I know this sub forum is almost dead but I was curious if anyone had any experience turning the navigation control buttons into a PC controller similar to how the Joycon turns steering wheel controls into an HID controller.

My ultimate goal would be to add the navi controls and screen to my non navi G and use them as programmable buttons in addition to using the Joycon with the steering controls.

Edit: I should probably add that my G is a 1st gen.

 

To use them as-is, no. However, if you de-solder the momentary contact OEM buttons from the OEM circuit board and mount them on a project board, then just run those wires to a USB controller board, like the I-PAC - it's just a matter of setting the I-PAC button mapping to do what you want on your computer.

If you leave the buttons on the OEM board, you're going to have a TON of other connections between the buttons besides just the obvious. I ran into that issue when I used the OEM climate control board to map to a Metra board when I did the franken-controls detailed here:
https://g35driver.com/forums/audio-v...-dd-kit-4.html

 

That's the kind of board I was looking for! I had seen some teensy stuff but this looks much closer to what I want to accomplish and I think the push button on the far right can be wired up like a standard joystick. Thanks a bunch Wrathernaut!

 

i was looking for the exact same thing. trying to get my navi buttons to still function but have dual functionality with the joycon exr. it uses a bus + and bus- signal wires. not sure if the joycon can interpret them or not

 

The steering wheel buttons simply vary the resistance to a reference ground on two different wires, which is (relatively) trivial to convert into different button presses. The climate control buttons do similar, but it's all to a controller on the circuit board. To do something like the joycon while maintaining OEM navi function, you'd have to find the wires and solder to the appropriate place to the board. I suppose it's possible, but it would be a fair amount of work to get all the resistances calculated for the joycon to work right, and it might be more wires than the joycon supports.

So long as you aren't trying to keep factory navi fully functional, you're definitely going to simply things by moving the buttons to a blank board with no hidden connections going on.

Anyone want to send me their navi controller and an I-PAC? I'll put one together.

 

lol i was trying to keep oem navi functional. yeah ive studied the board and it goes through a microprocessor but in the end isnt the functionality the same with the bus + and bus - wires? isnt it just different resistance per button that can be mapped by the joycon?

 

I don't have factory navi so it's kinda a moot point for me. I'm just hoping to replace the screen with a touch screen so I could have a double din pc and another one within eye sight for things I need (like GPS or OBD monitoring).

For me either soldering wires to the existing buttons once I get the controls or putting them on a new matrix board seems much more straightforward than interpreting the bus signal but I was going to go down that path if nothing better presented itself. (Again big thanks for pointing me in the right direction!)

Also since I can't get the digitalwheelz screen housing anymore this is the best way to have something factory looking that hides out of sight easily without doing custom fab. I have a hard enough time getting the time to setup the PC how I want it!

 

why not just get an oem motorized housing and retrofit a tablet in there?

 

Yeah, different resistance per button, but, whereas the steering wheel is three different buttons each on two wires which is pretty straightforward, the navi controls are a total of 16 buttons when you factor in the joystick, and no idea how many signal paths they combine to.

 

i think im actually only going to try to map a few of them and not every single one because if it has dual functionality i dont want it to mess up one side if im pressing buttons for the other one. im thinking like the map button. maybe not even map the joystick since the enter button would basically cause a lot of problems



but thats good info. now that i know that the bus + and bus- on the navibuttons have the same idea in regards to resistance i feel comfortable buying the joycon and trying it out. didnt know if like buttons had weird varying voltage within the same click or something. and it also has the adjuster **** on the joycon to vary things if the voltages are too close