Radio Upgrade

[sav]

Very interesting. The price isn't too bad either.

I wonder how long before it's rooted?

[sav]

Right, the radio is rooted and after a MASSIVE amount of fiddling I've managed to sort the memory problem out which prevented some apps from installing. The mount points were a bit wonky so now both internal SD and external SD are both pointing to the microsd card.

Managed to install Tomtom and it's working great, even with my HD Live traffic subscription! Lots of happiness there.

Next step is to make it report itself as a Nexus tablet which would remove most of the Play Store restrictions. Some apps are showing up as "not compatible" because the device is not recognized.
Then I need to find a compatible USB BT dongle, or at least one which has got drivers for Android I could install.

Now that it's rooted there is pretty much nothing you can't do. I'll eventually start looking into reducing the boot time as well...

It was a bit of a disappointing start but I'm VERY happy with this radio now.

[Vladror]

awesome, i hope you wrote down all the steps cause i might go down that same route if that parrot takes too long

[sav]

Yep, it would fairly straight forward the 2nd time around.

[Brandon__]

After reading this I'm also very keen to try the one you've got @sav. I'be bought quite a few gadgets from dx.com and they seem to work out fairly well.

[sav]

Cool, if you don't mind the 90sec Android startup time and fiddling with config files then it's awesome.

I didn't buy it form dx.com though but I have bought plenty of stuff from them. I see they do have a couple of Toyota radios for sale, but no android one.

[Brandon__]

@sav

Ya I saw the link was to hongkong something or other not dx.com.

I'm not sure how much longer we'll have to wait for the parrot but maybe it'll be worthwhile. I'm trying not to rush any upgrades especially for the interior. I want to do it right first time

Do the speakers connect directly to the Android box or is there an amp in between? Not really sure how the standard sound setup works but I've hear that to really get good sound you need a proper amp and some kind of sub added?

[sav]

Yep, it depends on what you want from the radio - the Parrot would have better hardware, better user interface, etc but the Asteroid market is very limited and you wouldn't be able to customize any of it. So for most people that would be the best option, I like fiddling with things so for me the chinese is great even though it's got it's niggles.

This radio connects to the speakers just like any other radio. It's got a built in 60w x4 amp which is okay but for the best sound a separate amp, sub and splits would be better.

[Brandon__]

So you could actually improve the sound just by changing the radio? It may not actually be the speakers fault for the crappy sound in the 86?

I just assumed you would need to change the speakers themselves...

[sav]

Yes and no - changing the radio does improve the sound quality but not by a massive amount. Radio + speakers would make a big difference.

[sav]

Some more pics:

[Brandon__]

@sav

Have you got any pics during the day? would dig to see how it looks in the dash

[Brandon__]

@sav

Have you got any pics during the day? would dig to see how it looks in the dash

[sav]

Not the best pic, sorry I had to take it an angle because of glare: