GM Steering wheel control interface
After seeing CdRsKuLL's setup with the i-bus interface controller, it got me thinking of a way to interface the the stock steering wheel controls on my Firebird Formula. Well, after a bit of brainstorming, I had an idea.
My car computer started out as PC in a NES case originally. My friend and I had started the project but never finished it. I got the idea from my other friend of putting in a car computer. He had tried it with putting a P4 system in his car, but that drew way too much power, and in the end he took it out. I decided on doing it the "Right" way, and using an EPIA-M10000 for my mainboard. I ended up buying my other friend unfinished NES PC for $120. That included a gutted NES case, EPIA-M10000 motherboard, 16X slim DVD drive with IDE adapter for it, 5GB 2.5" HDD with IDE adapter, and a DC-DC power supply. Quite a deal. Well, I ended up buying a 40GB 2.5" HDD cause the 5GB was slower than a slug. I tossed in 256MB of DDR and got the whole package wired up and finished. I later on wanted remote control for it so i put in my RF wireless remote receiver right inside the case so i could control the PC from over 40 feet away.
Now having the PC finished i purchased a lilliput 8" touchscreen and got that temporarily mounted in the car in the place of where i ripped out my Pioneer MP3 CD deck. Then wired up my 4 channel amp, which i found out had 2 blown channels.... I had been using it for a sub amp for 6 years and had the outputs bridged. Never noticed the bad channels till i seperated them out. So currently i'm running all my speakers from 2 channels. Amp will be replaced soon, but i'm dealing with it for now.
I got the computer mounted in and working great, but having to look over to the screen to adjust the volume just wasn't the safest thing in the world. I remembered from looking up info on NES PCs that there were pinouts for hooking up an adapter to get the controller ports on the NES to accept the nintendo controllers and use them as game controllers. Something i always wanted to do, but never got around to it. Seeing as i didnt want to spend $80 or more on one of those units that can accept the stock steering wheel controls and send the output to infrared to a deck, and then having to get a infrared receiver for the computer and use up another serial or USB port, I got the idea of using a nintendo's controler's IC and wiring up the steering wheel controls to this IC instead and then having that plug into the car PC's parallel port. The nintendo controller has 8 different buttons: 4 from the directional pad and then start, select, A, and B. The steering wheel in my car has 8 buttons also: Vol up, Vol down, Seek up, Seek down, Power, AM/FM, and 2 others that i can't think of the name of. Anyways, its a good match. I just though of this idea tonight and figured i'd share it. Its going to be my project for the next few day so i'll keep you posted and try to get some pictures up and a step by step guide.
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