Chinese replacement HUs?

LOL... No, we clocked in a little over 600 miles for the weekend trip to SoCal and I spent just $32 in gas. The ODO was right on 1000 miles when we pulled in the garage.

Thanks for the info... I think I'm going to be ordering the QL-TYT510 soon!

- Glenn

 

Glenn,

If budget was an issue, I would really look (and research AVIC forum) at the F900BT from Pioneer. It's been cracked and hacked - so I think has a decent number features that are nice (and can't be had - sadly on the $1000 Z110BT). They are very cheap used - but you need the PAC ad-ons (mostly as a package though - $300+).

I don't know much about it - but I know whenever I'm looking for stuff on mine, there's lots of stuff for that one...

Just another thought...

 

Oh no... now you just made it more interesting rrolff...

"MUST HAVE AVIC X920BT, MUST HAVE AVIC X920BT, MUST HAVE AVIC X920BT, MUST HAVE AVIC X920BT, MUST HAVE AVIC X920BT, MUST HAVE AVIC X920BT, MUST HAVE AVIC X920BT, MUST HAVE AVIC X920BT, MUST HAVE AVIC X920BT"

You're suggestion of the f900bt led me to the x920bt. Man, what a cool HU! Price is really not that bad, one eBay seller sells it for $729 delivered.

I immediately forgot about the Chinese HUs once I saw the x920bt. I haven't been paying attention to the progress/development of in-car entertainment and I was pleasantly surprised! Thanks!

 

I believe the Z110/Z120 is the same - just larger display.

I would possibly prefer a hacked/cracked version (the 900) - though I don't know much about what has been done on it. The 920 and 110 are not crackable as it stands today... I ended up with the Z110 simply because it was a very good deal ($670 after rebate).

The 900s can be had for a song...

Good luck either way...

 

Last weekend I finalised the 1st stage of the install.



1. As I expected, the original metal mounting brackets didn't fit well, so managed to dremel four major mounting holes and others adjustments as visible on two pictures.




The placement is not perfect, as you can see on 1st picture. Next time I open the dash, I'll change the shape of holes on sides to have a better fit. It is a better idea probably then change the front holes.

2. The next task was to find a good position for GPS. As recommended by rrolf, the dash tweeter area is very good. I was not able to fit a GPS antenna directly under tweeter cover, it was to high. But I found the good place after removing of tweeter from its position. I foamed the antenna to have a good, tight contact. Pictures say more.




3. I decided to place the microphone close to the original position as it was perfect from the user comfort point of view. From this position along windshield and headliner to A pillar, through tweeter opening, under the dash using the trace of original harness over parking brake, brake and acceleration pedals, fished it through opening under HU position. The microphone clip perfectly fits without any changes of plastic parts. The removing of A pillar was quite hard for first time - there is a special clip witch has to be turned by 90° and 2 clips close to the windshield/dashboard are quite tight to remove pllar out. But it was done w/o any visible damage. I recommend to be carefull of the curtain airbag - I fixed it with the masking tape during the manipulation around it.







4. I made the preparation for the backup camera install. I wired long AV cable and reverse wire extension from supplied harness to the parking brake locality where reverse signal is available and I will continue with AV along doors to the rear of the car. I used the same trace as for microphone and GPS cable. So all HU's wires are together.

5. I mentioned earlier, the EU version has a special FM/AM antenna connector and there is no DIN adapter available. So, I simply cutted the original coax cable and brown ant. amplifier wire and soldered the DIN male connector and tapped the HU's ANT. power where 12V is available when HU is turned on. From the original antenna connector I made the DIN female adapter for the potential future usage with the original stereo.

To be continue......

 

FM radio reception quality is pretty same - so no good and RDS doesn't work fully. It displays PTY infromation and some station's names. It doesnt have TA, AF functions.
MP3 player doesn't use folders for albums, it just scan the whole storage (NAND flash, SD, USB) and plays the content. There is some possibility to create play lists.
BT works as expected - the sound quality is perfect, but I'm missing voice dial.
DVD playback is fine. Navigation works as we can expect from latest version of iGo8. GPS fix is quick - much better then on my HTC Diamond mobile. When navigation plays the voice command the MP3 is paused or radio has a loudness dropout.
All together I'm a little disappointed, but if I compare $600 vs. 1600 for the "brand" which doesnt fit the original suround. The quality respects the price. Also $3000 for advanced tech package with not good navigation is a worst scenario and you dont have a toy.:cheer2:

 

Unfortunately their picture is not very clear and it looks to have a different shape which would not fit. I found frenchie's picture:


I cutted the original wiring and made ant. adapter Toyota-DIN female in case I'll return OEM stereo back to the car. I'll make a photo when I'm back at home next week.
Here is promised antenna DIY adapter.

 

Last weekend I found couple of hours to finalize the rearview camera install. I had a video cable ready beside the rear seatback from the previous install session. I selected the following wiring path:
1. Rear seatback remove - it is needed to loose the nut fixing the Seatback side cushion.
2. Rear Seatback Side remove.



3. Deck trim panel remove. I followed the cable harnish path on the picture to reverse lamp, where I tapped the (+) for the camer power.



4. The video cable together with the (+) power line followed the upper harness path, beside the rear curtain airback to the rubber connection.



5. I fished the wire through the rubber pipe, The lubrication (shower gel) was the essential trick and the second trial with video cable conencted to the fishing wire was successfull.



6. I found, after the rear door dismount, that the camera (Camry09)is much smaller then the camera opening in the rear door plastic panel. I decided to keep the orig. opening plastic plug for the future and cut&trim the new adapter from plastic. After the modelling of plug I glued the camera into it with hot-melt glue and spray it with the original color. The final result is:



7. The camera image from HU.

 

How is your HU?

 

Paja - can you go into how you removed the rear side panel - I've never had the guts to pull it because it seems tough...

 

Jeremy, while you have things apart, could you perform a simple continuity check from the am/fm antenna screw-in socket to the antenna plug at the HU? Ever since I realized that totally unscrewing my antenna has absolutely no effect on reception, I've been suspicious. But my days of hanging upside-down under dashboards are behind me. I'don't think I've seen a post here in which continuity had been verified.

 

To save you hours (well - that's what it took me), you need to pay close attention to the display setup in the mapping software.

I didn't save mine (sorry) - but form memory, iGo has a file (called sys.txt?) where you need to setup the display. There are parameters that must be set - like VGA=1 (???) - and a corresponding lib file that must have the 800x480 driver file. It's all a pain - took me lots of trial and error before I finally got the right combination to get the startup screen and main screens in sync.... You need the correct data.zip file...

Here's a good source that I used (general forums - this topic shows the data structure which is also critical)...Mobilism • View topic - The structure folders On iGO

Do your homework - it will help when you install...

Good luck!

 

Really, it's hard due to the display - most are lower resolution. The data.zip file must be in the right place, and be correct for the display. Also, the sys.txt file must have the correct stuff (again - don't remember specifics).

Looks like my old forum is gone - and has moved. You will likely run a 'skin' - I think a DIMKA search will get you there - and help in your quest (800x480 data.zip etc)... Good luck!

Maybe things have moved forward in the 6 months since I ran mine - it may be easier (I had to find a specific iGo version data.zip etc)..

 

Drat. At which end? Well, if anything occurs to you, relative to a swap-out test, and it's not a big pain to implement . . . .

Discovering that it didn't make any difference whether there was any kind of whip screwed into the antenna socket changed my thinking about where the problem with the OEM radio was -- unless there actually IS an antenna diversity setup, but I thought that hypothesis had been eliminated.