Xm Trip Computer Update, available at any dealer!

This post has been edited by jorgy9 on December 05, 2007 12:03 am

Oh well done that man !

Colin.P

LOL

Clever Clogs!

How did you do that? Did you discover the two pins which seem to recieve data?

Oh the fun that could be had!

Ciarán

Oh yes Ciaran you could have some serious fun with that, Can you imagine if you had tweaked one in this way, and wired it into the alarm so if some little sod pinched it, the display would suddenly came up with "get out", and then start counting down from 10 Do you think they would??????

Do you think it would display a TV picture?

Peter.N.

Like YOUR PLACE OR MINE !

R.

Haha could you see the look on their faces! Something like 'EJECTOR SEATS ACTIVATED' perhaps...

I'd love to do it on the S2 and not say anything, then when SWMBO drives it have it display stuff like 'DANGER WOMAN DRIVER - STOP IMMEDIATELY' or 'JUST WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING, DAVE?'.... then act like I know nothing about it, and say she must be looney tunes when she runs in to tell me the car is insulting her

Its almost worth taking the dash apart for.... almost...

Ciarán

This post has been edited by Ciaran on December 05, 2007 09:37 pm

Hi Jorgy,

I know there was a french group working on the comms between the radio and the instrument display and for the most part they cracked it. They could send any message they liked to the display by piggybacking onto the comms pair between the two devices.

Have you managed this yourself? If so, I'd be extrmemely interested in the methodology and the associated circuitry. Alternatively, is the photo a fake?

cheers

noz

I found an S1 dot matrix in my box of electrical spares last night when looking for a fuel pump for my dad (long story ).

Anyway, if anyone has a pin-out for them, I'd be happy to try some experimentation with it wired up to a serial port to see if we can work out how to interface with it....

Ciarán

This post has been edited by Ciaran on December 07, 2007 03:00 pm

Hi Ciaran,

The S1 matrix is quite different to the S2. The S1 works on a very simple principle. It has, say, 20 pins. If you short each pin in turn to earth you get a different alarm on the display. The little chip inside has the necessary text already programmed inside so as it detects each pin shorted to earth it brings up the associated message. It has no data comms whatsoever.

For the most part the S2 dot matrix operates the same way. It too has, say, 20 pins each of which produces a different text message when grounded. However, most importantly it has 2 additional pins. These are connected to two pins on the back of the radio. The interconnecting cable carries RDS information on CAN or VAN protocol from the radio to the dot matrix. Thats how you can see the name of the radio station or the frequency or the 'seek' text. In this case the text is not stored in the chip inside the display. The message is physically transmitted from the radio to the display. By piggybacking on the comms pair, using the right protocol, you can get the display to say almost anything you like.

In both cases the messages have a pre-programmed priority order so more serious alarms are displayed rather than a less serious alarm. As most people know, an ABS alarm masks all others and won't go away until the problem is fixed. In the S2 display any alarm is more important than radio station information therefore the alarms are given priority over radio info.

Hope that clears it up and saves you hours of tinkering with a non-comms S1 display. When I get home from work I'll post the website with the display comms project (although I'm sure I've already posted it on club-xm somewhere).

Found it:
http://club-xm.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=603


cheers

noz

This post has been edited by noz on December 07, 2007 11:43 pm

Hi all

Not really the place for questions but while we are on the subject, if i managed to get my hands on a MK1 matrix could i fit it to my prestige? would it be a case of plug and play, or a bit more involved/impossible?