Just installed new NAV/DVD head unit (with pics)

Azi,

When I say "no instructions" I mean nothing that helps much. It's like 34 pages - and should be 100+ with good details (this is more a computer than radio).

For installation, it was as I mentioned - silly easy. All the wires just plug into the Prius (and they only go to specific connectors - so it's impossible to mess up). There is a male connector "brake" wire out of the back of the unit (to connect to your brake wire on the Prius - from features on other HUs, I correctly guessed that I don't want this). There is also a female connector ground wire - I correctly guessed that you put the male wire in the female - and viola...

The mounting brackets come off the old head unit, and just mount straight back on this HU.

You pull the dash pieces out, unscrew the 4 10mm bolts on the HU, put in the new, connect wires, replace the bolts, and pop on all the trim.

Frenchie is correct that once you've done this, you could probably do it in 3 minutes (not including mounting the GPS - which I highly recommend putting under the drivers "tweeter" - I get great GPS reception, and it locks in pretty quickly... I believe this could be done by any competent 12 yr old...

It looks as good or better than the EBay pictures. The interface is very nice looking, That said, you gotta know what your doing - for instance, it's simple and straight forward - but when you get into changing things like the key beep tone, or the GPS volume or (whatever), it takes time to figure out where the stuff is - keep in mind though - some of it is specific programs - the GPS for example is its own program. When I put in Nav a GO (iGO for 800-x480 in 3D) in place of ROute 66, everything will change. Cool note - with this iGo you're supposed to be able to customize everything in it - from your own icons - or I even already found Homer Simpons voice for the software THumbs up on the interface thus far...

The screen is TFT - you can see from the EBay pictures, it's *clear* - so no worries about side views... I will say it's hard to see when the sun is at the right angle (but that is true in our Lexus also).

I'm still not sure what the USB cable does (?????????) - but I plan to run them through the "center bridge", by the shifter, and into the center console.

To date:
DVD is nice - works as expected. I would like the screen to be "brighter" but that's likely a setup issue.

Nav works great - locks in a signal within 20 secs, can even find a signal in my garage (???) - but I need to swap it out for iGO. I still can't figure out how to listen/watch NAV while listening to radio (again - a setup issue)

PIP works - but I can't figure out how to move the windows around, and set it up easily - again - a setup issue.

AM works great - with the exception of choosing stations - as an example, our most powerful station - 640 - when the radio "seeks", it stops at 638 (??????). Same with other stations - when you enter the station (took me a day to figure this out), it gets better/perfect reception. You can then store your 8 stations, and you are fine. I'm guessing there is some setup thing for this????

FM - my area does not have great coverage - so I'd rate my FM happiness in my Xterra/Lexus as a 8. The reception in this I would rate a 5. It is not as good - I get the stations, but in my area, they aren't as clear (remember, they weren't clear before either - it's just worse -- others have talked about antenna issues in the Prius. I think this has worse reception than the stock HU. That said, it may be setup (???)

iPOD does not charge my iPhone, and in fact, my iPhone goes into Airplane mode. I am sure there is a setup for this, but it goes back to the whole documentation support box... The interface works nicely, and looks good for listening to music etc. Didn't try videos, and only played with this for a few minutes...

USB - have no idea what you would use this for... Maybe iPhone USB to iPhone cord???????

SD cards - I believe it can support 8GB for MP3 and the like - you can make virtual CDs and other cool stuff - there's an interface for it I haven't played with - why bother with an iTouch/phone. Cool plug ins on the front for the 2 cards - 1 for GPS, the other for ..... Not really any docs on building your virtual CDs etc - but that's a setup issue

CD/MP3 - didn't try one - just DVD.

Remote - it has one, but didn't play with it.

Bluetooth - works nicely - easy interface - can stream music, and picks up incoming calls etc - just as you would expect. Didn't try changing tracks - there's an iPhone bug that prevents that - I think it was fixed in the iPhone 3.1 release, but I'm jailbroken - so I have to wait for the 3.1 jailbreak.

Haven't installed my backup cam or parking sensors (this will be the nicest thing about the unit - i HATE the rear visibility).

Initial impressions: It's really cool, has gobs and gobs of features, but it takes time to learn how to use them all - and documentation effectively does not exist. Tech support is also somewhere on the other side of the world. 2 days of emails, and nothing. That said, I really need to call them - they are supposed to have a user forum. This would fix all my woes (but I can live with the minimal woes I have)... I'd love to have a compatriot to help navigate this thing

One more thing - it has a MIC jack on the back, but also a mic on the front. It does not ship with an external mic, so I placed in one from my PC (on top of the steering column - hot-melted on). To date, I have no idea if the external or internal one - or both are working (again - maybe setup). I just plugged it in cause it made sense (????????????????)

EDIT: I ordered the parking sensor kit for $40 from them. You need it to match your paint color!!! They also have a "Camry" camera that appears plug and play for the Prius. As it doesn't have night vision, and was expensive (like $45), I chose one from a different spot with better specs. It looks like it will fit - and was cheap...
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=350125551920&ssPageName=ADME:B:EOIBSA:US:1123

I think for the money, you can't go wrong...

Cheers,

Rolf

 

I don't think so - it's not mentioned anywhere - I'll ask if and when I talk to them. You'd have to hook it up via USB (???)

 

Wow - impressive - that *thing* costs as much as my whole stereo

Did you take pictures of the wiring? Also the install

I'm getting sound material here Soundproofing & Noise Control Materiels Prices - seems low cost, functional, and you can get it in any thickness... How much (you can go metric here - even though this post originated in the US) material did you use per door (square meters/yards heck - nanometers - Angstroms)? How thick can I go (what is there space for)?

I want to open the bottom part under the bridge (where the cigarette adapter is) to install my inverter way back there (or up there as it is in the front of the car)...

Inverters, powered subs, powered amps - good thing we have that flux capacitor on-board!

TIA

 

PM quote:
Hey,

Great thread. I'm very interested in changing out the stock head unit of my trim II, but I haven't had any luck finding the unit in your pics on ebay. Would you mind pm'ing me the seller. Also, if you could point me toward the resources you mentioned with info about these different chinese HUs, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks!
End quote:

I left his (or her) name out, as it was a PM, but I think the context is important - he (or she) can identify him(or her)self as he(or she) wishes

EBay search { rav4 pip} - direct link...

As for the others, there are gobs - Ebay search camry GPS, or RAV4 gps, or toyota gps. You can reference the bezel threads for size (200x100) - I'm guessing there are like 15 varieties.... Eonon does not support the steering control - so that's a no-go... It's hard to find who does what - I think there are like 3-4 factories in china making these - some have better GUIs, some - not so...

I have a few things I am not happy with - the FM (Frenchie may have the fix), bugs - drove 3 hrs to the airport today, and sometimes you run bluetooth, and when you go back to radio, it would be "on" 640AM, but the radio channel was elsewhere - (780???, 530??????). You press the 640 button, and it stays there - you press 1070, it goes there, then press 640, it goes to the real 640. There is a slight whine with Bluetooth calls (on my end).

 

We went on a nice 2 hr trip to 6 Flags today, so had some time tooling around to at least clear the steering issue - they are programmable, and work - now figuring out what to associate with what... Volume works as you'd expect, Ch+ Ch- work fine with track changes, but on FM, they just scan up or down - they don't cycle through your programmed channels (again likely a setup issue). Mode can be set to move through sources - but I think you have to then select the source - which means touching the display (again maybe a setup issue - you can program these buttons to many things).

Bluetooth sound is not great - sounds like a car speakerphone - even when streaming audio (???) - the workaround was plugging iPhone direct to iPod interface - the phone went into "airplane" mode, but then you turn it "on" and it goes on. The iPod streaming is nice, you can cycle through track, volume etc through steering functions...

DVD audio is real surround, but I htink I am missing the center channel - so voice is quiet sometimes - not sure how to set it into phantom mode. I know that THX sound thing that comes on at the beginning of a movie sounds real good... With there was a center speaker out..

I still have no contact from support - of course it's their weekend. I have pointedly asked that they explain how their support works...

I won't work on FM until I get the DTV antenna and backup cam (Frenchie pointed out I believe correctly that you must power the antenna). Though FM reception is pretty fine - not a deal breaker...

GPS: I am able to run iGO Amigo - but once I get it going, if I turn off the car, and start it again, I get a Win error regarding screen resolution, and it stops working, and makes me restart the software. So good news, I can run it, and play with it - bad news, I don't have it setup correctly for the 800x480 screen. I've read about drivers and skins, but don't have the time to figure it out... One of these days - it looks like it will be a killer app once it's running (Route66 is fine in the mean time) - it has many voice modules, 3d landmarks, 3d stuff, even game modules - there's like 1GB of add-ons (I bought a 4G micro SD to play with - it comes with a 2GB).....

Still haven't touched the USB interface...

 

I'm not optimistic on the BT front... You have other options though - USB (still not sure what it does), and using the Aux input on the radio - or just getting an iPhone Mine's on TMobile...

As for real time traffic, I *think* that is broadcast via FM, and *think* it is a software thing - so maybe iGO??????????????? I was thinking this today when I was researching more on iGO...

Time from order to me:
Radio/parking sensors - 3 bus days
Bezel - 2 weeks - but it seems it's down to 3 bus days if you order from a pre-existing auction
DTV - 3 days
camera - likely 2 weeks (still isn't here)
Antenna - likely 2 weeks (still isn't here)

 

Cool, so I think my real only big issues left are configuration/software:

Getting iGo going (I know this can be done - just don't know enough about the SD card setup, and setting up the 800x480 drivers - the MFG also confirmed it does work)
Getting Nav to work with radio (again, I know this works - just not how to make it work - PIP and the like)...

I'll play with the USB on my way shopping...

 

Well - you can get your mud on, and save on shipping (they combine). On the bright side, it is stamped "made in the EU" - so you can add a little euro flair to your Prius.

 

OK - so I've had some time to play and learn - I did RTFM - which helped a *very small amount*.

On the support front, sadly, I have learned there is not much - only emails to China - which get answered a day later, then the wrong answer, and I have to restate the question, then finally a real answer - 4-5 day turn around. Thankfully, I've figured most everything out - so that isn't a big issue...

On the GPS front, I got iGO 8 running yesterday - in 3D - with all the bells and whistles... Wow - a very nice nav package - nay - amazing. It has more crazy features than anyone would really need or want - but it is fun, useful, and easy to use! The 3D images are cool (driving by Disneyland, the airport, ...). Nav N Go - Software Development for Mobile Devices
It is supposed to warn about red light cams (haven't been through one), and warns when you speed (has gobs of POI stuff). It did warn me about speeding on my drive today

DVD works like a charm - at night the picture (800x480 resolution) is stunning.

iPod interface works fine - *except* with iPhone OS 3.0, I get a warning when I first plug it in - I have to press a button on the iPhone to ignore it - then the car has full control.

Steering functions work fine, and are programmable. There is no Bluetooth/call answer button on my stock package II car - so I have to answer the call on the iPhone, by the remote control, or by pressing the display.

AM works fine - 8 presets

FM works - but not perfect. I have not yet put power to the antenna yet - this should fix any reception issues.

Haven't played with the USB - but I'm sure it's fine - same with CDs and MP3s.

Bluetooth works seamlessly - with the exception of sound - it sounds like a car speaker-phone. So when you play music/podcasts, you get that sound on A2DP - it's fine for podcasts, but not for music - stick with an aux jack, or USB, or iPod cables.

Bugs - there are 2 i've found - which are annoying, but I will live with them - and maybe someday, I'll be able to upgrade and get rid of em (just a wish) - The radio has 4 pages of presets (1 Am, 3 FM) - each page stores 8 stations. You cannot store the 8th button - it is stuck on whatever it shipped with. Same on all 4 pages. The other is you may be listening to one station, and when you turn off the car, and turn it back on, that station says it is playing, but the radio changed the station. So, it can be confusing, I was listening to baseball, then I get back in the car - it says I'm listening to the station, but classical music is playing (my first hint that something is wrong). Simple to work around - just press the buttons to change station - but these are annoying.

The pros range from:
PIP (picture in picture) for nav/dvd/whatever, good quality sound (without replacing the stock speakers).
Easy to use interface (GUI)
32 station presets (24 FM, 8 AM) - more on this in the cons
Amazing GPS capabilities
Seamless and easy bluetooth
Nice iPod interface
Perfect and SIMPLE installation - no wiring
Nice sound
Ability to upgrade amps etc
Aux input for gaming (or in my case DTV )
Nice inputs for rear cam
Nice parking sensor package (shows distance on display - but you need to put 4 holes in your bumper).

The cons
Support (nice but SLOW)
(2) bugs (FM)
Sound streaming A2DP bluetooth poor
Doesn't charge the iPhone while connected