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Something Similar to StealthOne for the 8500?
This is kind of a specific question, so I don't know if I'll get responses or not, but here goes.
For the E38 and E39 BMWs (95-01 7-Series, 97-03 5-series), there is a product called the StealthOne for the V1s. It displays the visual alerts on the car's LCD display in the instrument cluster.
Does anyone know of anything similar for the 8500?
As far as I know, no such interface exists for the 8500.
To the best of my knowledge, the 8500 does not send out "display data" like the Valentine One does for the remote display, making such an interface impossible unless they were to use the audio to interpret radar alerts.
I was just over at Eric's (inventor of stealthone) place to have a S1 installed. I asked him if he had ever been approached by RD companies to make products. He said Escort sent him 1 of every current product, but the quality was so poor that he couldn't make it work.
This guy is a very smart, he basically just had this idea that he wanted the the V1 displayed on the car's screen, then spent months reverse engineering the i-bus system. I'm no electrical engineer, but it seems pretty complicated, considering all the electronics that are in the vehicle and what I would guess is a limited amount of information on the wiring (not to mention whether its in German or not). If he could not figure it out, I doubt anyone has.
Doug,
Great. Thanks. Well, not great, but at least I have a final answer. Lol.
The I-Bus system is absurdly complicated. Even the damn DSP stereo is a mess, I'm going through major headaches doing an upgrade on it. Never seen such a complicated car stereo to work with.....and it still sucks for all that.
Also, I've done a few other wiring projects on it as well, and yes, wiring info for the E39 is VERY hard to come by. I had an E36 325is before, and there were hundreds of resources for it. Few have tried to unravel the mystery of I-Bus.
It's a shame he can't do it. I'm sure that myself and many others would be very interested in that product.
If you are just looking for an alternative display, you could try the Cheetah GPS Mirror, if you goal is to hardwire the 8500 in a spot where its original display is covered up? Sure, it's not quite the same (although it does allow the car to appear to not have a RD and it has the same speed-mute feature) and its lacking the steering wheel controls, but its something. And if they use speed/rl cameras in san diego thats a plus.
It's ashame thats is not easier to integrate a stealthone option into all vehicles, it is a really great product. But everyone is just so different, and each takes so much effort to engineer that its just not worthwhile to do. Even Eric with S1, focusing only on BMW's, said that the amount of time he put into was probably not worth the $ he made. And the new models with i-drive are even more complicated, and he was unable to get those to function properly. Although I am guessing that it wasnt just about the money, but more of a hobby. He just did it on the side.
Last edited by DougiesGoinDeep; 06-04-2008 at 08:13 PM.
DavidC from BimmerBoard is making his own version of the StealthOne for any iBus BMW people out there.
S1 is very cool because it displays the RD information in the CC as well as the navigation screen. When I heard David was making a S1 of his own I got really into getting a Valentine but when I came across the 8500 it was a done deal. Haven't looked back since.
I really wish Escort made one though. It would be cool just for the hell of it.
can you give me a link to that...I'm interested to see how it compares to the Jaric S1.Originally Posted by ejames7
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