Ottonavi Head Unit works fine with JBL Sound System!

Ottonavi Head Unit works fine with JBL Sound System using Scosche Adapter

My comments almost mirror Unreal's evaluation here:
http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii-2010-prius-audio-electronics/97121-my-ottonavi-experience.html

I had an issue of sound not coming out. I called Ottonavi and they were extremely helpful and responsive. They said they'd call me back after some experimentation of their own. They called 3 hours later and said that there was a setting for internal versus external amplifiers. So I put the unit back in and hit the tuner knob for audio controls. First comes up Bass, then mid, treble, balance, fade, ASL, and then finally Iamplifier or Eamplifier. I selected Eamplifier and it worked.

I was so afraid I was going to have to buy the PAC TATO or Scosche equivalent and in fact had already bought the Scosche from a local Best Buy. Of course I asked if I could return it and I did today.

And the nice thing is all the steering wheel buttons work. You can hit mode to switch from FM to AM to IPOD to DVD, etc. The volume works fine on the steering wheel along with the button to go to the next song or station. And the phone pick up and hang up buttons work perfectly. They really thought this unit through. The support guy said they are mainly selling these to dealers, the Prius unit is brand new. They got in 90 a week ago and only have 1 left.

OK, installation was a breeze except for taking it apart 3 times to try and get the sound to work. If I had known the setting, it would have been 30 minutes total. Hardest part is finding a good spot for the Nav antenna and bluetooth mic. I put the Nav antenna to the left of the start button using velcro/sticky back tape. I put the mic to the left of my right knee under the steering wheel. The JBL harness is the one with a large connector on each end. You do not use the one with a large connector on one end and two smaller connectors on the other end. If you want to use a back up camera, then there is a harness with about 15 or so RCA female pigtails. I believe you use the one marked CCD for the backup camera, but my 09 Camry camera won't be in till next week.

There is a third harness for steering wheel controls. Plug the small black connector to the back of the head unit, the other end to the car harness. There are also a bunch of wires (hot, ground, antenna, amp, etc.). Don't use any of these except the Pink wire, which you ground to allow your passenger to watch DVD's while you are moving.

The first harness with the 1 large connector on each side, one side plugs into the HU, other one to your main large car radio connector. You will be left with one small connector on the car side that you do not use. Made me feel funny, but no problem. I think it might be the aux, I haven't tried it.

 

Part 2, how does it work:
1) NAV: Haven't played too much with this yet. It uses Route 66 maps, so I'm guessing it will be pretty easy to use. When I turned it on, it thought it was still in Ontario, CA, so I need to let it find the satellites and play with it some.

2) Radio: The reception is not perfect in either FM or AM. Unreal thought it had to do with the magnetic GPS antenna. I don't know. I don't listen to the radio that much, but at first it sounded a little distorted. Not perfect. And the AM tuning is not perfect. Someone else mentioned it goes in 9 khz steps instead of the American 10 khz steps. I may try an amplified antenna if this bothers me.

3) IPOD: PERFECT! This is important to me. It looks like you are looking at a large IPOD with the lists on the left. I like to go to my Playlists and listen to Beatles, or Beachboys, or all my Favorites (The Killers, Coldplay, U2, etc.). The up and down buttons on the steering wheel selects the next song very quickly. AND THE SOUND! It sounds great. I was worried when listening to the radio, but the IPOD sounds great.

4) USB: There are 2 USB ports that I ran to the Glovebox. I also ran the IPOD cable to the Glovebox. I haven't tried the USB yet.

5) DVD: Grabbed "Best of Show" and put it in. Booted up quickly and the video and sound are perfect. Very pleased even though I doubt I will use this feature much.

6) CD: It has the ability to copy up to 6 discs. I haven't tried this yet. But playing my Prime Prine CD sounded great. Simple interface with tracks 1 through XX shown. Again, you can scroll through the songs either with the touchscreen or the steering wheel buttons.

7) Bluetooth: Paired it using code 1234. Found the phone and connected. Go to contacts and type in a name and enter the phone number. I haven't looked if it has voice recognition. Phone is clear when you call someone. It also asked if you want to pair it for audio, I said yes, but I don't know how to make it work. I'll have to bug one of my kids to teach me how to do this.

A big thanks to Unreal, Paja, Jeremy, this is a great forum. The funny thing is I was prepared to use the CAN Bus interface because nobody thought the head unit would communicate with the JBL amp. So when it didn't work, I figured I was screwed. I tried the Scosche and I didn't have the guts to cut into my Ottonavi harness. I'm sure glad I didn't. Turns out it was a simple setting. And Ottonavi felt so badly about this they offered me a backup camera for cost. Too bad I had already bought one off of Ebay.

Thanks,
Glenn
P.S. Don't forget to take the shipping screws out of the top or the unit will not take a DVD or CD.

 

I don't know who the manufacturer is, I'll look on the back of the unit when I put in the backup camera.

 

[/QUOTE]

I had to go to settings and have the unit search for a Nav port in order to make it work. Now it's fine. I doubt if I'll use the Nav unit more than a few times per year, so I don't know if I'll change to IGO or not. The route 66 is working fine.

Thanks for the advice on the radio reception. I've sent an email to Ottonavi on the radio reception. I'm hoping it's something like yours.

 

This looks correct to me. I did not have NAV to begin with, just the JBL head unit without Nav. I also did not try to use the stock microphone, but some people have run the cabling up into the overhead compartment and put the aftermarket microphone in the same spot as the OEM mic.

 

I have a 1 year warranty and their customer service has been good so far. Of course, I really want to get this resolved before I pay the credit card bill!

 

Someone on this forum (a very smart person indeed, but I can't remember who), suggested that maybe I was getting a high line out to the JBL amp when in the Radio mode. They were 100% correct. When I change the amp setting from external to internal the radio sounds PERFECT!!! So I just called Ottonavi and they are going to check with their factory. They have not had this problem before so they are going to exchange the head unit for a new one when they get the next shipment. In the mean time, I'll switch to internal amp setting when I listen to the radio (which is not very often).

This is an outstanding unit, once this issue is fixed, it will be perfect, I'm really happy with it.

 

Yes, thanks for pointing that out to me, I'd erased your PM so I wasn't sure who mentioned it. Great piece of detective work.

I'm hoping they can also solve it. They claim they've sold 100's of these units with very few problems. I'm just guessing that there is a piece of software that is "backwards" for turning on the low versus high setting when in the Radio mode.

Ottonavi is standing behind their unit, I've been impressed with their support so far. I guess I just couldn't find a good solution. I wanted something that would handle my IPOD and look OEM. Even the factory Nav unit doesn't do a good job with an IPOD. This unit does and it looks perfect in the dash. I wish Sony or Kenwood had made a OEM appearing unit, but they don't.

 

Sorry I haven't gotten back sooner. You were right, they were "sold out" but luckily they got some more in. So I got a new unit last Friday. A few changes. It has a quicker processor and a slightly updated operating system. Also has newer Nav software. I like the changes, now you can push the tuner button once and a nice audio screen comes up where you can set balance, fade, treble, mids, and bass. The intro screen also looks nicer. Nice icons to select radio, etc.

I hooked it up and the first thing was no sound. Well, I had to go in and select "external" amplifier. Took me a while to figure out that you have to be in the DVD mode and then hit the tuner button to get to the amplifier setting. OK, now it works, but unfortunately, identical to my old unit. IPOD, DVD, CD all sound great, AM/FM, NAV Voice, and Bluetooth are all over-amplified. Then I go back and select internal amp and it all sounds great except you have to turn up the volume in the IPOD, DVD, CD modes. AM/FM sounds perfect. But just like the old one, it would work in this mode for 5 minutes and sound would stop.

So I decided to try the Scosche Toyota JBL Adapter. $75 for an open box unit at my local Best Buy. And the best part is the great return policy with Best Buy. I hooked this up with some help from another thread on this forum (this is a great forum!).

http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii...99241-distorted-over-amplified-sound-jbl.html

Pretty simple install except I had to cut the JBL harness that comes with the Ottonavi unit. I cut the wires in the middle, so if I have to I can repair it. (I'm pretty good with the soldering iron and heat shrink from years of RC car racing and RC electric airplanes). You basically hook up the Red, Yellow, and Black and the amp wire from the unit directly to the blue/white wire on the Scosche harness (amp turn-on). But I discovered after hooking it up I couldn't get AM. So I ran power to pin 13 (antenna amp) from the wire that corresponded from the Ottonavi unit. VIOLA, perfect, I get AM/FM, IPOD, everything. Actually it sounds like the unit did before when I had it on internal amp, the difference is that it does not shut off after 5 minutes.

Overall I'm satisfied. People are right on this forum though, these Chinese units are not perfect, but I'm betting they will be in the future. I will continue to work with Ottonavi. There are some settings in their software that is incorrect when set to external amp. I've read that the Nav software runs on Windows CE and the sound software is proprietary software. So Ottonavi just needs to update their sound software.

I've also asked Ottonavi to refund me $75 to cover the cost of the Scosche adapter, we'll see if that happens.

 

Re: Ottonavi Head Unit works fine with JBL Sound System if you use Scosche Adapter

OK, this is what I did. I took the Ottonavi JBL connector and cut the red, black, and yellow wires in the middle. I stripped them and crimped them from the Head Unit to the corresponding red, black, and yellow wires on the Scosche Adapter. Now the tricky part. I took the Amp wire from the Ottonavi unit (it's on the pigtail that has all the RCA connectors in it) and I crimped it to the blue/white wire (Amp Turn-on) wire on the Scosche Adapter. The second tricky part is how to get power to the antenna amp in the car. Ottonavi figured out that they have to provide power to the antenna amp whenever they are in the radio mode. So you find the wire that corresponds to Pin 13 on the car harness for the radio and crimp it to the Pin 13 on the Scosche Connector that goes to the car. That way you bypass the Scosche adapter and run the power wire from the head unit to Pin 13 on the car connector like Ottonavi had it originally. That's it.



Now an update. Ottonavi sent me an update for the new faster unit. It came with V9.00 and they sent me V9.05. They said it would fix the gain issues and allow me to run without the Scosche adapter. Unfortunately the updater did not work properly for me. It stopped halfway through the update and would not update the operating software. Ottonavi came through AGAIN and sent me another unit, but this one still has V9.00. I just replaced the unit and everything is fine, but I am still using the Scosche adapter. It's really no big deal, everything works, just have to remember to turn down the volume if you switch from IPOD to radio.

The newest unit is the best yet. I really like the IGO Nav operating system, it's much better than the Route 66 system. Remember to go to the GPS screen and unclick the GPS and hit autodetect. You have to do this the first time to get GPS working. Then drive around for 10 minutes to acquire all the satellites.

The other thing about the new unit is when I synced my phone this time it automatically downloaded the contacts list. I was a little upset that the new unit has no method to add contact phone numbers manually. But the new unit does a great job of downloading all the phone numbers out of your contact list on your phone.

So in conclusion, this unit is well worth the money. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU BUY IT FROM OTTONAVI in Ontario, California. Or Alfaotto, it's the exact same company. I've worked with Kuo, Johnny, and Daniel and they have been FANTASTIC. Never a hesitation to send me out a unit or help me over the phone and emails. Great guys to work with.

The unit has great radio reception, I get FM and AM perfectly fine and I'm using the Shark Fin Antenna which is supposedly not as good as the stock antenna. The DVD system is extremely nice, I have to be careful because I have O'Brother Where Art Thou in there and it looks so good on the screen that I want to watch while I'm driving (but I don't). The best part is the IPOD player, very easy to operate. You can select artist, album, playlists, etc. You can also select Menu at the top of the simulated thumbwheel and get all the same menu items that's on your IPOD. Bluetooth works fine, just wish it had voice recognition.

I'm convinced that Ottonavi will fix the gain issue in the near future. I'm guessing that V9.05 probably fixes it, it's just I wasn't successful in doing the update.

Thanks,
Glenn