Thread: 2006 MazdaSpeed 6 Audio Test Lab

Ya the touch screen is not the easy to use when bouncing down the road. I think the touch screen is more of a cool factor then useful. Or cousre I don't have a sunlight readable one so its almsot uselsess during the day. I have steering wheel controls but just VOl up/down track up/down, mode and mute. I could use the basic functions with that but I need a little more too.

Glad to here your take Turbo on the space navigator. We really do need to steal ideas from OEM, because they spend tons of money of R&D to find the safest and most ergonimc ways to interface the radio. Will your thing you are working on look like Zorros CCstick?

I would almsot need something super flat like ribbon cable, the kind on thin plastic sheets. Is that what you meant by the LVDS cable? The wires from the parallel cable were pretty damn small, and I still didn't have room for those. I took a dremel to one button to make room, but I decided against that for now.

When I have a whoel day, my buddy and I are going to rip it apart again and hopefully figure out a way to get wires to each button. Maybe I just need bigger tactile buttons to allow me some space to fit wires. I dunno.

there are wires that are as tiny as a strand of hair, there has to be a solution for yours..

& yeah, I agree, the oem's do spend tons on R&D for interface, which is kinda why my idea is going to be pretty much the same fuctionality as the new s-class... I had one of them in my shop & it was really impresive... one thing that really impressed me was the variable dial that varied with the display like the haptic thing... when I saw that it was the first thing that popped into my head, cool, now I can build a control like the benz.... up until then I've been looking for a benz console to hack, but there impossible to find & would have been way more backwards engineering & phidgets & other funky mods...

the control I'll build will use the actual knob from a benz, & I want it to move & feel like the benz.... the navigator kinda swings through an arc as it travels side to side... meaning when it's pushed all the way left it's actually tilted towards the left & the left side is down while the right side is up... I don't want that, I want the knob to stay at exactly 90deg vertical through it's travel... sorry to spit this here, when I get started with the control I'm building I'll start a thread for it

No problem if you post comments here unrelated to my install. I think you have a good idea and I'll keep a look out for it. I haven't ever played with the benz control so I have to rely on you. I knwo you can come up with something cool.

I know there is wire that thin but for me to use it hahaha. No way. I worked in a place where they had Asian women soldering wires as thin as hair to components underneath a microscope. Asian women were the only ones that had enough patience and a steady hand to do such work according to my boss. I think he was right.

Anyway, I should have taken more pictures of the panel when I had it apart. I haven't given up yet. I'm just not too keen on hacking something up unless I know it can be returned to stock without a lot of time or money. I don't mind cutting/drilling/hacking once I have determined there is no other way.

Option1:
I plan on testing the circuit board to see if I can locate solder points on the backside.

Option 2:
Whip out my dremel and start making some room by cutting away excess plastic that is not needed.

Option 3:
Find some tactile switches that have a longer shaft.

Option 4:
Find a way to easily extend the shaft of the button or switch.

Ok I really wanted to get this rolling so now i am looking at

Option 2: make some room with the dremel.




Option 4: Extend the button shaft



Option 2 is looking very attractive right now.

So I went with Option 2. Fun with the Dremel

Basically without a ton of pictures, the above pictures shows in Green what I ground out. I also had to shave some of the white led difusers/track button holders just a tad to allow the wires to fit. After many test fits, looking to see wher ethe wires were routed, and hot glue, it finally went back together.

So now to do some testing to see if there are any votlages present on the wires going to the buttons. I need to determine if I can wire this directly up to a controller or a hacked up keypad without causing electrical damage to the face panel. THere is a microcontroller on the button circuit board, so it is possible that I could let the smok out of something. I am going to avoid that.

Also note that I wired the end of a parallel cable so I can disconnect it fairly easily in case I need to work on something.

What kind of voltage did you get when you tested the output? Do you have any detailed pics of the soundcard? My experience w/ changing the op-amps has yeilded more detailed highs, and mids, but that won't change the output voltage. If you have detailed pics of the card maybe a simple resistor change will open it up.

I haven't played with the card since after I installed it almost 2 months ago. I'll have to take some pictures of the card for you, but I already knew the opamps won't change the voltage, only how it sounds. I did a whole review on the card in the reviews section here if you wanted to check it out. After seeing the DAC thread you posted in I was thinking the same thing about possibly increasing the output voltage the same way (I was getting under 0.5V when I measured). I wasn't really that concerned about output voltage but it would sure help reduce the possiblity of noise.

I was going to say, the opamps don't have any bearing on the voltage outs.

if you could increase the output voltage that would be great.

Nope but the resistor values used in conjunction with the opamps and the voltage supply rails will help determine output. It would be interesting to alter this, but after I pulled the card out of my PC what I though makes it more difficult...not impossible...just difficult. The resistors are SMD.