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Got back together with Joying. They are definitely angling to do nothing, but sticking with it so I'm not upset.
This afternoon I decided to take apart the head unit, and found a tiny cable is likely the issue with the display. The mainboard connects to a daughterboard with a small, delicate cable that has obvious physical damage. Messing with this cable alternately scrambles and unscrambles the display. I tried flattening it and reinstalling it, but no dice - little jolts scramble the display. I now understand the previous and apparently random problems, so that's progress. I was able to adjust it so that I could do a firmware update hoping to restore the antenna function but no dice. Still no antenna. Everything else works great, though. Being the contingency thinker I am, I am trying to decide whether I'd be okay with a new cable and a discount in exchange for a non-functioning antenna trigger. I could use the amp trigger - all I lose is the ability to lower the antenna when not listening to the radio. It's not world-ending - lots of stereos are like that.
My new bench power supply is awesome. Set at 14v I was able to run the stereo indoors in a science-y way. At full tilt - installing firmware for example - power consumption maxes out at <.8a, which is not much. It generally sits around .4 or .5a. I assume if the speakers were connected that number would go up, but at "idle" that's not a lot of power. When turned off - which isn't actually "off" but "sleep," consumption is .008a at 14v. It's tangibly more than none, but not a lot. It's kind of impressive that an instant-on Intel CPU can "run" at that power. I was also able to take some temp readings. The heat sink (it's passively cooled) hangs out at 90F pretty much non-stop, and I'm not sure whether that goes up with the amp running. That's well within the CPU's tolerance, but I do worry a bit about it staying within tolerances when it's 140 degrees in the cabin. Once this is sorted, I may install a small fan to circulate air. There's plenty of room to do that.
I am waiting for the next step from Joying, but it was a productive night. I'm tired now though.
Edit: I like this relationship I have with the seller. They sent me a picture of the mainboard and highlighted a leg of a voltage regulator and asked for a meter at that spot. "Can you test here?" Hells yeah I can. Let's solve this. Far better than a defective Pioneer stereo I got where Pioneer lead with "Have you connected it to both power and negative ground?" :smh:
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The little damaged cable that I suspect is responsible for the display issues:
http://www.sacsaabs.org/sacsaabs.org...whitecable.jpg
and a bench power supply with the stereo sleeping:
http://www.sacsaabs.org/sacsaabs.org...gpowertest.jpg
Really stoked about the power supply. So many great things can be done with it!
The seller is asking me to ship back the radio, which is $$$. Not sure how I'm going to proceed yet... I didn't honestly see that coming!
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Super jealous of the power supply.
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I have rigged up some crazy shit in the past - computer power supplies and repurposed transformers. I have an EMBARRASSING box of transformers I keep around for whatever comes up. I'm moving on up! And I will feel a lot more comfortable about stuff I do knowing I have a reliable power supply rather than hoping the specs on the label are correct. I really could have used it when testing my speedometer gear for the SPG! I think it was a good use of $80.
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It's been a long road!
After some further troubleshooting with Joying, we established there was a definite problem with that little while cable, and there was a problem with the voltage regulator that triggers the antenna. I boxed up the head unit and sent it back to China. Added $40 to my bill, which sucked, but at least it wasn't a battle to get a return.
They had it for one day, then shipped a replacement which took two weeks to arrive. I got it on Friday and got back to installing Saturday morning. I'd left all the wiring in the dash, so the only thing really to do was slot it in, and pull the two USB cables to somewhere useful. All of 10 minutes.
http://www.sacsaabs.org/sacsaabs.org...nearlydone.jpg
I spent a bit configuring it to my taste - sound settings, getting rid of the silly animated wallpaper, removing useless icons from the desktop, etc.
I was shocked at how easy programming the steering wheel controls were. Choose a function, hit a button, move on to the next. Interestingly, the volume up and down controls came pre-mapped and worked. The other functions were not mapped. One disappointing thing is that there is no way to change functions with SWCs - I would have liked to use the NXT button to switch between radio and MP3, but I couldn't see how to do that. You can assign "functions" but not apps. Maybe something I can figure out later...
It took me a long time to get Torque working. I had ordered an ELM327 Bluetooth OBDII dongle with the head unit, but after 30 minutes of messing around *could not* get it to pair with the head unit. It worked fine with my phone, and my phone worked fine with the stereo, so I knew it wasn't a hardware defect... something in software. After giving up and resorting to google, I found a post on some other forum suggesting changing the Bluetooth PIN on the stereo to the same 1234 as configured with the dongle... and that worked perfectly. I have no explanation as to why, but it did so whatever. Just weird Chinese Android stereo problems. ;) Set up the car profile with Torque, and all was good to go.
I took the car on a couple drives over the weekend and so far it seems good. Actually, really good. I expected all sorts of half-working things and so far my only complaint is that the MP3 player forgets what it was doing with key cycles.... if it's playing a folder and you turn the car off, when you start back up it'll finish that track then start playing the entire flash drive. I'm gonna need a replacement media player fo sho. Radio works well, cheesy built-in nav app works well, h4x0red Torque app works well. I didn't play media via Bluetooth but I never do anyway... phone calls via BT work great.
Some other notes:
1. While messing around with the OBDII dongle the stereo went into a weird "can't sleep" mode. Turn off the key, and the display goes dark but the buttons stayed lit for a LONG time. Three minutes before I finally pulled the fuse. Normally, it takes 20-30 seconds to sleep. From my tests with the power supply, I know that in "going to sleep mode" it's still drawing about 500ma, so if it failed to sleep that'd be a problem pretty quickly. I'm thinking I blew up the BT stack, but it's something to keep an eye on.
2. Because I had to pull the fuse, I learned what the stereo loses when it loses power. Oddly, that's the backlight setting and the key press tones. No idea why that wouldn't be written to a configuration somewhere that could be read on restart, but it's not. Weird.
It's only been two days and probably 30 miles, but I think I'm happy with it. My next tasks are finding a better media player, loading Google Maps, and making a surround to fit between the dash and the display. That last task is actually a little problematic, since I need to figure out a way to make that trim stay put but also be removable so I can get the stereo back out if I need to. I'm concerned about heat - but it probably won't be an issue for six months so I'll deal with that bit later. ;)
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I'm trapped a bit between two functional forms. The all-in-one navigation head unit, and an Android Auto capable unit. I want the OEM convenience of just getting into the car and driving away when I want to. With the Android Auto unit you have to always physically dock your phone if you want to use navigation or apps like a podcast app or Google Play Music. Having to dock in every single time is really lame, but the technical limitations of Bluetooth and Wifi won't allow Android Auto to be a realistic wireless solution for quite a while.
The real hook for me is that I like app-based Navigation because it responds to real time traffic. Not sure the all-in-one solution will do that effectively, the BMW version of it was always a little sketchy to me.
No real question here, I guess, just musing aloud.
