Valentine V1 installation, continued

After having dissected the wiring diagram for the interface needed to read the signals from the V1 I decided to just buy a prebuilt cable instead. It may or may not work with the software mentioned in my previous post but, according to the folks who sell the cable, does work with Software One.

XM Radio, part 2

After an initial unsuccessful attempt at getting XM Radio to work I decided to try and get this to work using the serial to usb converter instead of plugging straight onto the motherboard's COM2 port. This worked out of the box but I (of course) had to redo my connections because I'd manually mapped them onto what I thought were the right pins given my cable setup. I didn't have the right cable to hook onto the motherboard and so I decided to try and wire things myself. In the end this turned out to be a wasted effort so now I need to go and find the proper (twisted) serial cable. It's getting there ...

I also had to resend the activation code for my radio and hope to be on-line any moment now ... let's hope it doesn't take an hour as they claim is sometimes the case!

Valentine V1 + XM Radio

The latest developments on the car PC include the installation of an XM Direct unit which I've yet to get to work and I also just ordered a little tool which will allow me to hook up my Valentine V1 radar detector to the PC. Coolness. Given the issues I currently have with the LCD's brightness I'll probably keep both interfaces for now (PC + remote display).

The XM radio doesn't work, yet. And I'm regretting the fact that they don't have any NPR stations and not having done my homework ahead of time. I built the cable last night and that didn't work so I tried connecting it via a Serial to USB device and that doesn't work either. For starters I tried using a demo version of TimeTrax software but it never gets past the step where it seeks out the device. I'll probably try a different piece of software in the interim, like Frodo player. The device hasn't been activated yet and I don't know how well TimeTrax deals with this situation. We'll see ...