CarPad recommendation?

[madcoder]

@cardroid, few questions for you:

1. Do you still have this unit in your VW -- and do you still recommend it?
2. Have you tried the AutoMate app yet?
3. Did the unit come with a plug-and-play wiring harness / adapter that connects straight to the stock stereo's harness? Or did you have to splice any wires?
4. How is the screen brightness in full sunlight?
5. Is the CAN-BUS app the same as what you'd find in other headunits like this? In particular, my Avant-2 can only show fuel and other stats using Metric units (liters, km, etc); but in the US I'd prefer to use imperial units (gallons, miles, ºF). I would have to reverse engineer the app that's on the Avant in order to make those changes.

I have the AVIN Avant-2 in my VW Jetta, but I'm looking to upgrade (dual-core, and 1 GB RAM is not enough!) The Avant-2 is not able to run AutoMate + Spotify + Maps navigation all at the same time... :/

Have you run into any other issues with it -- any deal-breakers?

I'm waiting to hear back from Summer @ Newsmy, to see if she can set up a PayPal invoice.

[cardroid]

Hi Madcoder, welcome

1. - Yes I still have this device in evaluation in my VW - and my feelings are mixed. The big problem is the radio app here - as it lacks RDS, AF and the station memory is not very useable. It is a software-problem though as the kernel *should* support RDS. But there has some work to be done to make this headunit a good "radio". The reception indeed is way better than all other chinese products I tested so far - and its power is REALLY nice

2. no didnt try that one - I run all apps directly on the headunit and didnt play with syncing with my mobilephone

3. Yes - its completely plug-and-play! One exception - but a very specific one: my car has 2 internal FM antennas and so I used a double-fakra adapter.

4. Brightness is as bad as all headunits... but with closed roof I had never a situation where I couldnt read the info I needed. With open roof I have a lot of reflections - I think I am going to test some display protection stuff

5. I had no time to dive so deep into the system - but you have to distuingish between a) OBD software (apps like torque) and b) CAN-Bus implementation. a) gives you (depending on your car) a lot of engine-related readings from turbo pressure to speed while b) taps into the CAN-Bus and reads/sends telegrams. The can-bus implementation is completely different to the one on AVIN/AV7 generation as the adapter is onboard and I already saw can-readings in the logcat So we talk about kernel support and I see a playground here...

[madcoder]

1. - Yes I still have this device in evaluation in my VW - and my feelings are mixed. The big problem is the radio app here - as it lacks RDS, AF and the station memory is not very useable. It is a software-problem though as the kernel *should* support RDS. But there has some work to be done to make this headunit a good "radio". The reception indeed is way better than all other chinese products I tested so far - and its power is REALLY nice

That's great to hear! I don't think I really need RDS -- I don't think I've ever gotten anything useful out of it, at least in my area.
But with the Nu3001 github repo you found, it might be possible to fix *some* of these bugs. But if the bug is in the MCU or some other closed-source portion of the system, then it won't be possible, unfortunately, without their help.

2. no didnt try that one - I run all apps directly on the headunit and didnt play with syncing with my mobilephone

Yeah, AutoMate is an Android Auto "simulator" of sorts.. It looks and acts somewhat like Android Auto, but runs physically on the device (not remote, like how Android Auto and Android Wear work).

3. Yes - its completely plug-and-play! One exception - but a very specific one: my car has 2 internal FM antennas and so I used a double-fakra adapter.

Yup, my car has the same set up. Although I don't recall if it's actually a "dual fakra", or two separate single fakra connections right next to each other. I remember I had to deconstruct the adapter that came with the AVIN unit.

5. I had no time to dive so deep into the system - but you have to distuingish between a) OBD software (apps like torque) and b) CAN-Bus implementation. a) gives you (depending on your car) a lot of engine-related readings from turbo pressure to speed while b) taps into the CAN-Bus and reads/sends telegrams.

I was referring to (b) the CAN-Bus. On the Avant-2, the built-in CAN app (not Torque) shows things like Fuel Remaining, Odometer reading, current speed, parking brake on/off, etc. But Fuel is shown in Liters; Odometer in km; speed in km/hr, etc. I was just hoping there'd be either some way to configure which units it displays, to be U.S.-friendly, or at least if the app is open source, I can hack on it myself and add a configuration option.

The can-bus implementation is completely different to the one on AVIN/AV7 generation as the adapter is onboard and I already saw can-readings in the logcat So we talk about kernel support and I see a playground here...

Well this is good to know. Will have to poke around in the github source to see if there's anything we can build upon here. Playground indeed

Thanks!

[cardroid]

Your motivation is contagious... I am looking forward to dig deeper

[madcoder]

@cardroid,
Mine arrived today, so I hope to get a chance to get it installed tonight. The cables seem to be a bit more complex than the AVIN Avant-2 that it will replace. That one only had about 2-3 things to plug in, and it was good to go. This seems to have a bunch of smaller cables, and I can't tell (yet) if any of them require manual splicing -- or if those extra smaller cables are just optional in case your car does not have the simple VW wiring harness.

For example, in the Avant-2, going into reverse (to enable the backup camera) was handled automatically by the MCU, listening over the CAN bus. But this one has a cable that looks like it needs to be spliced into the reverse light. Maybe it's not needed, but I won't know till I try to connect it.

It looks like there are 2 USB connectors, but can they both be used interchangeably? I have a 4G LTE dongle for T-Mobile, and the instructions mention that it should be connected to a specific USB connector (the OTG connector), so it seems that I'll have to keep them separate. And the other one I have been using to charge my phone while in the car.

Will follow up once I have a chance to get it installed in the car and play with it a bit

[madcoder]

So, I got everything connected and set up -- so far so good, for the most part. A few issues I've encountered:

1. I didn't realize that it only had a single USB connection. The 2nd connection (what I thought was a USB connection) is the connector that is supposed to be used for connecting an iPod (or maybe it's for SWC?) -- anyway I don't have that connector in my car. So I can only use the one USB OTG connector (blue)

2. It seems to be able to properly detect when I put the car into reverse, and shows the backup camera, so that's good! But what it does not seem to be able to automatically detect is when my headlights are on -- the AVIN unit would dim the display when headlights were on, but this one does not. Even if I enable the "car backlight" option under MCU settings, it doesn't seem to have any impact at all. I guess I could just use another app, like Screen Filter or Twilight to artificially dim the display, but was hoping it would at least dim the display some.

3. My USB 4G/LTE dongle does not seem to work correctly. It worked "ok" randomly in the AVIN unit, but so far I have not seen it connect at all in this unit. It does seem to recognize that it's a 4G Modem though, because while it's plugged in, I see the "signal" triangle in the status bar -- showing no signal at all -- and the dongle is just flashing blue. It's a Huawei UMG366. When I connect it to my Chromebook, the blue light eventually becomes steady blue, and Chrome OS reports that it is connected to T-Mobile. Also when I try to add the APN for Project Fi (h2g2 / 310260), it goes through the process of adding, but it never actually appears under the Mobile Networks list.

4. I'm not sure if this is just how it operates -- but I noticed that when I turn off the car, the unit is still on and radio/audio is still playing. When I open the car door, after about 3-5 seconds it does finally turn the screen off and the audio stops playing. But even after that, the red LEDs around the two knobs are still on! I'm not sure how long that will last, or if this is just a bug with the standby mode. It's only been about 30 minutes or so since I left the car (and the LEDs are still on), so I guess I'll wait about 2 hours and see if they do finally turn off.

@Valki: have you tried any custom ROMs yet? In particular, the github org you linked to (Nu3001) appears to be the community organization for the xdAuto ROM. I'm interested in trying it out, since they seem to have made a lot of changes to it (one of which is they now have a setting so you can control the standby mode). It's possible that they have also fixed the Huawei UMG366/E366 connectivity issues (assuming it's not just me doing something dumb)

[cardroid]

Hi! Sorry for my late answer - got some very busy days

@1: Yes there is only one connector - but as I am using an usb-hub in my glovebox that was never a problem...

@2: Good point - I didnt use this as I have my headlights always on during driving (what was a matter to legal restrictions in my country for some time)... so dimming depending on headlight state is not always helping I use tasker to dim the screen based on sun-down times Nevertheless, the knob-lights of the device are respecting the light-status of the car so the CAN info is definitely available! Check the logcat - there is a lot of CAN telegrams passing by - possible that you can use them to trigger tasker too.

@3: has to me a dongle-specific problem! Mine (HUAWEI E3131 and E173) works like a charm. There was a similiar problem (APN disapearing/not saving) with the AV7 that could be solved by adding the usb-mode-switching-scripts... - have search in the board! PS: Here you can find pretty actual configscripts... find out your uids first: https://github.com/Nu3001/external_usb_ ... deswitch.d

@4: i observed that the device turns off after getting the CAN telegrams "ignition off" followed by "door open". If your knobs are still illuminated please check if you connected those additional lighting cables! I didnt use them as it is triggered by CAN.