I met with Rob Putnam, the owner of SoundGate today. http://www.soundgate.com He told me Soundgate definitely plans an adapter for the S2000 to make the dash controls work with Alpine, Pioneer, Kenwood and Clarion heads.

Rob showed me a Soundgate adapter for GM products and said his S2000 adapter would look similar. Here's a picture of the GM one.

http://www.soundgate.com/remote1.html

Rob said I could say in public that he thought it would be available October 1, 2001. He said that he WILL be making the adapter, no "perhaps" about it.

Rob looked at the KCE-865B I got from UK. The KCE-865B arrived today. His unit will be kind of similar. However, his unit will have dip switches inside so you can set it for various brands. Also, he is under the impression that the KCE-865B sends signals to the head that are in a different code or language than what the USA Alpine heads will understand.

As soon as I get my hands on one of the newer Alpine heads that accepts the 3.5 mm plug that the KCE-865B uses to send remote signals, we'll give it a try.

 

Barry, this is great news. Will it be just plug and play? No IR?

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by itsjustme
[B]Barry, this is great news.

 

Here's a photo of the Soundgate adapter (for GM dash controls) side by side with the Alpine European KCE-865B adapter (which may or may not work with USA Alpine radios.)




link here to get a much higher resolution picture.

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/ViewPhoto?u...&p=48665280&f=0

 

I am currently working on a project of my own for a direct-cable converter for S2000 dash controls to Sony Remote Commander port. It is possible that the project could be altered/expanded to include control of other brands of stereos via a hard-wired connection. I'm not planning on doing any infra-red control though since the PAC unit already has this covered. The unit I am working on will be programable so you aren't stuck with the functions that the buttons were intended for, and it may offer a way to get additional functions out of the buttons. Once I am done I will be providing all the information to build one to anyone that is interested in building one for their own use.