I have now been driving around with my Car PC for 2 year without a decent FM radio receiver and it is driving me crazy that there are no real solutions to add a FM receiver within the CarPC. All FM receivers that have been discussed here on the forum seems to suffer under the receiving quality in the car.
I started to wonder if it was not easier to implement a Head Unit and use the amplifier and FM radio within this HU.
Can Anybody confirm if blaupunkt is using I2C for remote control in and external display data? I think they do for the display data, but Im not sure for the remote control in since I can't find a clock in pin on they rear!!.
If Blaupunkt is using I2C then I would buy the Blaupunkt Casablanca MP54 and do following: (
http://www.blaupunkt.co.uk/7644250310_main.asp)
1. Connect my Car PC to the Aux In.
2. Design/buy a RS232 to I2C and control the Volume and Search features like cars with steering wheel control.
3. Design/buy a I2C to RS232 to get the Display information out from the HU on the CarPC (Just the way as new cars does with their board computer)
I have been looking on the bl233 chip that has several I2C busses and one RS232 interface. (
http://www.i2cchip.com/bl233_a.pdf)
The Casablanca MP54 still has 4-channel Preamp-Out (4 V) for those that does not want to use the HU amplifier but prefers an external HIGH Power Amplifier.
Incase anybody has experience with I2C busses and/or programming of the bl233 chip please give me a feed back.
/ProCos