I know most of you will assume that this is someone is asking the tiresome question of adding navigation on a non-navigation GS and people are just dying to say it's too expensive than it's worth or get a car equipped with one. It's not one of those threads. Well, pictures tell a better story than words:

3D autozoom, street text to speech, live traffic, day/night, lane guidance, etc...


Or if you're old fashioned, no frills 2D version:


Music control retained via steering wheel controls.

 

Wow....very cool. Please share the details!!!

 

very nice indeed!

 

Very interesting. Who supplies this? How much does it cost? What does it take to install?

Is there an upgrade path to add traffic to existing nav versions?

Does this offering also include a good MP3 player application which can also be run off the same hard drive? I am assuming it is harddrive based - is it?

 

this would be the answer for people dying to put some factory like navigation into non-navi gs.. plz share some details.. can you still use audio function on stock stereo?

 

Alright...this is a first ...Well done, now spill the beans LOL

 

please stop the tease and post info on this please....dying to know

 

frickin TEASE $#@$#@$!@#@!#%$%^&*

there's no black friday on CL. we're not going to wait in line for an answer.

 

Okay, okay... Enough teasing. This is actually quite simple. I'm sure a lot of you have the necessary hardware to do this already. This is just a Vaistech SL2Vi connected to my iPhone. Because of this, yes, music control (MP3) is still there via OSD or steering wheel controls. Music even dims a tad while text to speech is activated, then resumes normal music volume after it's announced it's turn. You just need to add video out capabilities to your iPhone and you essentially have a carputer. This would be a good option for even those people with navis to add live traffic or a different looking interface (examples below). Live TV is possible too, but I would need a Slingbox.

Here's a few more screenshots
Sorry, the pics couldn't be better, but crappy camera sucks in low light and it gets too dark by the time I get around to taking these (can't take these at home for obvious reasons).

Running Navigon


Running TomTom (changed theme to green to match light on buttons, maybe not a good idea)


Among other things, can play games (hard to hold camera still while playing)

 

That is pretty cool... so with VAIS, you can actually use the dash display to show your iPod output - and, by extension, use the iPod GPS? Which iPods have a fully functioning GPS in them that can do this and how does one get the display to go from the "regular" HUD to the iPod output and back again?

 

How do u add the video out on a iphone? i very interested

 

in adition to the question asked, is this limited to just iphones?
Can it work on other data devices such as blackberrys?
also, say a call comes in on the iphone while the gps is going on, what happens? is the gps disabled temporarily? if it does, does it resume automatically?

 

Okay I haven't done this, but I do have an iPhone. I can answer a few of your questions:

1) The iPhone 3G or 3GS is the only Ipod with GPS built in. However the tom tom mount and other third party accessories can add GPS functionality to an ipod touch or iPhone 2G.

2) When recieving a call the GPS will be disabled untilt he call ends.

3) Depending on the nav app, you will have access to the iPhone's music library while using the nav app

4) The touch screen won't work for programming the nav - you will have to do that using the iPhone's screen (so its nice visually but won't offer as seamless a user experience)

5) This won't work with a Blackberry because the Vais SL2vi uses the ipod dock connector so it can only support iPhones.

Now I have 2 questions:
1) How do you stop the screen changing from landscape to portrait if the phone moves? Will it stay in landscape even if the phone shifts around inside the center console where the CVais cable is located?
2) Do you need the PS Nav/TV override for the video feature to work while the car is in motion?

 

wow this is really cool! this might be the reason why i would switch up to the sl2vi-p4! so with iphone 3g and 3gs, do you need to get some appz in order to feed the video out from the iphone? i think that's the key question. i don't know how to do that. but once that's done, then the rest is basically setting the vaistech to ipod mode.

please share the info, that's great discovery!

you will need the override unit in order to use the video feature when moving. otherwise video is shut off as soon as the car is in motion

 

Looks like most of you guys answered each other questions. Yes, this works on iPhone 3G and 3GS. Wish I had a 3GS, but using this on 3G.

Batman: In terms of switching orientation. Once you set it on landscape, it takes a lot of tolerance for it to switch orientation. Example. Once you set it on landscape, you can lay it flat, let it fly around. It just can't exceed 50 degrees to towards an opposing orientation and stay that way. Like you have it on landscape. You can only lift up the top of the phone to 50 degrees until it switches to portrait. More than likely it'll work since it's just sliding in the center console. If you're offroading and your phone is flying around like in a popcorn machine, that's different. Like rominl said, nav hack required.

rominl: Unfortunately, Apple is strict with their hardware. They only allow video out their in YouTube and iPod Video apps. Your phone has to be jailbroken. There's two apps that I know of that will enable video out on virtually all applications on the iPhone. They're called "ScreenSplitr", and "TV-Out" available on Cydia. I'm using TV-Out personally.