How to integrate factory steering wheel input buttons?

greatwhite · 10-28-2007, 12:44 PM

Hi all.

First of all:

Yes, I have searched the forums.

I'm looking for a way to intergrate the factory steering wheel stereo control buttons into my carputer. I've read god of cpu's thread from 2005, and a couple others, but none seem to offer a clear solution. Now and then someone chimes in with a "I got it to work" but that's about it.
My problem is this:

God of cpu's solution seems to be the best solution for me, but requires a joystick port. My car uses the two wire resistive controls as mentioned in the thread. Of course, my MB has neither the port nor the header for one. It also seems his solution doesn't work with a USB joystick (according to posts in the thread).

I've read a thread about getting a USB game pad to work, but about all that is mentioned is that an analog pad/joystick is needed.

I have also investigated girder, but am unsure how to get the output from the buttons to the 'puter without an interface (joystick/usb,etc).

I'd rather not go with PAX swi-x/IR solution. I prefer "hard wired" (plus, I'm not sure I could get it to work and would represent a fair bit of cash outlay).

I've also seen the solution on madhacker.org, but 100 bucks seems pretty steep for a simple cb. Well....................and I'm a little bit..............errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.............. ..............cheap. If I can just pull apart an old usb joystick with analog sticks, that would be the cat's @ss.

Can anyone offer some assistance?

Although I am loath to say it, "spoonfeeding" is welcome at this time as I am a relative "newb" at designing circuits (as in, I can't). This just seems to be slightly out of my reach to fathom.................

Thanks for any help.

Cheers

customaudioman · 10-31-2007, 10:59 PM

if your using an external sound card, you can buy a part that would learn the IR code for the remote to the soundcard. think company callled PAC makes a universal audio/video for steering wheel controls

2k1Toaster · 11-01-2007, 12:02 AM

Well the FB will read it no problem through USB.

Otherwise you are going to need some port on a PC that takes an analogue signal in and that is only the microphone and the joystick. Everything else is digital.

Either way you need custom software written. Are you good at writing drivers? You better be because you will need to.

I think using the mic input would be a great idea. The "volume" (amplitude) of the input signal would be the voltage meaning what button was pressed. It should sample as a flat input or very little variance depending on the resistor tolerances and alternator fluctuations. I dont think I have ever seen a program that monitors the audio channel voltage level and outputs a signal that way, but like I said, you will have to write it.

bigbuffs · 01-11-2008, 02:38 PM

Ya I have been looking at trying to interface my SWC for some time now. It seems that there is not currently a cheap way of doing this if you don't have a gameport.

I know that the fusion brain would work and phigets and some other stuff but that is a lot of money to spend for just SWC. I don't car for the pax stuff either and the price is about the same as the FB.

Does anyone have any simple solution. I have 1 wire with varying current for 8 buttons on my steering wheel. I'm sure a digital to analog converter chip could be used to make it work but I don't know enough about that stuff to build a circuit without help anyway.

customaudioman · 01-11-2008, 08:31 PM

I have a fusion brain for my steering wheel control. I have one wire with three buttons

l1nk · 01-15-2008, 06:12 AM

I've just buyed a sony x2s remote control and need suggestions on how to use it to control road runner. I'm very new to remote control the pc and already done a little search on forums but I'm really confused

Can someone explain or simply write a list of possible choices that I have to sucessfully use my new remote to control road runner? Thanks guys!