Here is another great do-it-yourself project that will delight many owners of older Saab 9-5 cars who want to improve the audio atmosphere in their cars and modernize the sound. Estonian Saab enthusiast Raivo Zazou, who now lives in America, recently figured out how to upgrade an outdated stereo system and thus modernize the music device in Saab 9-5.
So far, this innovation has been commercial, but now the author has changed the status of this Saab project in the interest of all Saab enthusiasts and car owners. Raivo has released thier old project SAAB 9-5 MP3 player as open-source now. This would help many owners of the 9-5 model to refresh the audio driving atmosphere, so Feel free to convert your old cassette player to USB/SD MP3 player.
MP3 module for SAAB 9-5 original stereo is a set of hardware and software specially designed for SAAB 9-5 (1998-2005) by replacing the old Tape module with the MP3 music player. Music can be played from SD card, USB stick or Aux in (e.g. phone, etc.). MP3 player is controlled over steering wheel buttons and SID buttons. And after all this, the innovators managed to sent to SID some information.
MP3 player fits SAAB 9-5 model years 1998-2005 without navigation and with Tape module.
The electronics is somewhat challenging to do, especially soldering ribbon cable, but nothing impossible. The solution is based on custom made AVR-CAN controller which combines Arduino Uno+CAN shield but is smaller. It can be programmed with USB-serial converter through Arduino IDE (includes Arduino bootloader).
For now, the authors no longer offer a product or service to swap. There are still some parts left, contact the innovator if you are interested. An MP3 player is a cheap unit from eBay, but it may be relatively difficult to find. The front panel is 3D printed.
Post-conversion features that this upgrade will allow you to do:
- Playing MP3 music from SD-card or USB stick
- Audio input (Aux in) standard 3,5 mm plug
- Equalizer (4 channels)
- Song repeat
- Next and previous song switching
- Moving forward by 10 songs
- Some information is showed in SID
Controller can be bought here (if interested we can pre-program it with MP3 player binary) and Controller software is here now: https://github.com/raivo/saab9-5mp3player
