Thread: Kenwood Nav input & touchscreen output

awesome work

I think Crutchfield is wrong about the screen having a 480x234 native res I think the nav puts out 480x234 video it wouldn't be the first time Crutchfield had the wrong spec's

I say this because I install kenwood navs all day and the video from the Kenwood nav does look like 480x234
lso tonight I learned a lot more about the RGB input on my DDX7015 it's an RGBS input and from messing around with some video scalers converters and laptops I am sure the vertical res is 480 so think that would make the horizontal res around 720 I need to look up the math for 16:9 screens to be sure (it's been a while) the sync freq is fixed at 60hz

my only issue left to work out as far as video is possition the video is not centered on the screen it's a bit low and none of the scalers converters or laptops I have laying around have any adjustment for this problem

I got a guy shipping me a 12v DC video converter with possition adjustments but it won't be here till 11th of october and there is some assembly required because it is an industrial unit I should have a useable video input by the 12th

in the mean time I need to get my hands on a 2 ch digital data loger so figure out if it is possable to interface with the touchscreen or atleast pass the IR data to the pc from the DDX7015

by the way the picture realy is very good it's about 5% away from being as good as a non touchscreen VGA screen like the Xanarc

I might be on to something here I mean check this out what choices do you have if you have to use a flip out screen

not many good ones the only good solution is the new xanarc and it leaves a lot to be desired

Alpine already has a motorized flip out touchscreen that is only a display for nav and video and it has a low HD res sometime next year it will be replaced by a true HD res unit witch is said to be 720p in pc terms thats 1280x720 it looks like we will all have access to top quality motorized touchscreens in just a year or two

Originally Posted by port20

I think Crutchfield is wrong about the screen having a 480x234 native res I think the nav puts out 480x234 video it wouldn't be the first time Crutchfield had the wrong spec's

I say this because I install kenwood navs all day and the video from the Kenwood nav does look like 480x234
lso tonight I learned a lot more about the RGB input on my DDX7015 it's an RGBS input and from messing around with some video scalers converters and laptops I am sure the vertical res is 480 so think that would make the horizontal res around 720 I need to look up the math for 16:9 screens to be sure (it's been a while) the sync freq is fixed at 60hz

my only issue left to work out as far as video is possition the video is not centered on the screen it's a bit low and none of the scalers converters or laptops I have laying around have any adjustment for this problem

I got a guy shipping me a 12v DC video converter with possition adjustments but it won't be here till 11th of october and there is some assembly required because it is an industrial unit I should have a useable video input by the 12th

in the mean time I need to get my hands on a 2 ch digital data loger so figure out if it is possable to interface with the touchscreen or atleast pass the IR data to the pc from the DDX7015

by the way the picture realy is very good it's about 5% away from being as good as a non touchscreen VGA screen like the Xanarc

I might be on to something here I mean check this out what choices do you have if you have to use a flip out screen

not many good ones the only good solution is the new xanarc and it leaves a lot to be desired

That's awesome! I really want to see some pictures... in the meantime, how do you explain this? This is straight from the horses mouth.

Ok hold up first I will say this I did the math if the v res is 480 than it has a h res of 720 being that the screen has a 16:9 aspect ratio

ok think about this for a min so you can understand why I am stating the res is 720x480 and that Kenwood and Crutchfield are giving out the wrong spec's

the max res of a composite video signal is 640x480 if the native res was only 480x234 then the video would look the same with eathier a composite input or a rgb input

I have tested with both signals and with a composite input you can't read the small text easly at all

but with the rgb input it is not a problem as I said before the video is realy good on scale of 1 to 100 1 being a composite screen and 100 being a xanarc without a touch panal I give it a 95 it's the same quality as my tview vga screen from DWW

at 640x480 only about 4/5 of the screen is being used horizontaly and all of it is being used verticaly

at 600x800 even less of the screen is being used in booth directions this means that the rgb input does not have any video scaler if it did then the input signal would fill the entire screen at any res this is not the case

also if the native res was only 480x234 then the display would only show part of the signal at 640x480 it would look zoomed in on a spot of the screen

because at 640x480 all of the screen is being used verticaly I have found the native vertical res of 480 and because the screen is a 16:9 aspect ratio screen that makes the horizontal res 720

because we know that there is no video scaler and the vertical res of 480 fills the screen and that a higher res fills less of the screen and a lower res is bigger than the screen we know that the native res is 720x480

I don't know why Kenwood and Crutchfield are giving out the wrong spec's but I do know

that monkeys are smarter than horses

I know you still want to see some good screen shots before you will belive me I have only been able to work on it for about an hour a day late at night so I have skiped documenting my progress but I will take some pictures on sunday and post them here for you

have you got any advice on taking a picture of a video display?

cars electrioncs and fabrication I know but camras I am not so good with

port20,

Any updates? I'm very interested to hear if you are able to get a solid picture on this unit. I'm currently in the process of putting together an XBOX system for my car and I've been considering getting a double-din Kenwood head unit if I can splice into the RGB nav display input. Although the resolution might not be as high as a traditional LCD VGA screen, if I could get a high quality input (RGB), I think the XBOX would look pretty good on it...

Where did you order the nav cable from? I've done some Googling and haven't found any companies selling it. I searched for the the head unit model number (7015, and also the newer models: 7017, 8017, 6017) and the nav unit model number but haven't found any places to buy the cable...

Any info or updates would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
Arion

Yeah have you got this thing working yet?? I'd like a carputer in my car, but can't fit a 7" XENARC screen where my stereo is, so I'd like to integrate a carputer with my Kenwood as well!

I have the DDX-8017.... how are you taking in these inputs from your computer??? How do you have the computer wired up to the RGB cable that goes into the head unit? If you can get a good, clear visualization on that Kenwood you need to tell us exactly what we need to do the same!! PLEASE!?! Haha. That would be great to get the computer display to show up on your DDX just like as if it were a XENARC monitor or something. It'll be even better if you can make the touchscreen feature of the head unit work with the computer!!

Arion, if you go to Ebay.com and search for "kenwood changer cable" or "kenwood sirius cable" you'll find some cables. I was looking for one on there some weeks back because I bought a Sirius tuner without the cable from someone.

Keep us updated on your findings.... I hope you can get things to work the way you want!

Much thanks,
Andrew

arionl and 04LS1GTO

first off you need to know that the kenwood sirius and cd changer cables are both audio buss cables and they are the same cable but are different from the nav cable they all have the same 13 pin din plug on them if you plug an audio buss cable in to the nav port you could fry your radio the audio buss cable is a navy blue color and the nav cable is a dark red color you need a nav cable for a KNA-DV4100 nav unit there about $60 I think kenwood calls it a AMS cable don't quote me on that

I will answer your questions as best as I can read on you will understand why I don't have any solid answers yet

I am a mobile electronics installer I have been for the last 12 years I had a cable laying around the shop so I said what the hell the head unit was only $1400 lets see if I can fry it

(How do you have the computer wired up to the RGB cable )

I don't at this point what I have done is tried to hook directly to my VGA output witch is RGBHV from looking at the nav cable I can see that the input on my head unit is RGBS meaning it only has 1 sync input

from playing around I found out what type of converter I need I have also gotten a rough idea of what resolution I will be able to get I think it will be around 720x480
this resolution is close to a Xanarc witch has a resolution of 800x480 there is still the question as to if the screen is sharp enough if it is not the resolution does not matter the picture will be blurry I have seen an unstable image the picture scrolling up the screen (this is caused by having the wrong sync frequency) that did have a good clear image as I said it seems to be about as good as a xanarc in about 6 hours I will have the converter I need and I should have it working an hour later

the touchscreen well I have found the data wires but don't know what to do with them at this point the data is going both ways I think the buss is kinda like a ps2 serial buss 2 wires data in and data out I know that you need to send data to activate the stereo audio input in the nav cable but I don't know how to interface with it I have found the wires for audio I am thinking if I can pioneer making the video work and enough of us are using our kenwood head units maybe we can get a computer programer and a microcontroller guy to build an interface board I don't know anything about computer programing and I am not skilled enough with microcontrollers I can only build simple stuff like the shutdown controller I just finished the code for today interfacing with a computer is beyond my skills I am trying to find people to work with me on it if you know anyone that might be interested let me know I will provide financing for a prototype

arionl

I am guessing you are going to run avalunch for your xbox project if you are only going to use it for movies music and games you won't need a higher resolution what I mean is cost vs benefit the xbox is only going to put out 640x480 ( am I wrong )at that resolution the sharper image won't be very noticable and I have already spent $200 to use the RGB input I have been out of the xbox sceen for a while can you use an xbox to surf the web yet?

neon_eddy

Thanks for the info I may need the video scaling feature if the GPU driver can't do 16:9 aspect ratios like my Gforce card on my HTPC

ok got it working I am posting this from my carputer on a Verizon 56K wireless internewt connection I will post screenshots as soon as the sun goes down the glare is bad in the pictures I took in the sun light and I suck at taking pictures I will wirte my findings and a tutorial later tonight I will say now it is not as good as a Xanarc but is way better than a composite input

l8r