Ok - I've installed a blitzsafe adapter and XM on my new March build 05 - works great.

I also was able to install Ice Link Plus - I got the blitzsafe with the extra pass through - also works great - I even have ID3 Tags on my H/K HU - very very cool!

But Please! - can't someone come up with a fix to permanently show the artist playing when I'm on XM? If you have Sirrus - the text will scroll - but with this XM install you only get to see the Station Name - you have to push the - button to get to see who is playing or the song.

I really don't care what station - I'd much rather know who is playing. Seems like there should be a fix - someone out here is smart enough to come up with something - short of buying Sirrus??

I know I saved a bundle doing it this way - and I'm glad it works - just seems like an opportunity for someone to sell and add-on or come up with a solution.

Any ideas????

 

Sounds like you have the same setup that I do. I also would like to have the artist as the default. I have asked this quesion on this and other boards and so far no help. I will keep watching your post to see if you have any better success.

Good Luck - Fred

 

There is no help beacuse, unfortunately, that is the only way the interface works. That is my one pet peeve about it. I have asked Blitzsafe about it and they have said that is it.



Maybe Mark from Blitzsafe can read this and they could maybe modify future version but with the amount of new things they are churning out they probably do not have time.

 

Wait, you guys are trying to tell me that the Sirius tuner behaves in the manner you would like? From my understanding, our XM interface performs identical to the OEM Sirius tuner. I was told the software in the headunit would need to be upgraded/changed to accomplish the change in the default. What is the part number on the Sirius tuner that behaves like this? I can test this on the bench with the Sirius tuner we have here and our interface. I will post the results I find.



P.S. I now recieve notification of all new threads here in this forum, so I can be on top of replying to everyone's problems.

 

Thanks for taking a look Mark - I don't know the model of the OEM Sirrus part - I do know that on the Sirrus hook-up you can select "scroll" on the headunit and the station, artist, song, will scroll across the screen.

That would be good too if it would do that on the XM hook-up. I've selected scroll and all it does is show the Station name - never scrolls. You have to physically push one of the minus buttons on the HU to see who is playing. I wouldn't even mind so much if I could push one of the buttons on the MFSW to see it - but you have to reach all the way over to the radio (sarcasm). I know it's not far, but I may as well change stations on the HU if I have to punch a button on it to see who's on.

Any help would be great!

 

Yep, I agree with tecomment about the at least being able to use the "dead" button on the MFSW to see the artist and title. If you hold the button down with the XM, it allows you to scroll through the Genres but that funtionality is not that useful to me and I would gladly give it up.

 

I'd considered jumping on the XMdirect/Blitzsafe set up for my Mini if it was changed. My main beef was I always want to be able to see the song name scrolling or at least listed as default. This one reason I'm still sticking with my Roady 2.


Howard

 

I don't have the OEM Sirius, but I know someone that does and I am pretty sure he said the same thing - you have to press a button to see the artist info.

Presumably there are messages from the satellite unit (or Blitzsafe) that send data identifying the station/artist/etc - it might be possible to swap the messages so that "artist" is sent in the "station name" slot, which could fool the head unit into doing what people want ...

My aftermarket Kenwood can be set up to display anything available - but it has the annoying feature of only scrolling once, so I can't see all of long details. Presumably "safer" to not scroll and be distracting - but I have to press & hold a switch for two seconds to get it to scroll, which surely is even less safe!
Paranoia everywhere these days - I bet that is why the head unit does not normally display artist data; they don't want you reading it, they want you looking at the road. If you can sue for hot coffee, you can probably sue for "not my fault - I was reading my radio"

 

I'll tag along here to see if there is a solution. I have an idea for a solution but no time to implement it in hardware.

It would be easy to put together a board that emulates the pressing of the info button every 3 seconds or so and then the current Blitzsafe unit would respond by sending the artist to the screen continually (or song name, which is what I would prefer)...

 

David,
Agreed ... like you I could probably put a circuit together (the HKenabler is probably close hardware wise), but with no access to the equipment to sniff messages, etc, I can do nothing.

 

My theory is (and I haven't tested it with my laptop, just not enough time in the day), but if you were to issue the following binary string onto the IBus, the Blitzsafe would think the info button had been pressed and would respond by displaying the artist. The second one SHOULD make it display the song info, as it is the second info press sequence.

68 05 73 3D 0E 00 2D
68 05 73 3D 0F 00 2C

I would imagine it would just take a basic IBus interface and a small programmable microprocessor to send this message out periodically. Maybe have it connected to a switch that would send message 1 if in position one or message 2 in position two. Or even have a set of dip switches that allow for more than one setting (like toggling back and forth between song and artist).

Anyway, if I only had the time, and I apologise for getting technical on a non-technical thread :-)

 

That sounds great - that's exactly what I was hoping for with the post. There must be some way to fool it in to showing what we want and I for one would gladly pay a bit of cash to get it to do it.

I just don't have the know how.

 

No Sirius does not. Your Blitzsafe is doing exactly what the OEM Sirius tuner does.
It always shows the station name.
You must press the info button to toggle between artist, title, etc.
If the name is longer than the screen, too bad. You have to then hold down the info button to turn "scroll" on. Then it goes back to the station name, and you have to hit the info button AGAIN to get back to the song name, where it displays the first half, then toggles to the second half of the name. It does not actually scroll the text, and it only displays it once.

This is one feature I freakin' hate of the OEM sirius tuner.

Oh, and did I mention? As soon as you turn the car off it forgets you ever even turned on "scroll" mode. The whole thing was clearly an afterthought.

Hacking up something to automatically enable info on the k-bus at startup would be nice, but it still will only scroll once. It will never stay on artist, as even if you leave it there, it reverts back to station name after a few seconds.

If this kind of stuff matters to you, go with a plug & play system or aftermarket head unit and save yourself a bunch of dough in the process.

This, along with the inferior sound quality vs my old sirius tuner, and of course the crazy $600 price, is the big drawback of the oem sirius tuner.

 

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...threadid=43123


I haven't had a chance to do a side by side comparison, but I suspected our unit was identical to the OEM Sirius tuner.

 

I have the xm and the bitzsafe with the standard 03 head unit, and when I hold doen the inf button and get the * I can then use the arrow buttons and change the channels up or down. If the * is not there then the arrow buttons just change to the preset stations.

Nik

 

Marc,

Your unit is ALMOST identical.

It will not do the Scroll On mode as mentioned above. If you have a song title longer than the 8 or 9 charachters that fit on the head unit display, there is no way to see it. Holding INFO down makes the unit say SCROLL ON but has no effect.

 

The good news is that my above post was correct. Issuing those binary codes down the IBus fools the Blitzsafe unit into thinking that the Info button was pressed. It then responds with the appropriate artist/song message.

The BAD news is that the headunit ignores the Blitzsafe's message. Something about actually pressing the Info button makes the head unit start looking for the message from the Blitzsafe, and since the button wasn't actually pressed, it ignores the Artist/Song info message. GRRRR!!!

I haven't given up yet, but I'm not sure how to overcome this problem at this time.

Anybody else have any ideas?

 

the loss of signal or "loading" message gets through without polling from the HU (at least I think it does). Any idea what that mechanism might be?

 

It is a little complicated, but basically when the headunit is displaying that, it is because the Blitzsafe is sending the "channel x preset yy show text ZZZ" message, which the headunit is always watching for. When the headunit sees that message it displays the text ZZZ.

If pressing the Info button caused the Blitzsafe to send the exact same message, only with the artist name, it would be easy to dupe. But instead, pressing the Info button causes the head unit to send the message "show me text QQQ" and the Blitzsafe sends back the artist and it is displayed. But apprently the headunit is only looking for the QQQ message after the Info button is pressed.

The only way around it that I can think of right now is for a extar piece of hardware to fake the "Info Pressed" message, wait for the Blitzsafe's response, and then send the ZZZ message with the QQQ text in it, if that makes sense.

Of course, if it did that, then the extra hardware would be sending "show QQQ" and the Blitzsafe would be sending "show ZZZ", and at best we would have some sort of war going on with the headunit displaying first one and then the other then back again.

I guess that would be better than having it just sit on th useless chanel name readout all the time.

I imagine it is too much to hope for a firmware change from Blitzsafe, but I am beginning to think that is what is necessary...