Pyroneer

Question about the volume **** on the 92-00 SC:

How hard do you think it would be to interface the volume **** to the serial port of a computer? By turning the ****, it acts as like a potentiometer or whatever and can adjust some attribute of the computer (i.e. volume) and by pushing the **** it could activate some feature of the computer (like mute or something).

I'm not too worried about the programming or device driver end of things, I'm pretty good with that kind of stuff, but has anybody actually looked at the physical **** itself and could tell me if this is possible?

Thanks a bunch to anybody who can help me tackle this one,
Shawn

engin_ear

iTrader: (1)

It is unlikely that you'll be able to do this without affecting your existing radio system. The pot is likely to be part of the actual audio path, unless you have a 'rotary encoder' (not a pot, but a **** that spins endlessly in either direction, with no stops). You'd have to rig up some fancy electronics to interface to the pot without affecting the audio quality. Why not put in a separate pot somewhere else? Are you trying to track your audio volume for some reason?

Pyroneer

Hey engin_ear,

The application in this instance would be some sort of "carputer" where the existing head unit would be removed and replaced with a display. By not having a head-unit, and the computers audio out plugged directly into the amps, you are left with several issues.

First, it scares me to have a completely computer controlled volume adjustor without some sort of hard wired solution up front for the driver, This avoids the whole issue of having the volume turned all the way up for some reason when you first get in the car, etc, and not being able to immediately lower it.

Second is that the stock volume **** is still there, after removing the head unit, hanging around for no real reason. I just think it would be really cool to implement the existing volume **** to the new setup, making it look even more "stock".

Even if the addition of a new headunit (single DIN, still leaving room for a screen) was used to control the system volume up front (computer audio via an AUX jack), it would be cool to somehow implement the volume **** to the computer to control the master or WAVE audio out of the soundcard (I guess the days of "line-out" on sound cards are gone).

Thanks for reading this much,
Shawn

engin_ear

iTrader: (1)

Oh, I didn't realize that the headunit and volume control were not part of the same unit in that car. Since you're not concerned with the original audio then, you could wire the pot to an 8-bit A/D converter. Its 8-bit output could then be routed to the computer's parallel port - or, you could get an A/D with a serial output and connect to serial port of computer - or, you could serialize the output of a parallel A/D. If there is also a push on-off switch on that ****, it may be separate from the pot and you can wire it into an I/O port of the computer (parallel port, maybe? or anything else that can be polled). Of course, you need to worry about getting reasonably clean power at the correct voltage(s), but this stuff is simple for anyone that knows a little circuit design...

LS007

It might be easier just to intercept the analog audio on the sound car or MB and route that thru the cars volume control and back to the analog output. Use well shielded microphone cable to route between "carputer" and volume ****.

Most times the shortest distance is the easiest route. Don't make it over complicated.