People who have converted their Soarer’s TV and audio to natively receive Australian/UK/NZ broadcast using my DIY kits know that I am a die-hard Soarer enthusiast trying to get the most out of this amazing and unique car’s audio system. Over the last two years I have spent countless hours studying and developing an interface kit for the Soarer EMV. Today I am pleased to announce I have succeeded and the first prototype of this new kit is operating in my car. The kit allows most off the shelf multimedia devices (such as video/audio players, multimedia pc or satellite navigation systems) to be controlled via the EMV touch screen.

Many Soarer owners already have one or more of these devices connected to the EMV via the two Audio/Video (AV) inputs provided by my TV conversion kit or via the Factory Video Terminal (FVT). Most of the devices have an Infra Red (IR) remote control interface for navigation. I made the Soarer EMV interface to replace those IR remotes by using the Soarer EMV touch screen.
How does this work?
Currently when the Soarer TV is selected for viewing (or the initial TV screen after power on) the touch screen does not operate, as there are no user menus to control. I took advantage of that and made the touch screen to accept touch events in this state. I divided the EMV screen area in 9 equal size rectangular zones, forming a 3x3 matrix. There is no graphical indication on the screen where the buttons are, but it is not difficult to correctly identify and touch them because of their big size (three rows of three buttons per row).
Each of these 9 buttons sends a unique IR signal (code) when pressed. This IR signal is taken (learned) from the Infra Red (IR) remote of the multimedia player/gps/pc already connected to the EMV. In other words, the EMV interface makes the touch screen to function as an IR remote control for your external device.

Often the device IR remote controls have more than 9 buttons (functions). To support more functions, each touch screen zone is designed to send two independent IR codes – one for a short button touch (shorter than 0.5sec) and another for a touch and hold (longer than 0.5 sec). There is a short beep and a long beep feedback. This allows 2x9=18 independent IR codes to be sent by the EMV interface to the device.

The TV conversion kit has two AV inputs, selectable via TV channels 19 and 20, for connection of up to two multimedia player/gps/pc devices. The EMV interface is designed to support an independent set of IR codes for each individual AV input. Therefore, each device has its own 18 IR functions and can be independently controlled by the EMV touch screen. By simply switching to channel 19 or 20, the touch screen is automatically switched to control the corresponding device.

Some people are using the Factory Video Terminal (FVT), which allows mono audio and video devices to be connected to the EMV. The disadvantage of this AV input is that it is not well integrated. It requires a switch (in the storage compartment between the front seats) to enable/disable it. The EMV interface integrates this AV input with the EMV. I used the Traffic Control Info EMV button (the Traffic Control Info service is only available in Japan) to switch (enable) this input. Now when the Info button is pressed and released, the EMV TV is switched on and the FVT selected (to exit from FVT just select another TV channel or EMV function). I also made the touch screen operating in FVT mode exactly the same as the TV kit AV inputs. So the FVT has its own 18 IR functions for device control automatically selected when FVT is enabled.

In addition to the 18 touch screen IR control functions for each of the three external devices connected to the EMV, I added two special IR functions for entry/exit. For example, when TV channel 19 AV input is selected the entry IR function is sent to the device. When switching from channel 19 to another channel or EMV audio source, the exit function is sent to the device. The entry/exit functions could be used to power up/down (or play/pause) the device when the AV input is selected/deselected.

In summary the EMV interface kit allows touch screen control via IR signals (codes) for up to three player/gps/pc devices, each of them having 20 independent IR control functions. The EMV interface learns the IR codes from the device IR remote control. The learning procedure is rather simple and needs to be done once after the EMV interface kit is installed. The EMV interface keeps the codes forever in a nonvolatile memory. You can change them at any time and as many times as you wish.

The EMV interface kit also allows integration with Pioneer CD-SR100 steering wheel IR remote control.
http://www.pioneer.com.au/car_entertainment/accessories/cdsr100/index.html

The Pioneer CD-SR100 keys are mapped to EMV and touch screen buttons in the way shown bellow:



When a Pioneer CD-SR100 key is pressed and released within 0.5 seconds the following EMV functions are accessed:



When pressed and held for longer than 0.5 seconds the following EMV functions are accessed:



The Pioneer CD-SR100 remote has two additional volume control buttons on its back. Their function is to control the Soarer volume as well.

The up and down arrow keys are directly mapped to the EMV TUNE/CH/TRACK buttons.

The left and right arrow keys are used for touch screen control and have different functions depending on which EMV user screen is displayed. They allow for up to four touch screen functions (short press / long press) per user screen to be controlled. Here is a table showing the four functions for each EMV user screen:


 

The Pioneer CD-SR100 IR remote not only can control the EMV, but also the three player/gps/pc devices connected to cannel 19, 20 or FVT AV inputs. The remote has 9 keys on the front panel, which map to the 9 touch screen zones used to control the external devices. The remote can be switched to/out of this mode by a long press of the up arrow button when the EMV has any of the cannel 19, 20 or FVT audio/video inputs selected. When the remote is in this mode, each button is mapped directly to the corresponding touch screen zones, and an IR command is sent to the external device.

The EMV interface also supports Sony TV remote control codes. A standard Sony TV remote control device can be used to control the EMV and the three external devices in the same way as the Pioneer CD-SR100 remote. The Sony TV numeric keys 1 to 9 form a matrix of 3x3 buttons, which match the CD-SR100 front buttons (Sony key 5 maps to the top CD-SR100 button Att). Other Sony buttons used are
Sony mute – mutes the EMV volume
Sony volume control – controls EMV volume
Sony channel Up/Down – directly mapped to EMV TUNE/CH/TRACK buttons

And finally Sony Power button, followed by a sequence of three numeric buttons (0 to 9), will activate any EMV function, such as touch screen event by X/Y coordinate or any EMV button.

The support of the Sony TV remote makes the EMV voice-control-ready. There are remotes on the market, which use voice recognition to generate IR commands. Sony TV codes are supported by all of them.
These remotes convert a voice command to a single remote key press event. Because the EMV interface uses short and long key press events it is a problem to emulate the long press events with such a remote. To overcome this limitation I made the EMV interface to respond to Sony VCR remote codes by interpreting a short Sony VCR key event as a long key press EMV interface event. Thus, a voice-operated remote can send Sony VCR short button press codes to the EMV interface, which will be interpreted as long button presses.
I tried this voice-operated remote:
http://www.visionhighway.com/gear/accenda_remote.htm
and it didn’t work well in a noisy car environment.

And finally, the EMV interface has a few functions that I am not planning to officially document in the installation manual as they put the EMV computer and the EMV display in an inconsistent state. These functions allow the EMV display to switch its input to TV or rear view camera from any other EMV screen. They also allow reversing the screen background (a function normally activated by the head lights) and the ability to change the brightness to max or middle level.


Here is a picture of the prototype board: