Sat Nav Speedo Input

[iainsmith]

Hi,

Just replaced my standard head unit for a Pioneer AVIC-X1 unit. It's a DVD / Sat Nav etc in a standard single din unit with flip out 7" TFT screen.

Fitting in place of the standard TVR supplied head unit was pretty straightforward. No major wiring issues and the additional box (Which Pioneer and everyone who supplies forgets to tell you about!) fits nicely under the dash on the passenger side.

The GPS antenna is small and black and fits easily near the tax disc and is not really noticable.

There are few additional wires that need to be connected:

1) to the handbrake - so you can't watch DVD's while driving - This is better earthed so it's available all of the time!

2) reverse switch - for switching in the (optional) rear view camera and telling the unit if you are reversing

3) Speedo pulse - This is the one I want to connect - When no GPS satellite is available it uses direction from a gyro in the unit and this input for speed.


Question is does anyone know where / what colour the Speedo pulse is that would normally go to the ECU?? Obviously i'm after it's closest point to the Stereo.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

FYI Dabs.com was the cheapest place I found the unit.

Amps and Speakers arrive tomorrow so i'll post some pics when all is complete!

[efb]

Cheers, i'd love to see the pics.

Can't answer your question, but would be interested in the outcome

[J_S_G]

I've seen them going for a decent price on EBay a few times, and I think caraudiodirect.co.uk had them on offer at one point, too. Wouldn't have minded one of those - finding it a bit of a pain to manufacture a touchscreen mounting bracket for mine.

Anyway, no idea which the speedo pulse wire is, but what I do know is that my analogue dial (which is in a way digital if you watch how it clicks up/down the speed in increments) is very, very different to the digital readout on occasions. The digital one is always accurate, and sometimes the analogue one matches it... but other times (it changes when starting the car up), it's been up to 10mph (static) out. Thought this might be worth chipping in incase things start to look weird on the GPS at some point...

[powerlord]

ooo. that sounds well cool. bloody expensive though.

think I'm gonna stick with looking for a sony mp3 headunit with a tft panel.. at least I can have piccies and stuff on the panel.

pioneer looks the dogs janglies though.

definately want to see piccies!

stu

[iainsmith]

Been driving it and using it today and it doesn't seem to need the speed sensor input under 'normal' condition s, it see's plenty satellites.

the input and navigation are superior to the unit fitted in my BMW. The best feature is the postcode input.

you can also import your own jpg files as the background to menu's etc!

I can def recommend it as a easy conversion from the standard pioneer head unit supplied by TVR.

Took about 2 hours to fit and wire-up!

Would still like to know about the speedo wire if anyone knows it's colour and whereabouts!!

Thanks

[Naith]

I was discussing the possibility of getting sat nav fitted with my local TVR dealers preferred audio outfit, who said that they were yet to come across a fully motorised head unit which cleared the Tuscan's moulded stereo hood.

Is the AVIC-X1 screen sympathetic to this?

[j_s_g]

Naith said:

I was discussing the possibility of getting sat nav fitted with my local TVR dealers preferred audio outfit, who said that they were yet to come across a fully motorised head unit which cleared the Tuscan's moulded stereo hood. Is the AVIC-X1 screen sympathetic to this?

Having done some initial costs, I should be able to do Windows (XP) based in-car stuff with GPS, DVD, Windows Media (i.e. MP3 jukebox, etc), and a touchscreen, widescreen monitor for less than £700 (possibly considerably less if I get a few people interested) with everything being brand new & warrantied apart from it using a second hand laptop PC (included in the price) to run it on... I'm just working on the mounting bracket for the screen at the moment to fit it above the stereo pod, but it's all looking quite sweet so far... (my car's the prototype for it) I'll hopefully have it all sorted in the next couple of weeks and will be putting details up on the site.

[Naith]

j_s_g said:

Having done some initial costs, I should be able to do Windows (XP) based in-car stuff with GPS, DVD, Windows Media (i.e. MP3 jukebox, etc), and a touchscreen, widescreen monitor for less than £700 (possibly considerably less if I get a few people interested) with everything being brand new & warrantied apart from it using a second hand laptop PC (included in the price) to run it on... I'm just working on the mounting bracket for the screen at the moment to fit it above the stereo pod, but it's all looking quite sweet so far... (my car's the prototype for it) I'll hopefully have it all sorted in the next couple of weeks and will be putting details up on the site.

If you're ever in the big smoke, I'll swap you a beer for a look at the prototype.

[admiral]

j_s_g said:

Naith said: I was discussing the possibility of getting sat nav fitted with my local TVR dealers preferred audio outfit, who said that they were yet to come across a fully motorised head unit which cleared the Tuscan's moulded stereo hood. Is the AVIC-X1 screen sympathetic to this? Having done some initial costs, I should be able to do Windows (XP) based in-car stuff with GPS, DVD, Windows Media (i.e. MP3 jukebox, etc), and a touchscreen, widescreen monitor for less than £700 (possibly considerably less if I get a few people interested) with everything being brand new & warrantied apart from it using a second hand laptop PC (included in the price) to run it on... I'm just working on the mounting bracket for the screen at the moment to fit it above the stereo pod, but it's all looking quite sweet so far... (my car's the prototype for it) I'll hopefully have it all sorted in the next couple of weeks and will be putting details up on the site.

j_s_g, this sounds very interesting - I was thinking of some similar setup myself, so I'd love to hear how you got on.

Have you thought of how you'd reliably manage the startup and shutdown of the PC?

[iainsmith]

The Motorised unit is fine, it comes out a couple of inches in front and the angle can be changed, so all the viewing angles etc are fine.

With respect to 'J_S_G' s idea of a Windows based system i've played around with idea too, I would suggest a Mini-ITX based system (see mini-itx.com for details) as you can get a motherboard with CPU and Dolby 5.1, USB, Firewire, Ethernet, Graphics card etc etc) Best of all they do a 12V supply for it so it's easy to power.

I suppose the biggest problem with using Mr. Gates finest is the time taken to boot up and what happens when it crashes!

[J_S_G]

iainsmith said:

The Motorised unit is fine, it comes out a couple of inches in front and the angle can be changed, so all the viewing angles etc are fine. With respect to 'J_S_G' s idea of a Windows based system i've played around with idea too, I would suggest a Mini-ITX based system (see mini-itx.com for details) as you can get a motherboard with CPU and Dolby 5.1, USB, Firewire, Ethernet, Graphics card etc etc) Best of all they do a 12V supply for it so it's easy to power. I suppose the biggest problem with using Mr. Gates finest is the time taken to boot up and what happens when it crashes!

Mini ITX systems end up costing far more... by the time you've spent:
£120 on motherboard
£50 on case
£40 on DVD drive
£40 on memory
£75 on hard drive

You're talking £325 already. Throw in delivery charges and you're well over £350, before sundries like mice/keyboards needed for setting it up and Windows licenses (assuming you're doing it legally).

With a laptop, you can take it out of the car & into a hotel room to watch DVDs if you're on the road much, can do proper typing/whatever in the car if necessary, costs less, and fits perfectly behind the passenger's seat. I've seen ITX based systems for £1800 or so retail. I'm sure I could halve that at least for people.

Re. Windows based systems, you're right... boot up time is a bit of a problem - but hibernate mode only takes 10secs or so, and standby on a laptop (using the battery) will last for a good couple of days without needing a charge at all. As for reliability - it's my job to design Windows based banking systems that don't fall over - I have no intention of having my car crash I may ditch Windows and go for something embedded in the longer term - an appropriate build of Windows CE, maybe... but one of my top priorities is getting all of the ECU software running on it (Windows only).

[iainsmith]

OK I understand what you are going for now, the laptop wouldn't be a donor 'plumbed' in but rather would be 'docked' while driving? The Mini-ITX would be probably be cheaper as a permenant solution.

The whole concept of PC based systems is interesting, another benefit could be the use of Gatso database linked to the GPS to provide speed camera warnings.

[J_S_G]

iainsmith said:

OK I understand what you are going for now, the laptop wouldn't be a donor 'plumbed' in but rather would be 'docked' while driving? The Mini-ITX would be probably be cheaper as a permenant solution.

I was planning on it being semi-permanent - saving me from taking my shiny home laptop out all the time when I'm going away for nights/weekends, but living in the car. You can get a second hand laptop for less than the cost of an ITX system from the right sources, and it gives you battery backup too. Just think... TVR dies while you're in the middle of nowhere, and you can run the laptop off batteries for long enough to get on PH for the answer!

iainsmith said:

The whole concept of PC based systems is interesting, another benefit could be the use of Gatso database linked to the GPS to provide speed camera warnings.

It sure is an interesting subject - they don't quite "match", and it's really tricky to get it slick, but there are so many useful things you can do. Gatso stuff for one. Then there's the overhead terrain photography of the whole of the UK I have, so I can watch out for deceptive corners, built up areas, etc. before I hit them. Then there's the online RAC database of cars, so I can look up a reg plate whilst driving to see if a 3 series is an "M" as stated, or just a kitted 318. Or if a 355 is actually an MR2 with plastic stuck on (not sure I'd need it for that one!)

[Ribol]

iainsmith said:

Just replaced my standard head unit for a Pioneer AVIC-X1 unit. It's a DVD / Sat Nav etc in a standard single din unit with flip out 7" TFT screen.

Looking at this unit myself, would be perfect for me(Pioneer head unit and changer already fitted).
Anyone found a cheap source for them yet other than Dabs.com?
What do you do if unit goes faulty when you buy from Dabs.com?

Ivan

>> Edited by Ribol on Thursday 6th May 23:39

[powerlord]

yeh, I use a pocketpc with gps at the moment with free database of speed cameras which works pretty good in car.

ok, not as swish, but quick and cheap way of getting in car navigation AND gps based speed camera detection.

total cost: 300 quid (incl. pocket pc)

[J_S_G]

Ribol said:

iainsmith said: Just replaced my standard head unit for a Pioneer AVIC-X1 unit. It's a DVD / Sat Nav etc in a standard single din unit with flip out 7" TFT screen. Looking at this unit myself, would be perfect for me(Pioneer head unit and changer already fitted). Anyone found a cheap source for them yet?

I'll look into it for you - I might be able to get you one for £1450 (new, sealed, with warranty).

[Methanol]

I was looking at the same unit (Pioneer AVIC-X1, very nice unit) but decided to stick with the TOMTOM 3. After weighing it all up, I came to the conclusion that the amount of times I would actually watch a DVD in the car was going to be minimal at best, as for the Sat-Nav you can do a lot more with TOMTOM, POI Warner and POI Handler, and it’s portable. However the idea of the Pioneer still tempts me.

I would like to add that if the Pioneer could do all what the TOMTOM does, I would probably have gone for it.

The cheapest I found it for was for £1499 + £150 for fitting.

www.incarmusic.co.uk/special_offer.asp

Methanol.

[lake]

J S G

Have you looked into solutions like www.dashpc.com/ as they look quite well developed now.

Lake

[powerlord]

also tom tom do a PDA based thing with the software
on it now especially for the car.

Might look better than a pda in a cradle, but still give you pda fucntionality (i.e. no reason why you couldn't use it for net surfing, etc, etc)

[Ribol]

Methanol said:

I would like to add that if the Pioneer could do all what the TOMTOM does, I would probably have gone for it.

What is it that TOMTOM does that you cannot do with the Pioneer then?

Ivan