I have a Tonghai Create unit with fitment for my car (2009 Audi TT). I have had various issues with it and almost all are related to the integration with the car's systems. As this has a CAN BUS encoder/decoder I believe the issues are down to how this 'talks' and 'reads' information on the CAN BUS.
For example turning the Volume up or down with either the steering wheel buttons or the volume knob on the unit will cause the 'Vol x' to be displayed on the cars DIS (Driver Information System in the centre of the dash between the speedo and the rev counter). If the radio is in operation the frequency is displayed on the DIS, however that is all - with the factory RNS-E head unit the RDS channel information is displayed (I.e. BBC R2). If the music app is playing tracks from the SD card then the DIS displays 'Trü X' and 'USB' - (I believe it should read 'Track X'), if you are playing music from the SD card with the factory RNS-E unit it displays the filename of the track. If a phonecall is in place then it displays some symbols and 'PHONE'; with the RNS-E it displays the caller name if it is in the phones phonebook, or the phone number if not.
With the RNS-E the SatNav instructions are also displayed on the DIS, however I am not too bothered about this, but other suppliers are saying the integration with the CAN BUS includes this functionality as well?
I have contacted the supplier who have not been able to help. I have also upgraded the software to the IQ Navi software (0.1.24) however the problems remain and they are obviously not related to the software on the head unit.
So my question is can the CAN BUS encoder/decoder be updated or replaced to restore/give the functionality of the RNS-E head unit? It would be better to have nothing displayed on the DIS rather than garbled stuff.
Andy
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Wow, just when you think you've found a headunit that is perfect, what happens instead? You read some reviews that are written after the user owned it for a short amount of time, and then you discover the problems.
Is there an Android HU that gets good FM/AM reception? Doesn't need to be rebooted? Won't disappoint? I previously got burned on a cheaper model and don't want to repeat that again. Hell - I could have just gotten a Kenwood and avoided all the headache and a $195 install job.
Hi,
I think that depends on your definition of "problems". My definition of a real problem is when there is no solotion on xda developers
OK, first I would recommend that you buy a head unit that was made for your car brand and model if available. I own a 2013 Skoda Rapid (similar to VW Polo / Golf, no "dirty" jokes please lol) and bought a VW specific model ("Autopumpkin" (reseller) 2 DIN for VW, RK3066 processor with Android 4.4.4 @ 800x480px, firmware is KLD2).
Installation: Plug in the quad lock CAN bus and the head unit was ready. Nothing else to do.
AM/FM:
In some cases, your car antenna needs +12V power to work properly. My head unit has a "phantom power adapter" (don't know if this is the right word in english). If you don't connect +12V to antenna, the reception is awful, I only received 4 stations with poor quality. Once the pantom power was connected (in my special case, I also needed a FAKRA adapter to connect the head unit with the car antenna since the plugs from the head unit didn't fit in the car connector), I received 18 stations (more can't be saved) on 88-95MHz (band goes from 88-108 here) using auto scan mode.
"Doesn't need to be rebooted":
I don't know exactly what you mean, would you like to specify that? The head unit can't be always on due to the high power consumption which would kill the battery very fast. Boot time is about 20-30 seconds but it remains about 5 minutes in standby if you pull out the ignition key.
Sound quality:
If sound quality is as important for you as for me, you MAYBE have a problem with those cheap head units but that also depends on what you like to do and to what kind of music you do listen.
On FM, sound quality doesn't matter for me because I use FM only for traffic announcements and news / documentary). The built in EQ is not the best one, at first I was thinking about to send the unit back because of the bad quality. After some days, I tried Poweramp with it's EQ and the difference was HUGE. Sounds better that the original car radio. Later, I tried Viper4Android (EQ app) since the Poweramp EQ only works for Poweramp and I thoght better radio sound quality would not be bad, but AFAIK AM/FM (and Bluetooth) sound output is not processed in Android what means only the build in EQ can influence the sound quality of that parts.
Traffic announcement (TA):
But one thing about TA feature does really drives me crazy: If you have enabled TA and the radio app detects traffic announcements (what happens also if the radio is in "background" respectively not explicit opened), a "modal popup" appears and you can't do anything (you can't skip TA or switch to another app) but vol up / down or disable TA with the "Close" button at all what means that you have to go to the radio app and enable TA again manually.
Bluetooth:
Bluetooth works much better than expected. If I get into the car in the morning, my phone (Sony Xperia Z2 with stock rom) connects with the head unit in seconds. If I press the "Play" button in the head unit's bluetooth app, it almost instantly continues playing my Spotify playlist from the phone (Spotify app doesn't work on my head unit, don't know why...).
3G / Wifi:
About 3G: Sometimes the HU loses connection because the power supplied by the USB ports is not enough. In that case, I have to power off and on the unit again (but "soft" reboot, done in seconds). Wifi (if you use your smartphone as hotspot with teathering) does work very well but not on distances over approx. 10 meters.
About GPS:
The GPS signal fixes very, VERY fast (2-5 seconds, but thats maybe because Android fixes the signal at boot time) and the supplied navigation app (iGO Primo) can calculate a route from south germany to a random forrest in Poland (I tapped on a random place on the map) approximately 1500km away in less than 10 seconds.
Dual way CAN bus:
Does work with my car, I can control radio stations via the buttons of my on-board computer / MFD (Multi Function Display as called by VW, my car doesn't have SWC) and the MFD shows the station frequency. I can also control the Media Player App (next / prev track, not volume), but only the built in one, not Poweramp.
Conclusion: If there is a HU for your specific brand / model, you should not have as much trouble as if you buy a generic one, especially with installation. You should have at least some basic Android, car and technical knowledge and (most important) the will to play around with your device, try out new apps, firmwares and roms, play with the settings etc... If you want a real plug and play solution, you maybe have to pay 1000€ / $ +. You get what you pay for
I hope my reply was helpful.
Nice Text. So it is.
hippelsepp said:
I hope my reply was helpful.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It was, thank you. Which HU do you use?
My question is: Is there an American/Japanese/Anywhere else head unit that can do as much as these Chinese head units??
Hello all,
I have a KGL1, 1024x600 RK3188 unit and even if the controls in the steering wheel work propperly, I am missing the part of the "FIS" screen (I have a SEAT-VW car group) where I could see radio stations and song titles.
After I installed this navi-radio, the screen became completely black and is not showing that information anymore, that was previously shown with the original "standard" radio that came with the car.
Do you know if is it there any solution for this? or it will be always like this?
I attach a photo as an example from other car (the part of the yellow square), but the result is the same.
Thank you.
hello,
i think this is normal.
i have a vw too, and my FIS after installing a "non OEM Radio" only show me the same information.
my opinion is, the can-bus adapter can only read information from the car, there can´t write back or send information from the new "non OEM radio" to the FIS.
greets
I have an Audi with a similar display on the dashboard and I get some information displayed. There is a CAN BUS decoder installed in the wiring loom that I believe is supposed to be a two-way thing - i.e. you change the volume, track or radio station with the buttons on the steering wheel and these are interpreted by the head unit or change them on the head unit and they are 'supposed' to be sent to the cars computer. This partially works on my Audi, although the text that is displayed is wrong or interpreted wrong; only the Radio band and frequency are correct. I think the CAN BUS unit 'tells' the car what is happening (i.e. its a music track or its a phone call), however I think the car is expecting some more information regarding the details - i.e. PHONE + Number or Contact name, or USB Audio + Track number/details.
I think this is down to the software on the CAN BUS unit - but I am still learning.... I haven't seen any details of updating software/firmware on the CAN BUS adapters?
Andy
Thanks a lot to both of you.
@ADB100, how did you managed to make it working? For me in the upper part of the FIS, nothing appears and if it could see the radio station, something is something
magnificus said:
Thanks a lot to both of you.
@ADB100, how did you managed to make it working? For me in the upper part of the FIS, nothing appears and if it could see the radio station, something is something
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I didn't do anything other than install the head unit with the CAN BUS decoder already in the wiring loom. I previously had an Audi RNS-E unit installed and all the information in the DIS (Audi refer to it as the Driver Information System) worked - Radio Station, Phone Contact, SD Card track name. The wiring loom that was supplied had the quadlock to connect to the connector from the car and then a small connected to connect to the back of the head unit. There were then RCA's for the four audio channels (FL, FR, RL & RR) plus the CAN BUS box. The CAN BUS box had a label on it saying 'CAN BUS DECODER. For Audi A3/TT' and then a software version. Its all installed in the car now so I can't tell you exactly as I'd need to remove it. I should have probably taken a few more photo's before I installed it... It might be coming out anyway and the RNS-E going back in to be honest as I am not too happy with this Tonghai Create unit...
Andy
Some HU "write" on the FIS, and others not......mine don't, but Xtrons PF73AA3A do.....
Hello,
I have an XTRONS PA17GFVPL-LB mounted on Golf 7. When I mounted it all worked correctly. After a few days, the communication with canbus started to work intermittently. So I asked for the replacement of the canbus decoder; which did not solve unfortunately. The xtrons support then asked me to upgrade to MCU GS v2.88, but also this action did not resolve the issue. The strangeness is the following: the radio sends correctly messages via canbus (I can set all the details such as units of measurement, radar sound tone, intensity of lights etc.) but it has some difficulties while receiving messagges (input from the steering wheel buttons and reading values such as temperature or values set above), meaning the "receiving" is intermittent, it works 1 time out of 5. However, in the rare cases the unit works fine, everything is fluid and perfect.
I also tried to unplug the car battery and / or the canbus fuses, hoping it would unlock somehow, but no way.
I tried all 100+ possible canbus combinations in the "factory settings" settings. The only one that works is the "35 Golf 7".
The xtrons unit is not blocked by particular processes, when it works everything is smooth, even with waze and spotify active together.
Xtrons says they do not have a more specific decoder for Golf Mk7 than the one they gave me. Below the link to the pictures of the canbus decoder I'm using, supplied by Xtrons. On Roadnavi.com I found the C257 for golf 7, I think I'll buy it, but I have no clue whether it is compatible with the unit.
Pictures link -> postimg[dot]cc/gallery/p2ue7cxo/
does anyone have any clue?
Thank you
Hi All,
I'm looking for advice. I want to fit android head-unit into my BMW e90. Looking at what is available on the market I think that there is nothing that would do all I need. Basically:
Joying JY-UOS03N4 - System looks most up to date spec-wise, it looks like the DSP provides very good control of the audio output, I like the detachable screen as I could place the LCD higher on the dash (with a custom mount). Issues: No support for BMW Canbus (Parking sensors chimes, parking sensors display, canbus data display)
Eonon GA9165 - Should nicely integrate into the the car, has physical buttons and full BMW canbus support. Issues: Software looks dated, no clear mention of support for android auto, poor sound output control (equaliser with 4 presents that's all, no mention of high/low pass filters for the sub etc.)
Xtrons PB7890BP - Not sure of anything on this unit.
Ideally I would like to get the Joying unit working with Canbus adapter from Eonon (can be purchased separately). So I have few questions:
- Does anyone know what signalling those adapters use? Is that somethign like usb/serial or just outputs resistive values like on normal car stereo?
- How difficult would it be to extract software (that displays the stats, parking sensors etc) from Eonon and put it into Joying unit?
- Is it worth a hassle? Any other ideas?
Thanks
GA9165B owner
I have a Hifi system, and I also only use the High quality options from Google play or streaming.
I very much think this unit puts out well left alone. There are lots of hidden menus in the head unit. And I think there is a sub output control buried in there with all the AVI controls.
I just want to go to Android 9 and ditch the locked Widget screen and expand the volume control option submenus.
The bigges setback is the system doesnt let you one aspect of sound its all or nothing single slide flat control, audio gets interrupted by unpleasent notifications and is unsettling.
Hey There!
I have a PX5 Android Radio (xtrons) built in my Mercedes-Benz E-Class (W211). This car has a display built in the speedometer, where you normally can search for another frequency or play the next DVD track.
I can play the next song with steering wheel buttons with the PX5, it even shows a small "AUX" text when AVIN is open, or "BT" when i play music via bluetooth. With the media player open, I can see the time of the track and can move forward and backwards.
Would that be possible with Spotify installed on the px5 to? Maybe with an android application, that sends the text via the canbus to the display? If that would work, it would be even possible to show Navigation on it.
Hopefully somebody could help me find a documentation or sth, so I could try to code such an application.
I have the same car with a PX6 head unit. It seems it's not possible to display any track info from Spotify or navigation info in the speedometer display.
Do you have the Harman/Kardon Logic 7 sound system? If so, are you using a fiber optics adapter with your head unit?
dape16 said:
I have the same car with a PX6 head unit. It seems it's not possible to display any track info from Spotify or navigation info in the speedometer display.
Do you have the Harman/Kardon Logic 7 sound system? If so, are you using a fiber optics adapter with your head unit?
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Click to collapse
I don't have the Harman/Kardon Logic sound system. It should be possible to write Text or pixels to the Dash Display via the canbus. It already displays "BT or AUX" so there also should be existing code that does this.
It would be mind blowing to have the Navigation Info in the Dash Display among with Radar Detection etc...