ipod 5.5g 80gb / using kenwood in-car headunit

[Journer]

i was wondering if anyone has successfully used rockbox along with their kenwood headunit using the ip500 ipod adapter.  this adapter hooks up to the USB port on the bottom of the ipod and has the following controls:
directory previous/next control
song previous/next control
volume is handled by the head unit
text display (folder, song, etc.)
charges the ipod

as far as i know, the ip500 controller works just like any speakerbox you can buy for the ipod.  does anyone have any experience with this particular head unit or other head units? i saw on the ipod accessories that a few head units do work so i am assuming it will, just need some more info i suppose.

thanks in advance

[soap]

I can promise you nothing will work except most likely charging, and possibly audio.  The controls and display will not work unless the Kenwood headunit is treating the iPod as a hard drive and simply parsing the iTunes database.

[RichieB]

I can confirm that my iPod 5g / 30gb does exactly as soap promises. Running Rockbox 3.2 it charges and audio works, but all the controls are dead. No song info is displayed on the head unit. On the upside, the song info is still displayed on the iPod and the controls on the iPod still work. (Unlike the stock firmware that just shows the KENWOOD logo and stops listening to the iPod controls while connected to the KCA-iP500.)

[soap]

I hope you see this, RichieB - as the claim of mine you were replying to was old as sin.
Much progress has been made in Rockbox since August of 2007 in adding basic Apple Accessory Protocol support to Rockbox.
That being said, there is little likelyhood of the more complicated (feature-rich) accessories working, but I would very much like if you could try a few things.

1 - Does the accessory work (at all / differently) depending on if you have Accessory Power Supply on versus off?
2 - Does the accessory work (at all / differently) depending on what you have the baud rate set at?  (I don't have my iPod in front of me at this time - it is in the System:Debug menu, will edit this post later.)
3- Do you mind reading this and noting what data we attempt to collect and report as detailed of findings as you can?  Please note the bit about the "ADC reading" as mentioned at the top of that page and the FlySpray task.
4 - Feel free to ask any questions regarding the above three.
5 - Thanks.

[donpipo]

Hi soap,
I own both a 5.5G Ipod and a Kenwood car headunit (a KDC-W6541U) too.
I previously requested that the IAP patch should be committed to SVN and that was the debut of your IAP build.
I had good hopes for Ipod control since, so I bought this headunit with built-in
Ipod control.
Full Ipod control was working with my Griffin AutoPilot previously with the former IAP build but I've not tested it since it was in SVN.

I'm currently testing with 3.2 Rockbox and I can't manage to establish communication between the headunit and the Ipod under Rockbox. It works fine with Apple firmware, the Kenwood logo shows up on screen and everything is under control through the headunit.

But with Rockbox:
All different options and combinations tested (i.e. Accessory Power Supply, Car Adapter mode...) but once it's plugged to the headunit, Rockbox goes into disk mode, then the headunit displays "Ipod error", then disk mode says "OK to disconnect".
I tried to turn "Ipod mode" off into the headunit options -> same result.
I can't go further...

Is there a way to prevent the headunit to make Rockbox going into disk mode? Because this is where is my problem.

Cheers and keep up the good work.
I hope I can help!

Alex.

[soap]

Press "Menu" while inserting the cable to prevent 3.2 from rebooting into disk mode.

Sorry for the late reply.

[donpipo]

Unfortunately, it doesn't help much.
The unit still says "Searching" then immediately "Ipod error".
Rockbox doesn't seem to "see" anything. 
All combination between Accessory Power Supply and Serial bitrate tried too.