Hi Geoff, Neither really, I'm not sure an i-Bus activated 12v is needed. I'm just taking 12v from the white (pin 8) and blue (pin 7) monitor connectors. It's a 12v Terminal 30 supply, so its on all the time. My screen replacement is simply mimicking the factory unit only in a higher resolution. I wanted it plug and play to keep it as stock as possible, apart from loosing the cassette player. As well as power, all my video feeds are taken from the connector board. An RGsB converter is used to convert the video signals to VGA for my new screen. I've spent countless hours reverse engineering and developing my knowledge base of these old systems, so I haven't had time to finish it yet, but I know it will work in the car fine. That and life getting in the way
If you're keeping it permanently on does it drain the battery or does it have a standby mode and is that similar to the original system? Which RGsB converter are you using, as I was going to use the Pi with a TV dongle and the HDMI input on my monitor I was going to convert the signal from the Nav with separate sync at the TV module and run in a VGA cable to the monitor. I like your solution better.Hi Geoff, Neither really, I'm not sure an i-Bus activated 12v is needed. I'm just taking 12v from the white (pin 8) and blue (pin 7) monitor connectors. It's a 12v Terminal 30 supply, so its on all the time. My screen replacement is simply mimicking the factory unit only in a higher resolution. I wanted it plug and play to keep it as stock as possible, apart from loosing the cassette player. As well as power, all my video feeds are taken from the connector board. An RGsB converter is used to convert the video signals to VGA for my new screen. I've spent countless hours reverse engineering and developing my knowledge base of these old systems, so I haven't had time to finish it yet, but I know it will work in the car fine. That and life getting in the way
Ok, so when you open your car door the BMW logo should be displayed on the screen. This action is the cars electrical system waking up, it's just like standby on a regular TV. I haven't actually tested it yet but the same thing should happen by "splicing into" that system for the new monitor control electronics. So no extra power should be drawn from the battery. The RGsB converter I'm using is custom, based on one I found in the net. It uses an LM1881 sync separator to strip the sync signal from the Green signal, the result is VGA compatible video. Any RGsB to VGA converter should work, I just like putting my stamp on it.
