alpine

Having been critical of Grom's device when fitted to my Mark 3 ML GS in the past, I felt it only fair to comment about their new firmware, now in a separate entry on their firmware upgrade page . It's specifically named 'Lexus 06-09 with Navi' and at last makes the LCD display work properly in displaying file names etc. You do of course need to stick to their recommended directory structure.

The new version 5 seems reliable for me, with the following provisos:
1. Do not follow their instructions and try to swap between the DVD, Radio and CD changer to swap inputs to USB from Ipod etc. I find that using their method I spasmodically lose the device and need to pull its harness socket. Instead, simply switch the Audio off and on and it will always announce the mode it's in and then work reliably. At that point, to swap inputs, press the track up/down buttons.

2. When you want to swap USB sticks, don't wait until the car is off, or switch the Audio off. Just pull the stick and do the swap.

3. On my car, when starting up the car, the first time when the Grom starts playing, I think it gets its clocking a little wrong. This shows up as some minor errors in the audio playback, just as though you were playing a cassette with a bit of tape damage This is fixed again by switching the audio on and off.

All in all, I am now happy enough with my GROM to decide I don't need to move to a Mk IV GS just to get USB playback!

worker

Thanks for the feed back alpine.

I'm thinking of switching to the newer Nav to get the media streaming from cell phone, than I can play the music directly from the cell phone instead. Again, too expensive and not sure it's possible.

BinaryJay

I really haven't had any problems with their firmware for the last 3 or 4 versions... it was really bad at the beginning, and slowly got better... took like a year for them to get it right in terms of having the unit stop randomly locking up when starting the car.

So it's pretty much all good now... kudos to them for actually supporting it and eventually getting it working. Also interesting is the last firmware supports their new direct usb android integration app which I'm going to try out with my tablet sometime.

I don't really know what the difference is with the "with navi" firmware... I don't have navi, but the menus etc. are all the same as the navi model... maybe you can explain better? I'm still using their vanilla toyota/lexus firmware.

alpine

Well basically on my 2008 ml gs, the firmware didn't work at all reliably and there was no integration with the mfd. This new version does work and is why they have put it in a new item in the firmware list specifically for Lexus. There is however no Android connectability with it at present. It's aimed at usb sticks, and those with Ipod connectors though I assume they will be updating it later for the Android USB application.

BinaryJay

So I guess they mean really, 2008+ and not 2006 when they say this... it's kind of confusing as I don't see what nav or non-nav has to do with music playback on the GS. I think what they're trying to get at is support for the built in folder browsing that 2008+ have as opposed to the purely "disc" based support prior?

At any rate I'm not going to mess with what works for me hehe.