Replacing bose head unit with nexus 7
 

OK. I know I'm new to 8s but I really hate the Bose unit. I've decided to put my nexus 7 units place. Ordered stage 1 last night will be here tomorrow and I've got everything covered but hands free. Does anyone have any ideas?

So far I am using a Timur's ogt kernel to charge and host.

A USB DAC will provide audio out to the PAC R4 that will go to the Bose amp. The PAC R4 will allow me to use a joycon steering wheel to us b controller to use built in controls. I'm going to mount a 4 port USB hub under the unit to plug in keyboards mice phones and controllers and have 3 free units in the back for obd2 etc. Transister controlled by ignition should wake and sleep easily enough, I just can't figure out hands free. Apparently the bluetooth stack on the nexus 7 does not support a2dp in host mode...I'll post pics but if anyone has any ideas please for the love of all that is naturally aspirated and rotary let me know.

Mike

Oh and its a 2011 R3. Don't know if it will make a difference or not but prob belongs in series Ii. And when I get done I will make the DIY. You really can't beat it for less than 500 bucks.

After hours of searching I don't think I'm going to make any progress on the BT hack until the parrot asteroid unit source is available so I started looking elsewhere. I think taking an old BT headset and connecting it to the PAC unit via a y connector (with a diode placed on each side) and then two transisters controlled by the notification light should work. Then set an event so that whenever tablet talk dials the notification light will be enabled (sending the audio coming out of the DAC to ground (or shutting off a second transister more likely and simultaneously activating a transister pushing audio to from the disassembled BT headset to the PAC unit and to the amp.

The biggest advantage is if I splurge for a nice headset I should be able to get some nice noise canceling out of it to get rid of the road noise which people I call would appreciate. The downside is that... This is more than I wanted to do. Plus I now have to power a second Bluetooth headset.

Does anyone have a more elegant solution? If not I might just put it all on some PCB and copy the run pattern so you can etch your own. That would be the 1200 head unit functionality (with no need to override motion sensing) for less than 500 (400 if you can find a cheap nexus 7)


Mike

Well I have ended my pursuit of an in dash tablet. I did get it hooked up and it worked, I'll scan and post my schematics for the Bluetooth work around but while I was up at best buy getting one more USB hub I saw

Pioneer - AppRadio 2 Apple® iPhone® 4/4S; iPod® Touch; select Android® devices-Ready In-Dash Receiver - SPH-DA100 - Best Buy

The price tag was 279 instead of 499. Turns out the tag should have been taken down in MARCH. After a little debate I walked out with this and purchased ar liberator. I can control my phone with no restrictions now.

I also found

Tronsmart T428 Quad Core Mini PC Android 4.2 Rockchip RK3188 2G DDR3 Wifi/BT TV BOX - GeekBuying.com

I ordered it for 100.

Throw in my adapters and I have an in dash quad core tablet with 2 gigs of ram, USB and sd card, WiFi and can tether it to my phone.. No crazy devices no permenantly giving up my tablet... And i can upgrade the tablet whenever i want. The tablet in dash is good but this is great. Will post pics.


Mike

How did you power the Bose amp without the headunit installed? Is audio signal enough to power it?

I tested it and had no problems. Putting sound out of the USB DAC I just split up the wires. The amp just needed a remote turn on which I just connected to the acc that would normally go to the head unit.

The concept would have worked but the circuit to enable Bluetooth was going to be crazy and the app radio 2 hack is really impressive. I'll post a vid/pics of it.

I dinged the center console piece above the ashtray level. Anyone know where to buy that? The one that goes around the center speaker and down to the bottom?

Mikr

Looking forward to a video of this. I have the appradio2 with a jailbreaked iPhone connected to it. Gonna swap the iPhone for an Android phone tomorrow. But your idea is kinda smart :)

Cant wait to see pics/video. I'm gonna do something similar very soon but I'm waiting for details on the new Nexus 7. Hopefully they talk about it at Google I/O this week.

Have you considered using the GROM CAR2PC box? It should present a virtual COM port if you can find an android kernel driver for it (it's in my honeycomb thread). It should should then just be a matter of opening it as a stream (worst can in JNI) and implementing the protocol yourself.

It's a very simple protocol. I did it in VB.NET some time ago when I ran a windows carpc.

Otherwise your best bet is a BT connection to a GROM IDP3 or similar box with a bluetooth adapter. That's how I've been driving my N73G.

Both of these options require preserving the stock HU though. I suspect that's not the route you want to go.

This was a fun exercise but with the appradio2 available it really doesn't make sense. It is much cleaner with the appradio2 than you would be able to make this and by the time you get everything you need to do for this you have spent quite a bit of money. I even got to set this up and test it and it worked with only a few odd circumstances but after having the appradio 2 set up I wouldn't do the nexus 7 in the dash.

I've already seen details for new one I think. I don't remember being impressed.

Mike

Yeah, I wanted to eliminate the head unit all together. What I had done essentially provided an auto sensing switch for the bluetooth. I had some issues maintaining the bluetooth to the amp signal during times that I wasn't talking but I think I had found a way to deal with it using capacitors.

Mike