So, I read how to change the COMAND nav voice to British and really like it. I t looks like everyones has tried to figure out how to make the change stick without success. However I wonder, the nav voices must be saved as audio files of some sort on the nav DVD. Did anyone try to re-burn the DVD with the British voices into the US folder? Or something of that sort? I was thinking about trying this out, but before wasting too much time on it, I figured I'd ask.

 

I was told the only way to get the british accent is to have the Euro Comand. That's what i've got.

 

OK, so I take it nobody has tried this yet. I'll give it a shot when I get back from vacation and post my results here.

 

It will be interesting to see if you can hack it - goodluck.

 

Just got back from vacation. First thing I did is pop in my navigation DVD into my powerbook and much to my surprise, I saw that MB uses some kind of database format to store their info in.

This is what mine contained. First the size in bytes, then the date, and then the filename.
3768320 Nov 2 2004 E8-48_NA_2095_D1.DB
182272 Jul 24 2004 GPS222.DB
20895744 Jul 24 2004 SDB_1846b.DB
768960512 Jul 24 2004 kN033NA01x06.DB
340033536 Jul 24 2004 kN033NA01x06g32b.DB
The DVD's volume name was E848_NA_2095_D1

I would appreciate if others could also pop in their DVDs and post the files it contains. Especially navigation DVDs from different years. Maybe there is a pattern. For instance, I wonder what is the relationship b/w "kN033NA01x06.DB" and "kN033NA01x06g32b.DB"? They have almost identical filename.

Anyone has a guess what these files might contain? I presume GPS222.DB contains the GPS coordinates for street addresses. But for the rest?!? SDB_1846b.DB could be the sound database (pure speculation!).

 

Found the following possibly related posting on another forum. Notice the similarities in the directory layout.

 

GPS222 is definitively not the GPS coordinates to street cross-references. It's only 180KB! Looking at its contents, it most likely the code to determine the current location from the GPS satelites.

Anyway, enough monologue. I'll do some more work and post again if I find anything of value to report (or if anyone asks for more info).

 

keep us updated! I would love to know if its possible

 

Ok, so here are a couple of updates. First, you can copy your Nav DVD and it will work. Actually, you can modify your Nav DVD and it still works. However, I've not been able to convince the COMAND unit to pick up the British sounds files. Nonetheless, I do have some insights into what the files are for:

E8-48_NA_2095_D1.DB:
This seems to be an application. It contains a lot of error and status messages. I don't know what it does and won't look any further into unless i have to.

GPS222.DB:
Probably information about the GPS satelites.

SDB_1846b.DB:
This file seems to contain something language related. It hast 26 files with .SP5 extension. Each of these contain a vocabulary of 200 words with offset and size information. My guess is that the latter point to the voice files for the corresponding language, but I'm still working on determining this.

kN033NA01x06.DB:
No idea, but my guess is that this file contains the street/map database.

kN033NA01x06g32b.DB
Ditto. No idea, but my guess is that this file contains the street/map database.

I've written a program to extract the information from the .DB files. These files are uncompressed archives of smaller files. Aside from making my life difficult they don't seem to have real value. Why the MB programmer's felt it to be necessary to invent a new filesystem is really unfortunate.

Anyway, now that I have extracted the .SP5 files from SDB_1846b.DB (there are 26 of them), I can do some investigation on them. It is my guess that these files contain the language specific information and modifying them should give us permanent access to the British sound files. However, at this point, this is only conjecture on my part.

Keep your fingers crossed and I'll post an update upon further progress. If anyone wants the source code to the tools I'm working on, just PM me. Cheers.

 

Hello Cormac, any update about your progress?

Regards,

Paco

 

Cormac, you are the man! Keep me updated on your progress and let me know if you need some help.

 

Thanks for the encouragement. I haven't had much time recently to play with it as I'm getting ready to relocate from Seattle to San Diego. That will be interesting drive.

Also, I ran into a small complication. It's not clear when the COMAND units loads the files from the DVD. I had worked under the assumption that burning the DVD, slapping it into the drive, and then starting the navigation system would be enough to find out if it worked. Well, that's not the case. It looks like the COMAND unit loads the files and then keeps them in memory. For instance, it was able to display the map and start navigation witout a DVD in the drive!

Anyone have a suggestion on how to reliably reset the unit so that it re-loads the DVD?

 

>>Anyone have a suggestion on how to reliably reset the unit so that it re-loads the DVD?

Yes, you can reload the DVD, at any time that you change de DVD version!

I was doing so many times to test it.

Regards,

Paco

 

if you go into the service menu i believe there is an option to "update". which means essentially reload. give it a shot.

 

Cormac,
Check this link out. You need to work with this guy. Between the two of you I bet you can get the English voice to stick as permanent.
Gareth

http://www.mbnz.org/forums/forums/th...sp?tid=1193579

 

in the Nav+5 menu, there is a option to do just that.

 

Awesome! Thanks. I'll give it a shot.

I finally finished moving in, so I should have some time after the O'Reilly conference is done in town. I'll keep you posted.

 

there is an option to change, but it does not stick. if you turn off the car and restart later, the language switches back to US English. We are trying to get it to stick to another language of our choice. If you know of the config to make that happen, please share it with the group.

 

clarify, I thought were was some option to reload the map or update it in that same menu. My last post was not in relation to the voice.

 

I know how to change the voice in the menu, but I would like to trick the COMAND unit in thinking that the British voice is actually the US voice. At the end, it's only bits. The unit does what it is told. That's why I'm trying to hack the voice files to bend it to our will.

 

keep us in the know!

 

I'll continue to post on the mbnz.org r171 forum and monitor this one, but here's my latest thoughts/efforts on this topic...

A little more digging indicates that the harman becker system uses a product called codescape for development. Apparently, one of the elements is a compiler, although based on some of the files I've been peeking at, it's not very efficient and may be possible to reverse without a herculean effort.

I'm planning on downloading the codescape software and looking at it since there is a free version. Hopefully it's not a complete waste of time. Check www.codescape.com if you're interrested.

My SWAG's on what's in the files are somewhat similar to yours. I would agree that the two larger ones are map data. SDB files appear to be the sound and menus.

I'd wager the GPS222 is the firmware upgrade based on some of the actual text in the file. To be clear, I'm referring to the 2005 nav disc. I haven't bothered to pull my 2006 disc out of the car to look at yet so the filenames may be slightly differnt.

My guess is that the E8-41 file is the one the COMAND unit loads at power up.
Of course, I could be completely wrong about all of this...

Something that would be really cool would be for someone with a different Nav disc (Not USA) to post the E8-41 and GPS222 files or their equivalents where it could be downloaded for analysis. If someone takes the time to do this, please indicate what the native language is, what year, and for which car models.

The easiest solution would be to post the same one I'm looking at(preferred disc: 04-05 CL, E, S 05 SL, SLK) or (04-05 CL, 04-06 E&S, 05 SL & SLK, 06 CLS) just to try and be sure it's the equivalent of what I have in my posession. If I end up getting both, I'll yank the disc out of my car and burn a copy to play with.

I can then do a file compare and look at the differences. Hopefully it's readily apparent.
If we can get a couple sets of these files, it should get really easy. Files from regions other than US would be appreciated.

The silly but obvious thing to say is please add download instructions as well.

 

here is a crazy idea, has anyone thought to call becker and ask them. I know its a crazy idea, but.......

 

MB USA make life so difficult for us??? unbelievable.

 

I've started collecting the information from this forum and the other one into a wiki. There is a lot of good stuff here and we shouldn't have to sift through it each time to find it.

The wiki is located at http://comand.jot.com/