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After thorough research and reading on CL, I purchased this Tesla style unit from Alibaba for $397 shipped. Yes, I was worried after reading all the issues everyone is having and I hoped the manufacturers will figure it out by now. I have a 2007 non-nav system.
To my surprise, I had no problems with the following:
1. No airbag light issues.
2. AC works with option to display Fahrenheit
3. No radio frequency issue
4. ZERO boot time. As soon as I start my car, it displays the main screen.
5. Plug and play installation
The only problem I found is that the rear speakers are not working. Currently in communication with the supplier to try to work this out. Overall, I am extremely satisfied with the purchase.
After thorough research and reading on CL, I purchased this Tesla style unit from Alibaba for $397 shipped. Yes, I was worried after reading all the issues everyone is having and I hoped the manufacturers will figure it out by now. I have a 2007 non-nav system.
To my surprise, I had no problems with the following:
1. No airbag light issues.
2. AC works with option to display Fahrenheit
3. No radio frequency issue
4. ZERO boot time. As soon as I start my car, it displays the main screen.
5. Plug and play installation
The only problem I found is that the rear speakers are not working. Currently in communication with the supplier to try to work this out. Overall, I am extremely satisfied with the purchase.
Can you link to the Alibaba supplier? What a great price!
That is an excellent price, I have the 2010 non nav model and would love to find out if you ever get the back speakers working as aside from that you mentioned everything else works great and boots super quick. How long ago did you get it and any thing it brings I see a lot of these vendors have "add-on" modules that can bring up cost
Any update on your setup? This is the one I'm looking into for a 2006 IS250 with NAV (no ML). Working with a vendor called Rhino who is having me send a pic of my head unit and model type/year of car. Hoping to get back a unit that is actually updated to work well with the 06, be as PNP as possible. The OE Headunit is crapping the bed so this looks like a pretty awesome upgrade vs. trying to get another OE unit for more money.
No update. I haven't mess with it since and kind of just dealt/settled with that it is. Maybe one day I'll just purchase a new unit as they seem to have worked out all the bugs and kinks.
I have a 2012 is250 with Nav and rear backup camera. (maps never been updated). Is the install for this easy? Plug and play? Seems like there's a lot of issues........ Which model does everyone recommend
No update. I haven't mess with it since and kind of just dealt/settled with that it is. Maybe one day I'll just purchase a new unit as they seem to have worked out all the bugs and kinks.
Sorry to hear that. Its kind of why I went with Rhino despite the price, they are in the States and answer the phone- also seem to be the only place that has a 4gig ram version with Android 8.x (so somewhat more future proofed). Though it sounds like Serifiyah might have gotten a similar unit if it is booting up so fast. Or they simply updated the sleep settings. I believe Crankshaft (an open source Raspi Android Auto build) has a similar feature- well not really feature but being a nix based Raspi build you can go into command line and setup scripts and cron jobs to fix some of these nagging issues.
On that note, I'm surprised there isn't an Android / firmware guru with this car, on this forum and messing around with one of these units. An XDA forum going Android guru could probably really get these things tuned up- both with boot up times (for the 1 gig slower processor models, just enable a longer sleep mode [albeit a little bit battery draining but likely negliable]), change C to F etc. Also canbus protocol is an open protocol. Thanks to VW, Linux builds can network monitor canbus (with the right hardware) and one can begin reverse engineering the vendor specific messages (a really neat example of this is the linkECU PNP ECU's for the 1st gen IS300s, 100% plug and play and control the canbus gauge cluster). So a real techie could really work these head units up, fixing what seems like such a small distance to go on making these things a legit 100% drop-in replacement.
I'm only at the level of probably being able to log the canbus traffic on my debian laptop but have no idea what I'm looking at, and I used to flash roms on my phones to extend their usable life (cyanogenmod then to LineageOS) but thats all through tutorials and standing on the shoulders of giants who actually grab the necessary drivers, kernal modifications, back doors to unlock, compile, make usable with things like TWRP. I'd FOR SURE brick this head unit if I got cocky and started to tinker.
About a week from now those types will be at Defcon in Vegas- would be a swarm of people that could optimize the ***** out of this headunit haha.
That is an excellent price, I have the 2010 non nav model and would love to find out if you ever get the back speakers working as aside from that you mentioned everything else works great and boots super quick. How long ago did you get it and any thing it brings I see a lot of these vendors have "add-on" modules that can bring up cost
Thank you.
It took about 2 weeks, from the day I made the payment to receiving the package. It did not come with any add-ons, but they do have options if you're interested.
Originally Posted by Token1
Do these units have ASL so that the volume compensates for ambient noise?
This unit does have ASL option, but I have not tried it yet.
Has anyone who has one of these units installed Torque Pro on the system? Seems like a pretty slick way to monitor some things directly on the dashboard.
Has anyone who has one of these units installed Torque Pro on the system? Seems like a pretty slick way to monitor some things directly on the dashboard.
I might try Torque light first. I wonder how much info could be gathered simply from the canbus input already going to the unit vs. using a bluetooth unit at the OBDII plug.
Update my (what now feels way overpriced thanks to @Serifiyah ) order has supposedly shipped. Sounds like there is no way around not having an issue. Something won't go right, be it rear view camera, or rear speakers, or some other thing. Here is to hoping the price delta is to Rhino doing the leg work to make their units 100%.
I emailed Rhino about the common issues with these types of units, but they claimed all of those issues would not be an issue with their radios. I just purchased it because they do give a 1 year warranty according to their website and they also replied to my questions pretty quickly. I purchased the 4gb of ram and android 8.1.
I keep popping over to the GS thread on this haha, meant to put this here:
TLDR, these units still have a long way to go.
Update:. The bad. does not fit 100%, the top vents have a few mm of interference Air Con does not work!!!! It just blows air. Suddenly works now on day 2, maybe pulling the battery during install required some level of mileage to get this working again? Hazards does not work Rear camera does not work (now that I found a tutorial to make a 12v to 6v circuit + RCA mod I'm not too upset with this, this might be an easy fix) Aux in is so weak it's worthless Rear speakers seem to work? I get music in the speakers in the rear doors and the rear OEM sub under the rear window bumps, but when you use the balance feature to shift all the music to the back the music just drops off. Canbus decoder box was included, it also has a two lead harness to be plugged into the OBD2 plug- not sure what it is getting from this, I guess other canbus data- this is a hit if you are a scanguage torque app type user. There is a boot up- but thankfully its not crazy long. wifi antenna is lame, can't get wifi in the garage though my phone and Chromecast can.
Won't play movies even in park
The OEM gps (I'm assuming) antenna is not used but instead theirs. Too bad. There is an un-used OEM harness and I can't help but wonder if that is for the backup camera
There are some flying leads in the aftermarket harness, maybe for aftermarket speaker installs?
The not so bad: Easy to change C to F, and I do get temp not just high/low, and duel seems to work Little bit of learning curve, climate is not intuitive Settings I changed to North America radio and it scanned automatically Gotta update the boot image, it's a cheesy lambo
Tip:. Don't just set time in their settings GUI, but also on the "more settings" section which is the typical Android settings GUI.
Pending checks: Android auto box thing Get within WiFi range to setup Google account band update maps and apps
The hazards not working + car thinks its driving in park (assuming as the movie content is blocked for safety) + bad rear speaker bias has me thinking the canbus decoder is not the right model.
Because going to Phoenix Automotive they have a tesla style head unit wiki, and they mention you simply will not retain the rear camera (obvious these units being used in the US was an afterthought for the producers).
Scroll down to Lexus, "Lexus OEM Back up camera retention" It basically says OEM is 6v so buy an aftermarket camera. I intend on doing the above mod though. I need to hunt down our wiring diagram as I doubt it matches the GS tutorial for this.
Pics Canbus
reuse OEM mounting brackets
fitment fail, is this why some mentioned you might need non/nav vents, I guess they are different?
broke one of the vent hinge things...
Even in park it won't play movies
None of the connection options (Android auto and all of the off brand stuff doesn't work).
08-01-19, 10:31 PM
