New Dvd Satnav Unit Fitted (Pics)

[Dee_82]

GPS, stick it in the A pillar, its a pain in the !Removed! to get off without breaking any clips, but even if you do, its not the end of the world to get it back together, it sits perfectly and receives just fine. id be cautious putting it in other locations as it will only be harder and I doubt it would make any difference. in fact if you put it too low in the car you may have a problem with the signal.

if your going to go for a wifi / 3g one id probably just stick with wifi and link it off your phone (check before hand if your phone is capable, sometimes carriers block this free feature and charge you to use it) My reason? you know wifi wont charge you anything if it gets a mind of its own, its one less bill to pay (Contract or PAYG) and you don't limit yourself to a shoddy speed when a better AP might be near by

Wireless cams, Hmm, in theory there is nothing stopping you from using a wireless camera, simple setup, camera and power to a transmitter, HU and power to the receiver, composite video going in or out at either side. Where you might have an issue is interference. Wifi and video senders use the same bandwidth 2.4GHz, this can reduced with a computer and a router as your able to shift the bands you use, on a HU and mobile phone however you might not have that choice, not only that, but the signal it sends will be effected by the cars powerplant and other electronic gear, by how much is the question and you will only know once you buy it. personally I don't like wifi camera setups, when trying to find problems it makes it much easier identifying problems when you know its physically connected in a closed circuit. I actually found running the cable forward the easiest part of doing the job, the hard part was the boot lid which you will have to do anyway because you will need power for the camera. End of the day its personal choice, but I wouldn't bother with them, for an extra half hours work you "could" save a lot of head scratching later on.

[ScorpionSX]

Darren summed it up very nicely.

I'd like to add, that I'm running the cable for the GPS antenna all the way to the roof and since it's magnetic, it's sticked near the radio antenna on the roof. Not that much more work and at least you don't have the rest of the cable stuck behind something in the glove compartment, etc... simply looks cleaner to me. And during the installation, I didn't remove the pillar at all, I just stuck it behind that rubber insulating thingy that surrounds the doors and then up to the roof tucking the cable behind the roof panel and towards the radio antenna. You have to remove the inside lights though, to have access there...

In the guides section, you can find very nice guide on how to install the rearview camera, and as Darren said, that is one of the easiest things to do - the provided cable is usually long enough to fit very nicely and the worst thing is to run it through that rubber thingy that covers the wires going from roof to the rear (license plate lights, power to the wiper, etc...). It's all mentioned in the guide and I belive if you are technically capable to install the head unit, then you won't have any trouble with wiring in the camera.

I also wouldn't go for the wireless cam because of the interferrence, because even if you turn all your devices off, there's still a lot of other wireless hotspots, transmitters, etc.. in your surroundings nowadays, that you would end up with not so usable system anyway...

[jason56d]

Thanks for the replies guys.

Watched a good video last night on the Eonon website about fitting the HU and GPS. Very in depth.

Give me a PC to build or fix rather a car any day though!

I did read the guide for fitting the camera and seems quite tricky if you haven't done anything similar before. Have no doubt that I could do it, its just I don't have a lot of patience or confidence and am afraid of breaking trim/ clips or it not fitting back together after.

My One Plan with Three has unlimited data and tethering and I use it to tether my iPad all the time, so no issues there then.

Now to buy my 2nd car then get on with the GPS project. Thanks again.

[ScorpionSX]

You have nothing to worry about :) ... I'm a PC technician too and this was one of the first things that I did on my Focus and I was worried a bit too, but it turns out, you really don't have to be. Everything that you need to unclip, unclips just fine, and even if you'd break one of the clips, you usually have 4-5 other which are enough. For example, since my first camera/stereo installation, I had to unclip the rear door plastic two or three times for various reasons, and it still holds perfectly, no broken clip whatsoever :)

[troy45]

I'm still having problems getting the IPOD function to work - emails back and to Asure haven't helped so far. The last reply I got didn't exactly make much sense as they told me I can only listen to music through IPOD and other functions not supported - all I was expecting to do was listen to music ::)

Previous advice was to open up IpodCom to select the ipod icon in factory settings but can't see this anywhere in the Factory settings menus

[troy45]

Quick update on my IPOD problem - after several emails going back and to between Asure and myself I'm glad to report it's all sorted now by means of a firmware update they sent me. Installation was simply a case of copying files onto an SD card and switching the unit on with this in the GPS slot on the front of the unit. As the on-screen instructions were in Chinese I missed it telling me it was finished and it restarted the unit itself, applying the update again. Instruction file had warned about pulling power while the unit was updating so I waited for it to complete again and get to the point where text box came up on the screen.

Bit of trial and error then getting the unit set back to English language but got there ok. Only niggle now is the warning screen on start-up is all in Chinese - you can see the .bmp file used in the list of files copied onto the SD card but I've not got hold of an English version yet. Then would be a case of substituting for the original LOGO.bmp and re-running the firmware update. Sounds simple but still could all go horribly wrong so maybe I'll just live with it.

Top marks to Asure for their tech support on this :)

[xand49]

Hi There,

I've narrowed my search for a head unit down to this one for my 2006 focus TDCi

Could anyone advise if this will be just plug and play or will require additional cables? not sure if this has the canbus (does that just enable the steering wheel stalk?)

[ScorpionSX]

Yes, it's just plug & play. The stalk controls are using wires on the main wiring which you would plug to your quadlock connector, so they will work with or without canbus. Maybe newer model require canbus for something else, I don't know...but I have basically the same one and the same car and it works very well. You just might need to "teach" the stereo what each button does, but that's done through the menu in a very user-friendly interface ;)

[xand49]

Yes, it's just plug & play. The stalk controls are using wires on the main wiring which you would plug to your quadlock connector, so they will work with or without canbus. Maybe newer model require canbus for something else, I don't know...but I have basically the same one and the same car and it works very well. You just might need to "teach" the stereo what each button does, but that's done through the menu in a very user-friendly interface ;)

fantastic,

that is the news i've been hunting for days!

did you require a fascia etc for yours or did it just slide in place?

[ScorpionSX]

No new fascia required, you just remove the current stereo (they send you the clips to remove it / or if not, it's GBP 2,- purchase on ebay), and then slide in the new one. Just be carefull when putting in the new one - you will have a bit more wires behind it, so just try not to break any of them, there is a place on both sides of the centre console where you can stuck the wires, so do that first, then plug them into the unit and slide it in. It'll fit easily then.

[xand49]

Excellent, I shall get it ordered today then!

Thanks so much for that

[ScorpionSX]

No problem. Feel free to ask if you run to any kind of trouble during the install process ;)

@troy45

I still find it weird that you didn't have the iPod mode available...the way I see it, Asure and all the other brands are using pretty much the same Android system, maybe just different in some logos or something, but if you just see the pics on their listings on eBay, you'll see it's pretty much the same UI everywhere...but then again, I didn't have the Play store on my unit until the firmware update so...maybe there are few glitches every now and then...hopefully most of these will be gone just with the FW update :)

[troy45]

@troy45

I still find it weird that you didn't have the iPod mode available...the way I see it, Asure and all the other brands are using pretty much the same Android system, maybe just different in some logos or something, but if you just see the pics on their listings on ebay, you'll see it's pretty much the same UI everywhere...but then again, I didn't have the Play store on my unit until the firmware update so...maybe there are few glitches every now and then...hopefully most of these will be gone just with the FW update :)

Asure fixed my iPod problem, so it works ok now. It took me a while to realise it wasn't working as it was only recently that I wired in their lead to the back of the head unit and tried plugging in my phone. All seems fine with the firmware update apart from the start-up warning screen being in Chinese now. Think I can live with that :)

Have wondered about the extra functionality with the android based units (mine's WinCE) but at the same time my unit works pretty well now and I'm pretty used to it. Whether that'll be the same if I upgrade from my iPhone 4S is another matter....

[troy45]

With the canbus box on my unit I'm not 100% certain about everything it does but I know it uses this to switch when the car is put into reverse - when I was installing my unit, before the camera was wired in it still switched to blank screen when reverse was selected.

[xand49]

With the canbus box on my unit I'm not 100% certain about everything it does but I know it uses this to switch when the car is put into reverse - when I was installing my unit, before the camera was wired in it still switched to blank screen when reverse was selected.

thanks for the info, don't think my order will be shipped prior to the bank holiday now, but will see what happens when it arrives next week (hopefully).

[xand49]

Just got my unit, nice postage speeds!

Only issue is, I don't seem to have an instruction manual with it!

Does anyone know if they have digital copies anywhere?

ScorpionSX can I just ask, where did you place the gps antenna with yours?

[ScorpionSX]

Oh I wouldn't be worried that much about missing something important by not having a manual...but you can always look it up at the "manufacturer's" website. If you went with that A-Sure tech one, they should have something about it on their website. But the manual usually only explains a bit more about the built in features, pretty much like the ad on eBay does. There isn't that much else to say, since there's pretty much no way to plug any of the wires the wrong way, and the Android system works just like on a regular Android phone or tablet.

And as for the GPS antenna, I placed mine above the interior lights, right next to standard radio antenna plug from the roof. It's magnetic, so it holds very well on the roof and also there's no remaining wire tangled up somewhere behind the glovebox or somewhere.

You need to remove two phillips screws to remove the roof lighting console and tuck the wire behind the roof and door panels...(sorry, it's hard for me to explain, since English is my second language and naming all the parts is still a little difficult for me )...I can make few pics if you're interested, I will be doing some touch-up mods on the car over the weekend, so I can get to it then probably ;)

[xand49]

Cheers for that will handle cable routing at the weekend,

For the big multi lock connector I have 5 spair taped off wires

Key, antenna, car, amp, control.

Any ideas what to do with those?

[ScorpionSX]

Ok, I hope I won't forget to take some pics over the weekend ;)

About the wires, antenna & amp - those I wouldn't worry about - only if you would need to power your antenna or amplifier through the radio - which you probably don't, if you don't have any amplifier installed.

Key - this is maybe, if the steering wheel controls are not working and you can't get them to "learn" what they should do, you will need to connect this wire to the car's original steering wheel wire, but I'm not 100% sure about this, it also could be something else...

Car - doesn't this say "car back"? - This is the wire where you should connect the "signal" wire from reverse gear, if you want the rearview camera to work - it'll get the signal from the reverse gear and switches the screen automatically to rearcamera...if you won't connect this, nothing happens when you put it reverse.

Control - also, doesn't this say "brake control"? - This wire you don't need to connect, it's a signal wire to check if the handbrake is engaged or not and the unit can play a video, or DVD movie. Without this wire connected, the video plays either way...and even if you connect it, you can override this setting in the stereo settings...so what's the point...

So basically, you don't need to worry about these, unless the steering wheel controls are not working and/or you have a reverse camera :)

[xand49]

Can't thank you enough there buddy, managed to get it all installed, wheel controls work perfectly. spent a good 3 hours just playing with it so far!

I will be looking at a reversing camera for next month maybe! for now just got to deal with placing the gps antenna somewhere and also finding a good way of wiring the external microphone to the steering column without wires everywhere (pulled one of the blanking panels out for the mean time).

Look forward to giving it a nice run tomorrow to work, and then leeching the office wifi from the car park!

[troy45]

There's a bunch of wires going to my unit which are spare but everything seems to work as intended.

Did have a hiccup with mine on the weekend where the volume controls went screwy showing it was muted but actually working, plus the sound biased itself to front left of car and wouldn't let me change it. Fixed by reloading the firmware update I was recently sent, and I took the opportunity to try a different graphic for the start-up screen instead of the Chinese language version warning page I'd ended up with. Worked just fine with a pretty ST logo on carbon fibre background now :)

[Votick]

Anyone with a 2008-2010 Focus got this fitted correctly in the dash? My trim dosn't seem to fit on aswell as the default HeadUnit.

NVM: bending the top mounting brackets flat seemed to get it to align correctly :) All good now

[ScorpionSX]

@xand49

So some unexpected stuff kinda ruined my plans to do some of the finishing touches on the car, and also doing the pics, but, I found there are some great shots in Brigante's manual to installing reverse cam, which nicely explain how to just tuck the GPS wire behind the trims, I hope I can "borrow" them for this:

You start at the roof, where you need to remove the lights:

Then, you'll have this in front of you:

That's where you can attach the magnetic antenna (or perhaps with some both-sided tape) and then you push the end with the connector through the roof lining (this is a shot from trunk, but in the front it's the same principle):

Then, you run the wire to the passanger side of the car, and tuck it behind the roof linig, all the way to the A-pillar and there's where you tuck it around the plastic pillar trim:

You will then route it around the pillar and tuck it behind the rubber door cover, and run it down to the spot where two of the rubber bands join together:

And that's where you run it behind the glovebox (which you need to take out, of course):

And then, you're right behind the stereo and you just plug it in ;)

I hope you'll make it work this way, for me, this was easier than removing the pillar trims, where I was scared to brake some of the trim holders, but the roof lights, you just swipe them out and unscrew the plastic holder... :)

[xand49]

cheers again,

was attempting to give this a go but it seems that my keys will no longer unlock the radio to remove it and one key is now permanently lodged in, they were releasing fine prior to being installed. wondering if it maybe shoddy keys as i struggled greatly to get the stock radio out with them.

when you have the wire down the side of the pillar by the dash does it just sneak behind the plastic into the dash area or do you have to pop something there?

[xand49]

Seems the brackets that came with the stereo are quite inadequate, have to bend the keys to knock it off the latch another way.

Managed to get everything wired in just about, was about 10cm short on the gps so had to push the box into the roof area from the light fitting hole (probably because i wired it under where the trim meets the front windscreen instead of through the roof)

Haven't been able to get the unit sat 100% perfectly in place and flush with the trim but i'd say its at least 95% there now.

All i need now is to find a way to password the device and find a good way to replace the default music player to something easier to navigate!