The only button I wish for is one to turn on the windshield wiper heater instead of having to dungeon dive through the climate menu on the screen.

 

The "talk/speech" button on the steering wheel can be used two ways.
Brief touch and release address the cars features, "Tune 93.1 FM" or "Change the temperature to 69 degrees.
A long press and hold address your phone, "Call John Smith" or "Text Mary Jones mobile", "Play Eric Clapton on Spotify",
"find nearest Wendy's".

The useful heated windshield wiper heater feature is crippled by it's absurd multistep actuating process.

 

Well today I carried out a bunch of experiments.
It's funny how car electronics can be inconsistent.

With the MODE button:
First TWO times I held the button for 3-15 seconds
or more. Nothing happened.
Then when the radio was on, it worked. It turned it off, but it didn't say OFF, it said the sound was Muted!
There is a difference between an audio device being Off and Muted.

Later when I held for 4-5 seconds the radio did turn on! So inconsistent.

 

Well... that's because that's the intended function: mute
And probably the reason why we don't have crazy interfaces with programmable buttons: people don't read user manuals.

 

Let's suppose I had my stereo turned on at home.
I turn it off not just because I don't want to hear it anymore.
I also turn it off because I don't want to pay any more for the electricity costs and wearing of electronic parts.

What has reading the manual got to do with programmable buttons?
Are you telling me if I read the manual I will learn how to re-program the buttons I was talking about?

That's not what those above have told me.

 

BTW, the long press of the MODE button mutes the radio as mentioned. The long press will Pause any playback of a stream from your phone or a CD in equipped.

 

LOL what is this thread.

Anyways yes, you can reprogram the buttons if you intercept the signal on the CANBUS. This is how openpilot / comma.ai works and remaps keys.

 

I'm game!
How do I intercept the signal on the CANBUS?

 

Depends on how hardcore you want to get. At the minimum you'll need to interface with the can-hi and can-lo wires (can buy a harness on mr. one's site for like $30). You'll then need to take some code from https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/tree/master in order to see how they are remapping keys. Then you'll need compatible hardware to run that code (which could probably be something like a raspberry pi if you're comfortable with embedded hardware programming).

 

Thanks, but this is way above my pay grade.

 

I guess it depends on how much you want to remap keys I guess.

You could also buy a comma and donate to someone on their discord to add the code for you. If you get them the log it would be trivial to do to a few dozen people on there.

It still takes effort and/or money either way.

 

Thanks.
Actually after playing around with the OK button on the steering wheel
I discovered it can do the job very nicely.
It isn't perfect, but close enough.

As long as I keep the OK menu set to Audio then I'm good to go.
One OK press brings up FM/AM/USB/Sirius etc.
FM is what I choose most of the time, so I just press
OK twice and the radio turns on.

I still need to turn it off the with the radio button, but that's fine.
The OK button is even better than the Phone switch as it's closer
to my LH thumb.

 

I think the mode button on the right side of the steering wheel toggles through all audio sources. Sounds like the same as your use of the OK button, but using the mode button might free up the OK button for other things.

 

Yes I used to use the Mode button to turn on and toggle the audio sources up until the day I made my OP.
I had accidentally hit a button and something interesting happened. I messed around and realized I had to have hit
the OK or arrow button below it by accident.
I followed up on it and saw that I could change radio settings with the OK button (first time).

That's when I started to think about the phone switch and the one below it (I never use them).

But for me the OK button is better to control the radio as it's closer to my thumb
and I don't use the OK button for anything else most of the time.