Car stereo upgrade

I got bored of my Sony head unit, and decided it's time for an upgrade. So I got one of those Chinese Android tablet units specifically for my car from Ebay for £91.48 including shipping, which took over a month to arrive

It was listed on Ebay as "9" Android 8.1 Car Stereo GPS Navigation Radio Bluetooth For Ford Focus Mondeo" It seems to be sold by several Ebay sellers at various different prices, and you can get it on Amazon as well



After more than a month of waiting it turned up, this is what you get in the box, it was well packaged to withstand the abuse that international shipping provides
In the box you get the unit itself, an "instruction book", the wiring harness to connect to the car, 2 slightly different USB leads, a GPS antenna, and an AV in/out harness

What you don't get is any cameras or a DAB adaptor, but you can add them later



These are the only controls on the unit
From the top, the microphone, reset, mute/power, home, back, volume up and down

If you tap power it mutes the audio, if you hold it it mutes the audio, blanks the screen and shows a clock, but if you then press volume up on the steering wheel controls it un-mutes the sound that was previously playing



The rear of the unit, including a close up of the sockets, the 4G sockets are not populated on my unit. You'll notice you can unscrew the tablet from the fascia if you wanted to paint or wrap it



This is what it looks like when everything is plugged in, there are still sockets with no plugs in



The old radio is removed with the four radio keys, you can get these on Amazon or Ebay for pennies. The plug is held in with a lever which you need to unclip and pull back



Then to remove the fascia panel, undo the two torx screws, then unclip the four clips just above the heater controls, then it just pulls off



I took the plastic screw threads out so they don't fall out later



Now it's just a case of plugging it all in, the plugs are quite tight, and the radio aerial doesn't doesn't seem to go all the way in



Please ignore the screen protector confusing the camera, and for some reason there was four of them on the screen?

Switch the ignition on to ACC and the stereo pops into life, it is just Android 8 with a few custom apps and a custom launcher. It turns on and off with the ignition just like pressing the power button on a real tablet, it also goes back to whatever you were doing before you switched the ignition off, so if you had the radio on, the radio starts back up again



Getting the steering wheel controls working was a challenge, you would think they would be in the car settings, but no, that just gives you a rather unhelpful error message



But you can scroll up for more settings, and they are under steering wheel controls, from there it's pretty straight forward, just tap the icon on the screen, then hold down the relevant button on the controls

I set Volume up/down, Next/Previous, and Home for the mode button



Other than changing the wallpaper and which navigation app opens, the default homescreen is not able to be modified, but you can install alternatives, I use ADW Launcher V2 on mine



This is the screen you get when you hold down power, there is a screen off command in the android quick menu which blanks the screen



I installed ADW Launcher V2 to replace the default launcher, you can customize this one however you like, and it picks up all the custom apps as well, I've read that not all of them do



It's running Android 8.1Go, and you can turn on developer settings in the usual way for further tinkering


FAQ
To save me answering the same questions over and over again, see if your question is listed here...

01. Is it DAB? Yes, but you'll need a DAB USB dongle and antenna, you can get these from Ebay for about £20, then install the DAB-Z app from Google Play
02. How loud is it? Loud enough, the manual states 4x45W, I've no idea if this is RMS or PMPO, or just random numbers chosen on the day
03. Can you connect a sub? Yes
04. Does it have USB? Yes, it has 2, they have different connectors into the unit, one has six pins, and the other four, I don't know why yet
05. Does it have mobile internet? No, but it will connect to your phone's mobile hotspot
06. Does it sound as good as the Sony unit? Yes, turn the bass and treble up in the EQ settings and it sounds just as good
07. Can you connect a reversing camera? Yes
08. Can you connect a DVD player, games console, Raspberry Pi, or other device? Yes, it's only composite and stereo audio in though
09. Does it have aux in? Yes, through the AV in ports, although it assumes it has a video source and just shows a blank screen, but it will play audio in the background. The app allows two source inputs, but only the first source which is labelled as DVD has the audio, I assume the other source is for the DVR camera
10. Can you connect additional screens? Yes, composite and stereo audio out is available
11. Does it have a TV tuner? Maybe it'll support DTV through a SDR dongle with antenna, and a suitable app
12. Does it have wifi and Bluetooth? Yes
13. Does it have the Google Play Store? Yes
14. How does it fit into the car? With clips, it doesn't fit as well as the original fascia panel, and feels like it would come out easily, so security is an issue
15. Where did you put the GPS antenna? I popped out the dash tray and stuck it under the top of the dashboard, it picks up the satellites fine
16. What's the navigation like? The default mapping app is Google maps, which needs a network connection, but you can install others, I used Here WeGo maps as it works off line
17. What's Bluetooth like? As you would expect, it works for calls and media, the song artist and title are displayed on the Bluetooth media screen, and you can skip tracks on screen and via the steering wheel controls (once set up)
18. Can you play music while navigating? Yes, it multi tasks just like a normal Android tablet
19. Can you adjust the brightness? Yes, it dims when the vehicles lights are on, you can change both brightness levels in the settings menu
20. Does it have DVR (dash cam) ability? Yes, there are three video inputs, AV in with audio, reversing camera, and DVR
21. Does it lower the audio when notifications come through on your phone or when navigating? Yes, but when using the AV in app it mutes the audio completely
22. Does Torque work? I can't get it to pair with my OBD2 reader, the Bluetooth menu has been removed from the Android settings, and the custom app won't give you the option to pair with it, although it can see it
23. What apps would you recommend? ADW Launcher V2 (Beta), DAB-Z, and Here WeGo maps, it's free and works offline

Things that annoy me and I haven't worked out how to solve yet
01. Every time you press one of the steering wheel controls it beeps, but only through the left speaker
02. While you can feed audio in, it is using the AV in which assumes a video signal is being sent, so just shows a black screen, it'll be nice if you could disable the video in and show something on screen while audio is playing, although you can press home and use another app at the same time
03. It seems way too easy to reset some of the custom apps to factory settings, so if you have one of those kinds of people who tap at everything on the screen in your car, you'll end up having to set up all your radio presets, or reconnect your phone all the time
04. The fit of the fascia panel is not as good as it could be, it doesn't quite fit in properly at the bottom and feels like it would come out quite easily (It does)
05. I can't work out how to pair Bluetooth devices from the unit, it pairs with phones easily when initiated from the phone itself


DAB Adaptor update

Here is the DAB USB adaptor, it's probably just a normal USB SDR (Software defined radio)

Does it remind you of anything?



Anyway I won't be using the supplied windscreen aerial as they are rubbish, and I have a proper DAB aerial fitted, so it's just a case of plugging it in and connecting the aerial, the DAB-Z app auto detects the SDR and opens and prompts you to do a scan for stations



Not really much to show, it just works, the DAB-Z app will prompt for a network connection to download the station logo pack, it will download some from the DAB signal, but not all of them, however you don't need to do it that often

And as a bonus, I have all the storage back under the radio for my various phones and other assorted bits and pieces



Here's the old Next Base unit which has done well and will now be retired to a drawer, like an old phone

The next accessories to be fitted will be a reversing camera, and a GPS speed widget (if I can find one)


Reversing camera update

Time to pull it all back out again to fit the reversing camera, I am aware you can get one to replace the number plate light, but that one is £30, and also you need the LED light for the other number plate light or it looks wrong at night. However this one is only £12, so that's the one I got, you can get cheaper cameras if you want to wait for the shipping from China



Route the cable through the dashboard and connect up the yellow phono plug to the phono socket, which is marked "F.CAMERA-IN"



The trigger wire is orange and labelled as "BACK", if you translate the text into English it's labelled as "BACK reverse control line"



Route the cable through the car to the back, that's easy, the hard part is getting it through this rubber tube, at least it's a thin connector. I used a long thin knitting needle and lots of insulation tape, you will need to route twin-core power cable through as the camera's power lead is way too short, a couple of metres of cheap speaker cable will do



Here is where I spliced the camera's power cable into the car's loom



And this is where I mounted the camera, it looks like it's aligned wrong, but it isn't. Also, please be mightily impressed with the way I obscured my number plate using a photo of my Raspberry Pi powered Sinclair Spectrum

To fit the camera here you will need to remove the internal trim then remove the plastic strip from above the number plate, there's four nuts and two trim fixings on each end

Once that's off, you can drill a small hole for the camera, feed the cable through, and hold it in place with the small spring washer and nut, then just route the cable round the boot lid and connect the connections together, the top plastic trim just pulls off to reveal the cable entry point, you won't need to remove the side trim pieces, you can just pop the cable under them



As soon as the car goes into reverse the screen instantly swaps to the camera, remember you will need the ignition on while testing. The coloured guide lines come from the camera itself, and can't be switched off on this model, although on other camera models they can be disabled by cutting a loop of wire



You can choose whether you want the sound muted or not when the camera is active by the "Revers Settings" in other settings, it would be nice if the volume was lowered, but it's either on or off

In practice, it works quite well, it looks like the camera isn't controlled by Android as it instantly cuts over the display, then instantly goes back to whatever it was doing before, there's no evidence of an app loading, I would say there's a video switcher module in control of what's on the screen, and a signal on the trigger wire just swaps the sources over, although the option to mute the audio is inside of Android, so I don't know really


For more cheap car upgrades, click here