Well, after my success on getting the stuck headunit to display text as I want, I have begun writing a control program as described previously. I have now overcome one of the biggest problems with the stock headunit, and that is scrolling text (boo on the Blitzsafe for not scrolling :-). Now that is licked, I should have an alpha version of a program out in a few days for anyone who is interested:

http://www.davidbroome.com/page.asp?Page=140

 

sounds very cool, I am interested.

 

How do you see the final version working? Will it be some sort of adapter to plug in line between the XM unit and the HU? Also, seems the lag between pressing the button and the info on the screen showing is a bit long.

Overall I think it is a great effort with great results so far. Now why couldn't MINI/BMW and Blitzsafe get this working?

 

Right now, it is a program running on a computer that is located in the boot, as that is what my setup is. As far as creating a hardware device, well, that isn't out of the realm of possibility :-)

 

As I am sure you know, having to bring a computer along to enable text displaying is impractical for most of us. Find a way to import this into a little device that you can throw in-line and out of the way and you have a little gold mine!

Ian Cull (the guy who makes the auto-up windows ciruit for the Mini) may be able to give you some pointers/advice on how to go about this.

Thanks for pioneering this. As a user of XM I hear a lot of songs that I want to know the tittle of and can only get 10 (or so) letters of it. Rather annoying. Keep up the good work!

 

Thanks, and evetually it could head in that direction. It is a LOT easier to hack out a protocol on a computer and port that to a smaller microcontroller device. I appreciate the pointer to Ian, he and I have had a couple conversations about this sort of thing...

 

I guess the next questions are... Is the XM radio module getting the whole title? Is it sending all the text to the Blitzsafe module? And is that sending it all to the head unit?

And if the unit is inline, how would it work with MP3s?

 

The XMDirect does receive all the song name/artist characters XM sends (that it's chipset allows). And it sends it on to the Blitzsafe. Blitzsafe does not appear to send it all to the head unit.

Right now, you have to unplug the Blitzsafe and plug the cable into the computer interface to run my code, making the XMDiret not useable. However, I am writing an XMDirect/XMPCR controller plugin that will allow you to control the XMDirect from the computer using the headunit as a controller. In which case you would just hit the SAT button on the display to change to another plugin (mp3).

I'll post more details when I have it all working later this week or next week...

 

That would be sweet. I am using a similar setup in my office since I waited about a week too late to pull the trigger on the PCR and didn;t want to pay $300+ on ebay.

 

So just to clear things up from what i read in this post and your other one.

You have not yet found out how to make the Radio read ID3 tags from MP3 CD's that are in the unit? Now that would be one hell of a mod i would pay some money for!

 

You are correct. To do that, someone would have to rip the firmware off the HU, reverse engineer it, change it, and then send it back to the HU. That is way beynd how much time I have to put in thie project ;-)