Slider radio, updated

[jaysterling]

Blah! That's funny. Your head unit is about on par with a 1980's 20 million dollar super computer.

What did you get the boot time down to?

It boots, auto-connects to my phone, hits "play" on the phone, and I'm streaming audio in 12-15 seconds from power on. This is way better than I had hoped and I've done zero tweaking to make it fast. I just made my app that's orchestrating all this a system service so it's launched early in the boot process.

The software side of this project is turning out to be more work than expected and most of what I've been working on lately is mind-numbingly boring but crucial. Working with a 2 input, 6 output USB sound card on a RPi *should* just work, but of course it doesn't quite, so those are the kinds of fun issues I'm working through....

[Klug]

Awesome work! Keep it up

[Kershaw]

If you made and sold kits, there'd definitely be people interested. If I hadn't just gotten my perfect oem+ head unit, I would be all about this. This is an awesome project.

[berlow94]

I'd definitely be interested in this.


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[Chrisbike]

If you ever decide to make this I'll be in for it. Trying to buy a stock radio for my e30 right now and Bluetooth would be amazing. :)

[Mahalaleel]

If you made and sold kits, there'd definitely be people interested. If I hadn't just gotten my perfect oem+ head unit, I would be all about this. This is an awesome project.

What is the best OEM+ head unit? I haven't found any that fit the looks of the e30 dash

[george graves]

You should sell a few and buy yourself a better bench power supply ;)

Looks like you were able to source a connect for the flex/ribbon cable? I'm sure that was fun hunting down.

[jaysterling]

You should sell a few and buy yourself a better bench power supply ;)

Yeah, that thing is kinda garbage, but I figured if I borrowed a junky one from work no one would notice ;)

Looks like you were able to source a connect for the flex/ribbon cable? I'm sure that was fun hunting down.

Digikey has one! It's not a nice zero-insertion force one like in the radio but at least it's a Molex. Also ridiculous that 1.25mm and 1.27mm are both valid (and seemingly common) pitches for those flex cables. Of course, only 1.25mm was available in a 27-pin connector, so that determined that question haha. Works fine.

Anyway, there seems to be a fair amount of interest in the less intrusive method of adding BT input that I mentioned awhile back. I'm looking seriously at putting together a kit for this and selling them to help fund this. I've ordered a few of these cheap Chinese Bluetooth audio boards off eBay to test out, I'd like to use one of these for the BT guts since a) BT modules alone are tricky for an average DIYer to solder and b) these are like 1/5 the price of US-based solutions (at least in the quantity I'd be dealing with). I think I'll probably start another feeler thread on this once I have something to demo.

[stonea]

I'd be super interested in this (maybe 2 of them?) I hate non factory looking head units in cars.

[jaysterling]

Short progress update. Finished a 2nd revision of the RaspberryCassette PCB and assembled it this past weekend. This is much improved from the first version, which had several issues. This time it's got a stout power supply, use of IC switches for the button "faking" rather than an array of transistors (which didn't work on rev 1), a few other minor problems, and a move to mostly SMD parts for real estate.



Then I made this video last night once I reached this baby milestone. The video shows me entering commands in a Mac terminal and the stereo's LCD changing. What's going on is I'm logged in via ssh to the raspberry pi from my Mac, then running the app on there that is the main brains of this operation. The commands I'm entering are stand-ins for physical button pushing, so a command like "p band" issues a button press and release of the physical "BAND" button. As I scroll through, after WB, you see a new input, BT. Upon hitting band again, we return back to regular radio functionality. Not shown but working is the audio system routing all audio through my app and my app 'mixing" the correct audio to the 4.1 output format:



Lastly, I am also still looking into the simpler approach that I want to make a kit/product for. I've been working on reverse-engineering the cassette deck itself and good news is that I've got it pretty much nailed down. This plug-n-play solution will actually be able to have integration with the transport controls, EJ, and PROG buttons on the face (since these commands ultimately go to the deck through a connector I can hijack) and I will probably hijack the volume button inward click to switch sources. Stay tuned!

[ypresman]

Do you by any chance have he original wiring diagram to this radio?


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[jaysterling]

Do you by any chance have he original wiring diagram to this radio?


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I wish! Woulda saved me a lot of poking in the dark with a scope. I called Alpine customer support months ago to see if they had it, just for giggles, and they said they were sure it was in some binder in storage somewhere, but they didn't have stuff that old in digital form.

[ypresman]

Slider radio, updated

I wish! Woulda saved me a lot of poking in the dark with a scope. I called Alpine customer support months ago to see if they had it, just for giggles, and they said they were sure it was in some binder in storage somewhere, but they didn't have stuff that old in digital form.

Haha.. that's what I assumed, I'm having an engineer friend fix/rebuild the same radio for me but keeping it all stock... it was making an on and off squealing sound of death when the volume was turned on... she's rebuilding all she can but was asking if I can get my hands on the original wiring diagram since it would make everything go much faster... lol


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[Downeaster1]

Honestly, this along with the OpenOBC project that going on with reverse engineering older BMW control panels totally blows my mind.

[Court M3]

Have an idea of final production cost?