No issues with voice control but I'll qualify that. I gave up on just saying "Hey Google" as it doesn't typically work well when music is playing. When I touch the mic button that I added, the music mutes and no issues with voice recognition.

Second qualifier is that I've tested with the car running, my car's in storage so I don't know if road noise will impact it. I won't know that until spring.

I haven't determined a final location for my mic yet either btw so once you find the optimal location, please post. right now I'm thinking next to the mode button.

 

I test there too, just behind the ash tray seems a perfect spot from an installation point of view, unfortunately it didn't work well on the move. I've only got a very cheap mic so wondering whether to invest in a better microphone to give that a go.

If anyone has any thoughts on a good in car microphone I'd love to know.

Cheers.

 

You might try buying another mic as a donor, cut the mic off, strip the wires and connect at IP057/4 (Red wire) and IP057/5 (Green Wire) at the IAM. There are two plugs @ the IAM. IP057 is the larger of the two. Those are the two microphone wires going into the IAM. The IAM is directly below the head unit.
There is a third wire (WHITE @ IP057/6) which is the screen or shield wire. I would ignore for now.

Plug the mic's 3.5mm connector into your O-Droid and then to the vehicle's red (POS) and Green (NEG) just to test if it works.

If successful, test it out with the car running to see if the lack of shielding on you newly added wire causes interference.
If still successful, test using the phone to see if it receives any interference.

Mic wires are extremely thin. I would test without soldering first of course. Something like this should work.



EDIT: I don't know if this will work as there's no voice command in the XK. So my theory is that you'd have to manually trigger the mic by touching the mic soft button. Really nothing more than a SWAG on my part.

The potential downside perhaps is that by integrating the O-Droid mic line-in with the vehicle's mic, it would turn the XK phone mic into an "always listening" mode and again, I have no idea on the impact to phone usage. Example: If the mic becomes always listening and you get a call, is everything that's said on that call being perceived by the O-Droid as instructions, requests? If so, then you'd need to add an on/off in line switch between the mic and the O'Droid. Just some mental floss at this point.

 

I love the idea of using the OEM mic so will definitely investigate this. Thanks again. I'm waiting on stock for the UTC and only want to have the screen out once if at all possible so might wait for that.

You may find this of interest. There are apps on the Play store that route phone audio to BT mono. I had a quick go and was able to get Odroid audio playing to the XKR phone output. Worked well with nav voice directions cutting in like they were phone calls, app 'hung up' again after.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d....bedoig.BTmono

It does route all media to mono but there might be a better app or maybe tasker to only route from nav stream.

Just though it was interesting

 

So your Odroid is tethered to your phone?

My carrier doesn't allow tethering so I'll just toggle to the XK's BT phone connectivity for phone calls.

 

Yes. I'm using this app https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...xy.trial&hl=en (no affiliation) which is an AA head unit port and runs on Android.

This then acts exactly like OEM AA. You can connect your phone either by USB (to avoid tethering restrictions) or create a hotspot on your phone and have the Odroid, running the Headunit Reloaded app, tethered to that. Either way you end up with OEM AA. I'm probably going to go with the tethering option as it's one less wire to route and I like the idea of not having to plug my phone into USB every journey.

 

OK to the original OP's question and beyond, I purchased a Chromecast dongle and a USB-C OTG cable to test for him. The install is the same as I've previously described but instead of installing an android media box, you simply plug in a Chromecast dongle.

CONS:
1) Mirroring - Using google home with Chromecast worked fine though I found it to be a PIA to boot up and cast every time I get in the car. More practical for longer trips.
2) To simply display your phone's home screen on the head unit is of no value to me.
3) The phone screen displayed to the very edges of the head unit and perhaps beyond a bit. This is likely due to the high def of the phone vs the 800x480 pixels of the head unit. In order to shrink the screen, you'd need a launcher like Apex launcher which allows you to shrink the screen on your phone 1% at a time. I think 95% display would likely work.

PROS:
1) If you launch Torque Pro, you can display your temp and voltage gauges on the head unit.

Does it work with the universal touch screen controller?
Yes sort of - you plug the UTC USB cable into the OTG to your phone and there is touch functionality.

CONS:
1) Calibration - I didn't spend much time attempting to calibrate the screen. Touch worked pretty good for scrolling, but not so much for pressing in a specific spot on the screen.

The UTC from Car-solutions.com is designed for screens 800x480 or less so I think connecting it to the high resolution phone causes this problem. Again, using the Apex Launcher, you can adjust screen resolution so that could help. I didn't try this test.

2) When connected to the phone, you can't charge as there's only a single port and it doesn't charge while connected to the UTC.

PROS:
1) If you can solve the calibration issue using Apex launcher and then launch Android auto, you will have full integration of music, phone and maps.
2) Google maps - Full functionality displayed on the head unit, and you can drag the map north, south, east and west:-)
3) You can use other car launchers too - you're not limited to Android Auto.
4) For those intimidated or just don't want to learn how to use an Android box, Chromecast is plug and play.

CONCLUSION:
Too kludgy for me. You can probably get it to work smoothly using Apex Launcher to adjust screen size and resolution, but I like my setup. Sorry I couldn't commit any more time to it. Chromecast is being returned to Best Buy today.

 

Thanks so much for testing this for me Sean. I really do appreciate it. Having got pretty far, your help, with my Odroid I agree that it's the better solution, more feature rich and stable too I think.

All good fun though these experiments (especially when Amazon will just take all the unwanted kit back!)

Thanks again,
Andrew.

 

You're welcome. If all anyone wants to do is mirror their phone on to the head unit, the Chromecast dongle is cheap and easy.

 

Wanted to update the forum since I've been purchasing the components to have android work via GVIF. Unfortunately, 2 critical components (the touch controller and the switch board) are no longer available. I tried to find comparable boards from different suppliers that can work with Linux (android), but was unsuccessful.

I reached out to Car Solutions, since the touch screen controller and switch board have not been in stock for almost 1 year. Car Solutions designed these boards in house... so they are not duplicated through digi-key or mouser, or ali-express, or similar. Gregory, the engineer at car-solutions, said that the manufacturer of both boards estimates 2 more months until they are ready for delivery. He said that they've ordered a quantity of boards to satisfy everyone on the waiting list and have enough to continue to fill orders for quite some time.

So, if anyone has been wanting to do this and couldn't because of lack of components, it sounds like late September is the date to watch out for. It's unfortunate that there seems to be only 1 company that makes both boards that are required to make this solution work. I'll keep checking in with CS every few weeks and provide an update when these boards are back in stock.

 

Sean, I wanted to confirm that the 4 conductor harness from the UTC to the switch board is correct in this image. I have it oriented as you show, but wanted to confirm before powering everything on.

I plan to connect the ground wire on the switch board to the touch screen chassis, in a similar fashion to the UTC. I will run the control wire (from switch board POS terminal) and ACC wire to the trunk, along side the USB cable, 'magic button' cable, and remote cable.

The ribbon cable going into the touch screen was not long enough to pull outside the chassis... you show a white cable with blue end going into the splitter board, so I assume you bought a ribbon cable coupling or similar?

Thanks... just trying to clarify some small details that your videos and thread don't explain. I'm in the home stretch. Have had the android box up and running being control via air mouse/remote with minimal issues for the last week.

 

Hey TraxtarXKR. Yes I bought ribbons - 4 Pin Flexible Flat Cable FFC 0.5mm Pitch 150mm AWM 20624 80C 60V VW-1.

Yes the set up in the pic is correct.
Consider powering your box using the SEL Out AV1 yellow line to the positive on the touch out. THat's what I ultimately did. Gray in the pic was for testing as it was easier to just ground it while testing. When AV1 is selected, the yellow feeds power. See the GVIF manual. I presume you'll always have it on AV1.

 

I guess powering off ACC is good as well. I have an 07 and originally used the rear sel out wire to power a back up camera until Cambo provided us with an option to retrofit a camera without the need to touch the GVIF selector button. So I had 2 video feeds at the time - AV1 Sel out for the android and rear sel out for the camera. This is now irelevant. But now you know it's a power source:-)

 

I could not source a 0.5mm pitch 4-conductor extension connector to lengthen the amber touch ribbon cable from the screen, so I just left that board inside the chassis. If you want to link to what coupling connector you bought, please do.

The yellow AV1 trigger wire would be fine to power the android box. It looks like 20AWG wire, which is rated for 11A chassis current. I personally like a 20% safety factor in my wiring.

That being said, I've already created a wiring harness with a 4 conductor 18AWG shielded cable I had lying around, using the connector in the trunk side compartment. 2 of the conductors in my harness cable are wired to the ACC + line at the jaguar connector, and the other two are ground on the same circuit. I had no need for constant 12V power so it's left open. Since my android box uses a 12v 2A DC power supply, I just had to get a step up/down regulator that puts out a constant 12V 2A+ so the components in the android box wouldn't get stressed.

Of those two ACC lines, one goes to the input of the regulator, and the other goes to the GVIF. Ground wires are the same.

In hindsight, I do wish I had purchased something with more amperage for future proofing, but it should be fine as components usually only get more efficient. If I bought a step up/down regulator with something like 5A output, I could have run the GVIF AND the android box from it for cleaner power, to further reduce the chance of noise in the system.


The output wires of that box are soldered to stripped conductors on a 12V power supply lead I had lying around which plug directly into the android box, so I kept the original Beelink power supply untouched, and basically 'built' my own.

I have a fuse splitter that plugs into the power-in line in for the GVIF, that is also fused, which will run to the POS terminal on the splitter board.


I do see a bit of banding on the display currently, but really only notice it when the display is showing a lot of white. Text can get blown out, and contrast isn't great for some colors and details. I will probably add a ferrite core to the USB cable going into the HDMI to RCA converter. My android box also has a 3.5mm RCA port that I haven't investigated. If this works to eliminate the need for an HDMI converter, even better.

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/FFC-FPC-Fle...r=553166969617

but inside works too

 

Right, that's the cable. Easy to find.

How did you splice that cable onto the amber touchscreen cable that plugs into the board? You need to extend the OEM cable because it's not long enough to go outside the chassis, so there must be something like this you bought... unless I'm missing something?

 

Oh sorry, yes it's something like that but was enclosed but doesn't really need to be.

 

Do you have a part number from digi key or similar?

 

Does this not work as a connector? Came with the UTC. Not what I used though. Edit: disregard. I see that it doesn't.

 

These last ten posts to my ears have been "blahblahblahblahblahblah". I don't comprehend stuff nearly as well as I did four decades ago.