually using my cruise control buttons and am gonna switch between the cruise and the computer. I've got the resistance values from my repair manual as follows

accel 210-217 ohms
decel 560-700 ohms
cancel 1390-1700 ohms

I'm using Curiosity's wiring with the two 10K ohm resistors as show an a 100K ohm instead of the 120K

Sadly I am using the radio shack adaptor as well. After getting no change with different combinations of resistors, I decided to check the voltage on pins 1 and 3. When I do this I get around 4 volts with no buttons and varying voltages very close to 4 for each button. As long as I am holding probes on pins 1 and 3 I can calibrate the joystick and get different values for each button. I can also get Steering Wheel Controls working almost perfectly. The minute I pull the probes off of the pins I can't do jack. ]

Any ideas??
Thanks!
Andy

**Curiosity** · 01-11-2005, 01:00 AM

I think changing both 10K to 1K should work for you and most others. I'd like to hear from CrazyOne01 if that worked for him! When it's showing 4V and not dropping much, that means you should lower the resistance on the resistor connected to the buttons, and if it's dropping too much, lower the other one. But not too much. I've noticed that the radio shack adapter doesn't register anything past a certain point. Somewhere around 1V-4V works best. They probably assume that most joysticks only use maybe the middle 50% of the pot or less and don't care about the full range.

The meter thing is strange though. Maybe it's resistance is helping?

**CrzyOne01** · 01-15-2005, 02:57 PM

nope still struggling with this, I swapped the mboth for 1k ohm resistors and the only one that was registering was button number 2(the one with the lowest resistance). Could this just be an issue with the radioshack crap usb adapter ?(its a shame that the epias do nto have an onboard gameport adapter)

- Phil(out of ideas)

**Curiosity** · 01-15-2005, 05:01 PM

It is hard to work with, that's for sure. First it was button 6, now button 2? Maybe get a couple small 10K pots. That way you could adjust them until it worked. Well, I can't think of anything else. Sometimes my volume up stops working, which is the lowest. It just jumps all over the place. Anything I do makes it worse, but maybe with some pots I could figure out the best value for the resistors. The adapter also has 1.6K internal resistors on the axis pins. No idea what those are there for or if they add to the problems.

**PatO** · 01-24-2005, 08:59 PM

Sorry to dredge this thread up again, but I found this website that might be appropriate:
http://p-car.com/diy/steeringradio/
Some guy wanted to control his stereo with stock buttons on the steering wheel (like you folks), except he wanted to use his Porsche Tiptronic Tranny buttons!

I mean come on... You pay that much for a car, then go disabling one of its biggest features!

**Raptor** · 02-16-2005, 03:03 PM

Originally Posted by CrzyOne01

nope still struggling with this, I swapped the mboth for 1k ohm resistors and the only one that was registering was button number 2(the one with the lowest resistance). Could this just be an issue with the radioshack crap usb adapter ?(its a shame that the epias do nto have an onboard gameport adapter)

- Phil(out of ideas)

Phil please keep me posted on this because I<m just about to start my carputer project in my 3

Got any pics of your setup to date ?

**kamikaze2112** · 07-13-2005, 08:19 PM

Originally Posted by CrzyOne01

nope still struggling with this, I swapped the mboth for 1k ohm resistors and the only one that was registering was button number 2(the one with the lowest resistance). Could this just be an issue with the radioshack crap usb adapter ?(its a shame that the epias do nto have an onboard gameport adapter)

- Phil(out of ideas)

NO luck with this yet do you? I too have no gameport and would really like to know how I can get this working. I read someone earler mention one of those phidgets things, would something like that be appropriate in this situation?