jdpdata, I am going to use microSD to download Spotify songs for times where there's no network availability (not common, but not rare in parts of California either e.g. Grapevine/Northern Coast) and possibly offline map data when I know we're gonna be driving through the boonies.

I don't know exactly where he put the antenna, but it's not in the glove box. He said "It's hidden under the dash". GPS acquires satellites quickly so I'm fine with it where it's at. Also, if the antenna is attached to the windshield, it could slightly complicate a windshield replacement. But not a big deal either way. Cost $300 for the install - took about 3 hours. So far Car Launcher works well, but I'll keep an eye out for instability.

 

Nice Bob! Glad you finally took the plunge. I know you've considering VL2 for awhile..hehe. and yes Multi Display ECU is the Blue Video port back of nav screen. Hook up to HDMI Display Harness to Blue video port back of your nav screen. Once you pull it out, you'll see it clearly. Throw up some pics of your install when you're done.

Wow! $300 and 3 hours! Was this a pro installer? Took me only 90 minutes and I'm completely clueless. But as long as you're happy with the install, that's fine. Pandora have offline music feature, I don't have to download anything, it does it automatically. At times when I forget to turn on Hotspot, my music still plays just fine. Pretty sure Google Maps will let you download offline maps in your home area too. 16GB of on-board storage is plenty. I still have over 8GB left after installing a bunch of apps.

 

@xvimalx CarPlay works just fine and is very stable. To launch it for the first time, plug the USB to lightning cable to the phone and click on the CarPlay icon and in the next window, click on the only option that will toggle between manually and automatic at least 8 times in a row or until it tells you that it’s ready and the CarPlay screen will launch from there. That’s the only time you’ll have to do this and going forward, whenever you plug the lightning cable, it automatically launches CarPlay.

If you don’t want it to launch automatically, click on the icon without the phone plugged in and change the setting to manually. From there, when you plug your phone, the icon will turn green and when you click on it, CarPlay is launched. I have mine set to manually because I like Waze and iHeartRadio on the Grom side better. If you get a call, the screen automatically changes to CarPlay for you to pick it up.

My only dilemma is the Apple Maps is very pale and doesn’t change to dark mode at night. Hopefully @gromaudio fixes that soon. Let me know if you found a fix for that as you use it. Here’s a couple of pictures of it to show you.

 

Just uninstall/reinstall Free Car Launcher again. Hope that it will stop Force closing. There is a setting under Preference to start playing music as soon as Car Launcher starts. Now when I start the car, Car Launch automatically start playing my last music app. Love the customization of this app, wish it was more stable though. Happy to report no problems with VL2, it have been rock stable for me last few weeks. I only experienced that one start up hiccup. Many updates came after that seems to fixed the issue.

 

Thanks for reporting @jdpdata. I just installed car launcher too. It is a really nice interface. I like it so far. Do you know if it’s possible to add a plugin (e.g. CarPlay) as part of the apps list? Just imagine if this one of those windows would show a map instead. That launcher would’ve been fire. Here what mine looks like so far...

 

Wow that looks hot on your widescreen. Don't think you can add any GROMs plugins. They're all garbage IMO, I don't use them. But you can add DashLinq app if you need to quickly access any of those plugins.

 

Thanks man. I don’t care much about the other plugins but CarPlay. I’m gonna try this car Laucher for a bit and see how it goes. I’ll add DashLinq as one of the app; good suggestion

 

This is piquing my interest for the CarPlay features alone. I’m just trying to get a good understanding of it. Where is the box typically stored. I’m just looking at how much cooling it needs. Comes across like a virtual desktop of android running virtual apps.

 

Most of us have it installed in the glove box. It fits perfectly on the OEM shelf.

 

It's not a virtual box. It's like a headless tablet running Android. Your Lexus screen and RT mouse act as the display and input. Mine is Velcro top of glove box. It has internal fan, haven't run into any over-heating problems.

 

Can't wait to see some videos on it!

 

Experience another startup hiccup today. Similar to previous problem, I had black screen of death with error saying "Climate Control system error. Please contact your dealer." What I noticed is both times I experience this problem, I started the car and pulled out of the garage just beyond access to my home WiFI signal (forgot to turn on WiFi Hotspot on my Note 8). Maybe there is a correlation here. Perhaps, VL2 is looking for WiFi to connect to during start-up and without any nearby access point, it threw an error. Thing is, this error is intermittent, I can't replicate it. Will send off to Tech Support to see what they say. Slightly annoyed to get this error again as I have to pull the wiring harness at the back of VL2 to force a hard reboot. Don't want to be yanking on this harness too many times, I fear it may loosen the pin connections.


Black Screen of Death

 

They really should provide a button on the box to do a hard reset.

 

I doubt the WiFi has anything to do with it. My bet is also on a loose connection. Rattle over roads might have loosened a connection. Might be worth adding some wire tires to the harness to take some stress/load off the connection/termination of the harness.

 

I doubt it's a loose connection. Been working for fine for weeks. If something was loose, I'd experience problems when I'm driving and hitting a bump. This problem only occur at first startup when car has sit in garage overnight. Maybe a voltage issue? But my battery is brand new only a couple months old. Cold cranking is very strong.

Exactly! How dumb of them not to provide a hard reset button on the device. Wonder if I can hard-wire a toggle switch to power harness.