VW TO SONY TO HONDA

[damb]

I recently bought a new car (06 civic SI) and want to hook up my PB to my head unit but want to stay with the factory unit. I was reading that SBINGER hooked you up via and honda to sony interface with some issues. Just wondeing did you work those issues out and where did you get the cable or did you make it. If you made it where did you get the pin out. Does anybody know where to buy the cable.

[sbingner]

I made the cable, and the pinout is on http://www.phathack.com/pinouts.html -- I never did get the issues resolved but it's possible it would not be a problem for you.   There seemed to be some voltage fluctuation that caused the Honda/Sony adaptor to sometimes tell the PhatBox to turn off.... if you use another interface and pipe just audio through the sony/honda adaptor it works fine

I sort of gave up on it, my cable is made from an old sony cd changer cable and was a major pain to make.   It doesn't always make good contact on the adaptor end which is part of the problems I've experienced.   If you have a good cable you may have better luck (which is why I offered to buy that sony cable on the for sale forum)

[sbingner]

Also, I think the Accord and Civic interface is different, but I'm not sure

[damb]

I read some where that you had to install rca's on the vw phatbox's. Why?

[sbingner]

Sony requires RCA because the connection is 2 RCA plugs and a control interface... it doesn't run the audio through the main control interface

[bman]

sbinger,

What honda-to-sony converter did you use?  I would like to attempt to convert my VW phatbox to a sony so that I can use it in my new Honda Pilot.  

My Pilot has the head unit with an in-dash 6 disk changer, XM radio and a rear DVD player.  If someone has done something like this, any ideas would be appreciated!  We really miss our phatbox since getting the Pilot.

Thanks

[shoora]

How to make SSA work on Sony firmware? This unit useless without SSA. Especially my wife - she just get so much use to this feature in her VW Jetta.
Do we really need custom built 51d?
I have experience in disassembling ARM code, may be I can help with something.

Another problem I have is that I see my red LED light all the time. It never turn off. Seems odd to me. I afraid for my battery, since I feel that area behind voltage regulator on my PhatBox is war. Presumable it cunsume in stendby mode pretty significant current.

[S80_UK]

Another problem I have is that I see my red LED light all the time. It never turn off. Seems odd to me. I afraid for my battery, since I feel that area behind voltage regulator on my PhatBox is war. Presumable it cunsume in stendby mode pretty significant current.

The red power LED should normally go aff a few seconds after the ignition / head unit is shut down.  If it is staying on then something is not right in the interface from the head-unit.  I have no Honda knowledge, but normally the Phatbox takes a signal to say if power is on or not (pin 14 on the 26 way connector).  This pin normally goes to +12 volts to turn on the Phatbox.  It sounds like this is not being disconnected when you turn things off in the car. 

[shoora]

The red power LED should normally go aff a few seconds after the ignition / head unit is shut down.  If it is staying on then something is not right in the interface from the head-unit.  I have no Honda knowledge, but normally the Phatbox takes a signal to say if power is on or not (pin 14 on the 26 way connector).  This pin normally goes to +12 volts to turn on the Phatbox.  It sounds like this is not being disconnected when you turn things off in the car. 

Thanks for hint about pin 14. Actually, in Sony cable, it is not connected. May be I have to build some schema to short it to the ground when ingition is off.
I am just guessing that we can teach PhatBox to do SSA on Sony using phatbox.ini? Will play with this later today.

[sbingner]

SSA doesn't work, and the stupid thing still isn't powering off properly...  anyways I used a PIE HON03/PC-SON adaptor...

[shoora]

SSA doesn't work, and the stupid thing still isn't powering off properly...  anyways I used a PIE HON03/PC-SON adaptor...

Whats a difference between SSA head units and no SSA? By common sense it must be somewhere in 51d. May be triggered by 8051 firmware.
I can see that you made some custom 51d.
Currenly I am only preparing to move PhatBox in my wifes Honda. Have not picked adaptor yet. Or I can buy some Sony head unit - have not decided yet.
For now I am testing it with my BMW with Soundgate #SNBMW adaptor.

Just verified that tricking phatbox.ini with headunit_code 0x0600 does not work.
In you listing of 51d I saw massage "SSA head unit", that give me a hope to hack that daemon to enable for all units.
In my log I see:
>>
processpac: Got Session: mode 0, run type 17, lot 32 01
>>
From what I can see "run mode" is bitfield:
bit0 - "Will auto-stop at eod / random track change"
bit1 - "SSA head unit"
bit2 - "Extra help enabled"
bit3 - "Force magazine random"
bit4 - "text unit"
In our case "run mode" is 0x11
Does this means that we will see text on Sony HU?

Is anyone managed to decrypt and disassemble 8051 firmware?
Have you seen traces of Pioneer firmware/pinout, by the way. Could be useful in future.

[judb]

AFAIK no progress has been made on loading code into the 8051. 

I was told by a phatnoise employee a long time ago that they had a pioneer head unit (you can see traces of that in the phatbox.ini on some newer firmwares) but that pioneer wouldn't allow them a license to sell it so they just shelved it.

That firmware was never released and I doubt it ever will be.

[shoora]

SSA doesn't work, and the stupid thing still isn't powering off properly...  anyways I used a PIE HON03/PC-SON adaptor...

1. Do you think I can solve SSA problem with some patch of 51d?
2. If we do some circuit to control pin14, will this help to put PhatBox asleep?
3. I believe that Kenwood SSA is actually replaces firmware.pac. Can you give full list of files of Kenwood SSA plugin? I don't think it is illegal. Any way it is can not be used with Sony HU - just to give me a clue.

Worst of all whould be, of course, if significant chunk of code missing from 8051 firmware. But I still don't understand what part of SSA functionality VW HU has that Sony HU does not!

[sbingner]

Kenwood SSA flips a bit in the 8051 code.

The SSA is implimented partially in the 8051, and partially in 51d.

Once we have a replacement for phatd and/or 51d, we can EMULATE SSA on non-SSA head units, to some extent yes.   Feel free to work on the replacement 51d a bit

[shoora]

Kenwood SSA flips a bit in the 8051 code.

The SSA is implimented partially in the 8051, and partially in 51d.

Once we have a replacement for phatd and/or 51d, we can EMULATE SSA on non-SSA head units, to some extent yes.   Feel free to work on the replacement 51d a bit

I can see you 51d code from 12/10/05. You done a lot, but seems there much more work needs to done. I have pending project with CDC emulator for Rockbox. I think this project is better use of my spare time.
By the way, I am not familiar with 8051 assembler but, when I feed firmware.pac to IDA, code may looks like real. May be it is not encrypted, but for me it's too difficult to completely disassemble it then do some changes (in unknown to me assembler!) and compile.
As alternative I am looking at MBus protocol adapter. I have started another topic asking for any success stories of MBus with PhatBox.

[sbingner]

The firmware is encrypted, but I believe we could upload an un-encrypted firmware if we were to code one...

Really though, as long as the HU is supported if you want to work on the replacement 51d with me we could probably emulate the full SSA functionality...  I've almost got a 2.6 kernel running for a phatbox, my only problem now is that for some reason the console isn't being initialized right or something.   Well, that and I still have to add the soundcard support but I doubt that would be too big.

Oh yes, IRC (irc.freenode.net #phathack) is the best place to discuss if you're interested in working on 51d etc...