2001 Prius with no navigation, is there anything I can put in it's place?

My '01 didn't have navigation from the factory. It did have the single-disc CD player, which lives behind the door that's right underneath the heater and A/C controls. I'm told that if you didn't have the CD player, you just got a storage cubbyhole in that location.

My understanding is that the navigation "brain" lived under the front passenger seat, and had its own integrated CD/DVD drive. Every so often, you'd buy an updated set of map discs from Toyota at vast cost, and then load them one by one into that drive under the seat. I think the "brain" copied them to a hard drive or flash memory inside the "brain", so you didn't need to have a disc in it while you drove around. There may have also been a GPS antenna under the dash somewhere.

The maps displayed on the same touch screen that all Gen1s have. If you don't have navigation, and you try to access that function, you just get a message on the screen like "External system not connected".

One thing to consider is the condition of your touch screen. Mine has gradually gotten darker - delaminated? I do not know - to where it's pretty hard to read except at night. This might be a consequence of it spending a lot of time parked outside in the sun. If your screen is in good condition, and you can get the navigation hardware for cheap from the salvage yard, it might be a fun add-on.

If you like to have your own tunes in your car, a possible addition is an AUX jack, which at least an '01 didn't have from the factory. I used an adapter from BlitzSafe to install an AUX jack in a mid-90s brand H (Japan) car. It plugged into the back of the factory radio (IIRC) and pretended to be a CD changer; to use the AUX input, you pressed the "CD" button on the factory radio, and then fired up your phone, MP3 player, or whatever.

That company still offers AUX adapters, but they don't have one specifically for a Gen1 Prius. They do still have them for other Toyota models around that time, but I'm not sure if they'll work in a Prius. It might be worthwhile to shoot them an email about it.

Otherwise, if your cassette deck still works, you can still get a 3.5mm-to-cassette adaptor. If your phone is completely modern, you can also get a Bluetooth-to-analog-audio adaptor, and then go from that to the cassette adaptor. You can be a leader in trailing edge technology!

You posted in the right place.

I am not affiliated with any companies mentioned.

 

Way back in the early 2000s, I heard that Gen1s in Japan either came with or had an optional backup camera, which displayed on the touch screen when you shifted to reverse. I think, but have no link for the details, that some people in the US had figured out how to put it on a US-market Gen1. If I remember right, it was a combination of sending some packets on the digital bus to the touch screen, to get it to turn on the camera input, and then sending analog video into another pin on the touch screen connector. It could have been digital video, though - probably not DVI/HDMI, something earlier and lower-resolution.

I've also heard that some of the radio-related stuff in a Gen1 (maybe the tuner and the CD changer?) speaks a protocol called "AVC-LAN", from Fujitsu Ten. I don't know much more about it than that, but maybe there's an open-source library for an Arduino, bare PIC, 8051, or equal that can speak that.

You are several states away from them, but @ronlewis seems to wheel and deal in wrecked Gen1s. If they get one that has the navigation installed, maybe go down there and attack the data buses with a Saleae Logic or equal, and then post the results.

As ChapmanF has noted, the Gen1 was designed about a week before the automotive world standardized on CAN, so not everything in a Gen1 is CAN.

 

I have one car with a working nav system, but I want to keep it that way, and of course, trying to even test/examine it means breaking the dash bezel, unless you talk to God and He listens.