Parrot Asteroid Smart
 

Had the opportunity to install the new Parrot Asteroid Smart in a customer's car today. Completely different operating system from anything we're used to. 4...yes FOUR... USB inputs. Built-in WiFi and capable of accepting 3G/4G USB dongles. On-screen navigation with the help of your phone. SD card slot. Bluetooth (which is what made Parrot famous). And...I haven't quite figured this out yet... but apparently the Asteroid and the Android operating system play very nice together. As in maybe you can flash custom Android stuff to your Asteroid? Parrot has a link to an Android development section right on there product page.

Might be something worth looking for those planning on installing a double-din.:)

silly goose, the Asteroid is running the android OS

Yeah I thought it might be. But it didn't really look like anything I'd seen before. And I thought they'd be bragging about it all over their page for sure!

Bump,

Any updates on this product, or any of the Parrot items. Looks attractive, kind of a different way, but I am concerned with Android 2.3...

Although, WAZE and TORQUE, running in the dash, are kind of interesting. But, I cannot tell if it has a radio.

Thoughts?

Hey 04Green,

I've had this system since last spring and I gotta tell you...it's amazing! It does have a radio. And you can root it so that you can download anything you want from the actual GooglePlay market app. I have Netflix running, Waze, Spotify...and if you have the Bose speakers, this system will make it sound amazing! I was gonna get a sub but I do't even need that now. Everyone says it sounds amazing. I was worried that it's running Android 2.3 but it's not bad at all. And the head unit fits nice with the Metra kit and looks completely stock. Nothing out of place at all. Trust me, you will not regret buying this head unit at all.

Thanks,

Did you get the steering wheel control module and back up camera as well?

When you rooted, did you stay with 2.3, or update android?

I got the Metra one, not the Parrot Unika. I haven't yet hooked it up since I haven't had time since I got the unit. Well, I have but the weather hasn't been so great lately. I was actually gonna do it today but I had some errands to run. I will probably do it tomorrow and give you feedback about it.

When I rooted, I didn't update to a later android system. All I did was update to 2.3.3 (I think that's what it was) which Parrot released a while back. Works just fine for me. Maybe there's a way you can update to a newer android version but I haven't looked into that.

Thanks, looking forward to hearing how it went. I likely have a few months of work before I can do this.

So, I finally got to installing the steering wheel controls. The install was a breeze; just splicing 3 or 4 wires. All the buttons are recognized by the Asteroid Smart except for the mute button (you can't set "mute" functionality to the steering wheel control) so I just manually set it to "Play/Pause" with one tap and "Push-To-Talk (PTT)" with a long press (Instructions to do this are provided on the manual from the Metra kit). Works great. I realized that the Play/Pause functionality now works as Mute on the radio but Play/Pause when playing music on bluetooth.

One thing I noticed though that's really bothering me is that if I have the Spotify app installed on the Smart and I'm playing music from my Music app on my phone through Bluetooth (which I do like 90% of the time) and I press the "Play Next/Previous" buttons on the steering wheel, it automatically opens my Spotify app on the Smart and starts playing music from there. With the Spotify app on the Smart uninstalled the buttons work fine.