Stock navigation unit: obdii, android auto, apple carplay

[bigBADbenny]

Starting an faq post on using the stock nav for things more useful than just maps and reverse camera: future proof your nav!

Stock nav mod Gen4...

Take the utmost care removing your nav bezel, tear the surrounding dash and you’ll regret it, to the point I’m not really going to give any advice for fear of making things worse!

Well having said that, the first time will be the hardest as the bezel will probably be a little stuck to the dash.
Meaning it’s going to need a decent yank to unseat it.

The least intrusive method would be to use some plastic trim hooks and use them through the vents. Wedging credit cards in between the dash and bezel works but avoid the corners.

Test some fancy quick release detailing masking tape in an unseen area to see if it pulls away cleanly.
If it works, line the dash aperture with it to protect it.

Have an old towel on hand to fold up to protect the dash from the nav unit frame & mounts which are very sharp and the looms are very short, in other words, be prepared and don’t rush it!

Generally, c1 type navs do have video aux in, that’s the type with DVD map in glovebox. Its a yellow female RCA plug next to the reverse camera input.

C2 type has the DVD in the head unit no video aux in but potentially via a jdm tv adapter loom etc.
If you’re really stuck you could make the reverse camera input switchable between reverse, stock maps and aux-in.


Yep, 2 nav hacks, android tv box into the rear AV aux in.
The hacks are touched on in this post:

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=20939&p=356707&hilit=fixed#p356707

Add a wired AA/AC (Android Auto, Apple Carplay wired mirroring for Android) dongle for android to the box and audio out into your head unit aux in.

You’ll need a tv box with no power button, and 3.5mm av/audio out, 12v-5v converter running off a fuse tap and terminated with a barrel plug to suit the box.

I’m using a TX2 android tv box, it’s been very reliable but that particular model has been superseded and is currently a TX9 or similar.

I recently discovered the reason that the 3.5mm audio is very noisy, the tv box probably required a galvanically isolated power source.
Fixed install Nexus7 users use these amongst others: https://au.rs-online.com/web/p/isolated ... s/8762642/
Otherwise use a USB DAC.


Mini key pad/mouse for haptics or use voice control to command your phone.

I guess if you were to not use the nav for its own discs, an android compatible 7” USB touch screen overlay could be substituted or laid over the oem touch screen, below the protector.

As for the C2 nav screen, it’s very low res but useable and stock as.

Budget $100 or $150 with clear blue case vagcom and Btssm app for turbo and h6 cars or a little less for a clear blue case elm327 bt plug and torque pro app, for n/a 2.0 & 2.5 cars.

The reason for the Btssm vd Torque thing is that the latter ecu’s are fully defined for ssm logging an the n/a ecu’s can be read with generic obdii.

[bigBADbenny]

Reserved.

[bigBADbenny]

Reserved.

[bigBADbenny]

Ok to kick the discussion off, I got a PM regarding this mod and I'm just going to quote it here.
The info is not PM material, thats why I'm posting here: to share the info and maybe learn things.

Quick question, does the magical jdm tv box harness actually exist?

Probably. If its a want, someone somewhere has probably done it, assuming its not a factory option.
Look for your nav model number eg by putting it in diagnostioc mode or by pulling the nav screen.

Import Monster has a section in used auto parts dedicated to navigation systems.
Import Monster is a site that aggregates and translates Yahoo.jp.
I use reverse translation strategies using google translate, alot when getting down to tin tacks in searching.

There are at least 5 different aftermarket harnesses for BP/BL, that do various things.
BM/BR is up to you to look as I'm fairly unlikely to ever own one.
Legacy GT forum member SVXDC has various adapter harnesses as well, check his forum FAQ's and site: http://ae64.com/

I did a quick search and it appears that the adapter harness VHA-F32 is the AV video and audio input adapter for SD/stereo devices into BP/BL and BM/BR Subarus. It shouldn’t be to hard to confirm this, or even find the pinouts for a diy adapter.

Surely there has to be a method to extract at least an RCA connection from the C2 unit and given by the lowres of the display one could mount a first gen raspberry pi or something similar for next to no cost and run this https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments ... raspberry/ instead?

C2 is decent at 800x400, thats perfectly useable in the real world.

As is C1 at the prehistoric resolution of 400x240.
Its not like our focus is on the screen for that long regardless.

iirc the Pi gen 1 has native RCA output, the Gen 2 / 3/ 4/ and derivatives use hdmi with composite requiring an adaptor. And an advantage would be that it would run on less power than your TV box hack, run colder, be smaller, and gives the ability for more to be done on the stock headunit through mouse and kb.

You can run any host that suits your needs, "my" Android TV box is not hacked even one bit, they come stock rooted.
With on-board av out, its just one less adapter to deal with, but if i had to use an hdmi adapter, sure its a thing.

Indeed the same strategy can be used to add Android plus AA/AC functionality to an aftermarket head unit with either HDMI or AV input.
Fancier HDMI input HU's will even support haptic input to the Android TV box via the HDMI cable.

There's zero heat, reliability or power issues, but regardless a galvanically isolated power supply should make for a cleaner audio and video signal, be it windows, linux, android or whatever.

The nav hacks are simply to allow for using the video aux-in on the stock nav screen whilst in motion.

Once again this solution is to avaiod the many hassles of messing about with Nexus7 setups, they're very possible to do but I know very few who have such a seamless setup as this "stock plus" mod.

My setup has been working great for at least 3 years, probably more.

The C1 nav even remembers the input selection after key-off so you'll never need to "agree" again unless using the stock side of the nav.

The one thing that would be lacking for me with your proposed setup would be no BtSSM support.
BtSSM is not Android Auto compatible. If a Pi can run android, then bring it on!

[subyroo]

If a Pi can run android, then bring it on!

Is this link of any use to you bBb?

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/install-android-raspberry-pi/

[bigBADbenny]

Any links welcome!
I’ll dig up the link explaining galvanically isolated power transformers as the thread is a very useful one for no battery mod nexus 7.

[dapple]

thought i'd reply with what i've gotten working so far,

so far just to test the waters prove that everything works and get a rough idea of the area i'm working with i've managed the following

- removed nav unit, (mines defiantly the C2 type)
- tested that I can still operate the radio without the nav unit (volume works, channel changing works etc)
- very quickly and poorly mocked up a quick cad of the navi unit
- tested torque with AOSP, torque does work with AOSP, have not tested out writing anything via OBD yet

Navi unit quick cad

Screen Shot 2020-10-26 at 9.29.24 pm.png (205.34 KiB) Viewed 12100 times

next up is removing the lower headunit and Aircon, finding the magical aux in that uses some stupid non aux connection, figuring out what pins do what and producing a crappy but functional aux cable without buying it from subaru or ebay, testing the aux in, figuring out how much power and which pins the Nav unit runs off and how I can adapt it to something a pi 4 and tft display can run off.

I intend on replacing the Nav unit with a pi or small linux box to do carplay/ android auto and using that to aux in to the stock unit until I can afford the facia kit and ill move AC/AA to there and keep the top display for OBD info.

anyone got a pinout for the stock navigation upper harnesses and the stock headunit? mines the C2 type with the dvd in the headunit

[bigBADbenny]

It’s 2x 3 pins of female header strip to make a diy aux in plug for a McIntosh head unit...

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=16196&start=375#p306983

You can start your own thread in an appropriate section of this forum.
In this thread we’re discussing stock nav unit mods.
I don’t mind either way really, especially if you’re eg reverse engineering the stock nav buttons.

Service manuals are available online for some of the oem clarion HU and Kenwood navs. If you can find them eg “model number + service manual” search, they contain block & component diagrams.

Or find a compatible video out/aftermarket nav harness for your head unit.


FB group member Jeremy Veith has done a comprehensive Pi or android setup for his lib, I’ve been meaning to as what screen he used.

[dapple]

Ah thanks, I’ll shoot him a Facebook message and just ask him about it. I’ll probably start a walkthrough thread once it’s done with all the info diagrams and stuff I’ve made if anyone else wants it. My end goal is to keep it as stock looking as possible and fully reversible for any future desire.

[montyLalor]

I have an alternative train of thought for manipulating the stock nav screen.

My intention is to end up with something like this:



A UK company called Zada-tech does full digital gauges with OLED and TFT screens, run by controllers that except multiple inputs. The controllers have HDMI outputs.

I plan to hard-wire sensors for everything in the above image accept the two gauges on the left. Should the resolution not be good enough, I'd be happy with just the four other ones.

Should the res be fine, I'll add another two temp sensors from the engine bay (running ambient - a mate and I are looking at H6 engine bay heat reduction strategies...).

Here's the stock mod: I'm hoping that I can simply use a HDMI -> Component adapter to display the gauges from the digital sensor controller. Oh, and work out the handbrake signal mod

Is this likely to work (with a reduced resolution output from the sensor controller)?

[bigBADbenny]

Thanks! I’ll look them up later.

I was considering a daylight video production monitor but generally the interfaces for bright/dark/reverse etc don’t suit auto applications, out of the box.

There is one company that does make such a product (automotive monitors) and I’ll link it later.

Because of k-Line SSM, Btssm is still my preferred choice for gauges, logging & lv.

[bigBADbenny]

They say (Zada Tech) that firmware is customisable

But the product seems more suited to cars running stock ecu’s with no support for data logging.

Its also way more expensive than any Btssm setup.

[bigBADbenny]

Let’s say you have an Apple Carplay or Android Auto (AC/AA) only head unit, no AV or hdmi input and you want or need to run non AC/AA compatible apps, there’s now a thing called Android AI device that can mirror Android OS into AC/AA head unit.

Check it out here, a potential solution for slow head units as it will remove processor load from the HU:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y94QJur0i ... e=youtu.be

[bigBADbenny]

Another develeopment: an all in one solution for AC/AA on the stock head unit via the AV input, or any non AC/AA head unit with AV or HDMI input: Cartizan, basically an AC/AA box with a joystick for haptic input, AV and HDMI output…

Hopefully the price will reduce on these, seems a little steep, but as always, gotta pay for the convenient solution:

https://cartizan-direct.com/collections ... yJmG5OAXWo

Here’s the spotto post on FB, interested to see if it’s an ad or legit post/actually going through with the install:

https://m.facebook.com/groups/SpecBsuba ... eed_mobile

[bigBADbenny]

Here’s a new twist on the android tv box hack, this time for C2 disc type higher resolution stock navigation units…

Its really next level pcb level modding, and as such could only have come out of Eastern Europe, in particular Russian Federation, thanks Dimitrii!

You’ll need to use a translator, Chrome browser has it built in:

https://www.drive2.ru/l/559526075286159714/