Touchtone electronic steering wheel

A steering wheel control system for passing electronic information from a steering wheel to a vehicle system, said control system comprising:

• a steering wheel electronics assembly connected to the steering wheel for generating a tone corresponding to the electronic information;
• a signal transmission assembly connected to the steering wheel electronics assembly for transmitting the tone from the steering wheel electronics assembly;
• and
• an electronic control box responsive to the transmitted tone from the signal transmission assembly, said control box being connected to the signal transmission assembly and to the vehicle system, said control box decoding the transmitted tone and sending the decoded tone to the vehicle system.

A steering wheel control system for operating a vehicle system, said control system comprising:

• a steering wheel electronics assembly that generates a tone in response to a selected steering wheel push button on a vehicle steering wheel, wherein a distinct tone corresponds to each of a plurality of steering wheel push-buttons, said electronics assembly including a detection circuit for detecting an electrical signal from the selected steering wheel push-button, a matching circuit for matching the electrical signal from the selected push-button to the generated tone, and a tone generator for producing the tone;
• a signal transmission assembly connected to the steering wheel electronics assembly for transmitting the generated tone from the steering wheel electronics assembly, said steering wheel electronics assembly including a sliding contact connected to the tone generator;
• and
• an electronic control box including a tone decoder, said tone decoder connected to the sliding contact and decoding the tone back to the electrical signal to operate the vehicle system.