I know we've talked about this some before, but I keep hoping someone with hacking experience (or connections) will take this and run with it. Someone who knows what he's doing should be able (for instance) to easily disable the in-motion lockout.

The first step would be to determine the operating system our Nav uses. Many of these systems use either Win CE or Win Mobile, but I don't know if Lexus used that or some other proprietary OS (which I doubt, since the Windows products are available off the shelf).

The next step would be to access the OS, probably through the port under the dash where updates are installed. I don't know if anyone has tried connecting a laptop or Win Mobile device to the port, but doing so might allow you to see the contents of the HDD as a drive, like any other USB device connected to your computer.

After that, it would be a matter of examining the code to see where the command is to disable Nav inputs when the car starts moving ... and disabling or overriding that command.

For someone like me with no computer language experience (and no developer tools), it's beyond my capability, but to hackers who live to break code, this should be a walk in the park. X-Box wasn't out a month before kids were rewriting it, and as we all know, just about every OS and piece of software has been hacked.

We have a lot of smart and creative people on this forum, and I'm sure someone has the skills or connections to get this done. And I suspect there would be some money in it for the guy who got it done ...

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I also can't believe this has not been done already, I was checking over on the Acura forums and they have hacked those pretty good. Maybe you can recruit someone from over there? I was looking at one the other day where you can even change the startup screen image.

 

Yeah, and I was checking the Cadillac forum today (the wife kinda wants a new CTS), and they are chugging away there trying to hack their system. Theirs is mfd by Alpine, and it runs Win Mobile (which is a version of Win CE). People are trying to download the OS, modify it to eliminate the lockout, allow videos while moving, etc., etc. They haven't succeeded yet, but they are really working at it.

As for the Acura hack, the guy who did that one got PO'ed at the forum because he wanted some payment for his work (which I thought was reasonable) and the Admin's banned him for not being an approved sponsor.

I hope I'm wrong, but I'm getting the idea LS owners are just lukewarm on the whole idea ... or are content to allow their Nav systems to be crippled by Lexus.

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No Siree. Please count me in. I am willing to participate and pay my fair share to a hacker.

 

That's the spirit!

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Gogogogoggo!

 

I'm totally for getting full functionality back, but in the meantime (as a show of my optimism) I've ordered the override unit from PS.

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Add me to those in favor of, but lacking the skills to accomplish this. If someone is successful, I'd contribute to their reward.

 

well i finally got my lexus, but man it's complicated, I am planning on buying the nav hack, but the gps has a lot of options, right now i feel like i need to stop to get it to work.


maybe i should read the manual..

g

 

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the manual is too much blah blah for me .. self learning is way much better and interesting

 

You and I have a lot in common. Especially since this is such a crummy manual.

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took me maybe 5-6 nights to finish reading the damn manual... useful though i think

installed another nav hack on a 600hl today with 7.1 nav. worked out perfect

 

Pretty soon you'll be able to quit your day job and do installs full-time.

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lol man, then that would be a very poor life i live