This is a recurring problem i keep having across android phones and I'm trying to find some kind of solution ....
Ive got a few different car stereos, they all allow usb mass storage mounting to directly read/play songs from the phone.
They all require the same basic things: they expect to see a fat32 partition, they load the first and only the first partition that they can see, and they load every "media" file in the drive, including the nav turn by turn cache, etc.
Im hoping someone can write a program similar to "multi mount sd card" that basically allows you to choose a particular folder where you know all of your music, and only your music, is stored, and present that single folder to the car stereo as a good old fashioned mass storage device with a fat32 partition. Theoretically, id hope to leave the rest of the storage access able to the other programs on the phone, the only thing that would be affected maybe is the music player....which i wouldn't be using. I have different kinds of problems with getting this to work across different phones, an app like this could fix them all at once.
Ive got a lot of different tech experience e but im not a dev by any stretch. Ive tried a lot and my current issue is card order, stereo is seeing the internal card but my music is on external and it refuses to look past the first partition.
Anyone got any ideas? Ive got a razr (vzw) on the 215 leak.
Just wondering, I have a few decks in my cars and trucks also... Why do you plug your phone into the deck? I just recently got a Pioneer deh-6400bt for 149$ that allows me to seamlessly use Bluetooth to play music and also to talk with for hands free since its technically illegal to talk on the phone in Oregon....gr... anyways, And another point almost all decks that I have used, kenwood, alpine, pioneer, don't push enough power through the USB to make it worth your while to plug your phone in while using it. And all of those decks that had USB input also had a AUX input in the front.
he probably wants to use the deck to control the music, which can't be done with the aux cable
That is true... Have to tell you though.. BT is the shizzz though.. get in your rig and start it up... connects to phone and continues streaming where it left off and having the hands free is awesome
1. I actually have the pioneer deh-p6200bt in one of my cars - and it doesn't stream bluetooth audio, only phone functions. My other vehicle has a deck which can stream BT audio, and it's great for some things, like pandora, but with my internal music collection the audio quality is just not up to par, it's an obvious weak link.
2. The USB port charges at standard USB rates. It isn't a quick charge but it's certainly enough to make things worthwhile. I've found that on extended, 6-10 hour drives, running pandora, wifi tether, nav, torque and leaving the screen on constantly, yes, it can discharge to the point where it shuts off. I was running this configuration while driving for a touring band once. More often, however, I'm not using everything at once, and i turn the screen off just because I don't always need it. It seems that I can run pandora, nav, torque, and have the phone still actually charge, it was serving wifi tether to the rest of the van that caused the phone to go over the edge and actually pull more power than it wAas getting in. Moreover, the bigger problem I wind up having is that phones will actually stop charging themselves from overheating (sun heat through windshield, and/or just to much load on the phones systems at once), at which point the amperage is irrelevant. In fact this may have been the ONLY problem I was having, while driving I couldn't pay enough attention to the phone to figure out much other than "oh hell it shut off cause its cooking itself".
3. Yes, I want control over tracks from front of deck, and USB is THE most complete way to do that, especially in the one car I have where i have steering wheel controls. I can search for specific tracks from the wheel, as well as call up any phone functions, which is more than the BT side would be able to do - in BT audio mode my systems seem to only be able to start/pause and track forward/reverse. Having hardware buttons that handle both phone and music leaves the screen of the device free for torque or maps.
4. On the audio quality note, if you're playing digital files stored on the device, nothing beats using the stereo to play them via USB, because the deck itself is the actual computer doing the conversion and the D/A converters in the deck should theoretically be nicer than anything in a cell phone. Its the cleanest path one could have.
For things like pandora, this isn't always possible, and in that case the next best option would be a toss up between BT and the 3.5mm jack, based on your ears which is cleaner. in absolutely ideal scenarios, where BT on the deck supports the more recent high quality a2dp codecs, BT can sound as good or better than the cable. A2DP audio isn't exactly this clear cut though, as the blanket of A2DP doesn't specify which codecs are supported, and the better ones are a more recent thing. I'll say that the cell phones have been good about this, it's more that the decks themselves don't always have the newer codecs. And in addition to that, there's still the matter of settings within either device, such at bitpool on the phone, that can have an effect on the sound. Unfortunately, my setup is such that only one deck I have does actual BT streaming, and while nice for some things definitely doesn't sound as good as when it is cabled or using USB directly.
The cable has the disadvantage of running through multiple conversions - the phone goes from D to A through it's own, lower quality converter, the stereo gets that signal as A, changes it to D in order to apply EQ/etc, then back to A as it goes down to the amps. It's generally unnecessary to do something like this if one can avoid it.
There is a third option, but this is very rare and just sort of coming to market - if you happen to have an in car video system with an HDMI input, it will send the streaming audio info as a pure digital signal and as with USB the radios D/A converters will be the units making the actual sound and thus being just as clean. An example of a unit like this is the Pioneer SPh-da100 (I could be wrong on model number), AKA the "appradio2". These are rare, and the least expensive version of this I've found is around 300-350 bucks. One thing I don't like about the appradio is that it seems to have only 2 sets of preamp outs....other than that, it looks like an amazing solution for at least one of my problems!
Basically.... sorry about the confused ramblings. I'm still trying to figure this out. The funny thing is - the phone presents the two storages, internal and external, and both of my radios make the connection - however one radio, a Dual unit, actually sees the external partition first and works fine, while the pioneer radio actually sees the internal first and it gives me nothing! the third vehicle I have, I actually am just using the 3.5mm in for sheer simplicity, it's an old crappy car that has no use for such a nice setup and the moto car dock with the combo usb/audio cable is actually a perfect fit for it. For the other cars, the moto car dock actually sucks, because it won't pass USB data, but that's another issue for another thread. Most likely I'm gonna gut it's frame and insert a straight through USB data cable for it.......
But I still need some way to make the phone consistently present the right info, all the time, every time!
Bump......
Anyone? Theres got to be someone else out there as frustrated by this as I am.....
Well, you're not the only one. I've running a Kenwood deck, on my Razr prior to the ICS update, I got it to work every time, since then...it's like rolling a die and trying to get lucky 7. Something in the update must have disabled the order of recognition of partitions coming up. I was able to get it to work...*once*. I've read that leaving dev/debug mode on some devices cause enough of a timing delay to let the deck recognize the sdcard, but this didn't work for me. There's actually a kenwood app that's supposed to help with all this but of course for me it does nothing. You might want to try the debug mode thing - I've read for some people that worked. I just want a way to configure the phone to *only* mount the sdcard drive when setup as a usb mass storage device. I'm assuming this is the problem, the internal storage confusing the deck.
It's been very frustrating...
Related
I would like to create a custom rom for the fascinate to use as a head unit in my car. Due to financial reasons I now have a banned esn. so i am now going to try to go this route with it. I am thinking of using the app Car Home as a home replacement. I don't need a modem except for wifi maybe. I want to get rid of sms, mms, browser, gmail, dialer, contacts, etc... Pretty much all i want to do is have a core android operating system that can play videos, music, maybe some games via blue tooth controller, gps (i know i will have to use an app with down loadable maps), and anything else that might be useful in a car. The concept is to replace the head unit, not be an addition. any thoughts or help on this would be greatly appreciated. I am thinking of basing it on this rom http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=919864 of course with JTs permission.
Please post your opinions of this. Any feedback is welcome. Any help is definitely welcome.
I know you're looking for help with the ROM, but just wanted to bring up some things you'll want to consider with the integration into the car.
First, you will need an external amplifier to power the speakers. The headphone jack doesn't have enough power to driver real speakers. The headphone jack also only has Left and Right, so you could control balance but won't be able to control fade with the phone. You would need something external if you would want that.
Also, you will probably want some way to trigger the phone to know that the vehicle is on. If you powered the phone constantly, I am not sure how you would accomplish this. In this case, you might need to stop/start the music manually and lock/unlock the screen each time you leave/enter the vehicle.
I was thinking you might want to tie phone charging to vehicle ignition to tell the phone that the vehicle is on. Don't directly tie the vehicle ignition line (12V) to the USB port on the phone (5V) - you will damage your phone. I have heard good things about Tasker (I haven't personally used it), but it makes me think you could trigger music playing based on charging state. When the charger comes on, the music would start. When the charger goes off, the music would stop, and the screen would turn off/lock (assuming "Stay Awake While Plugged In" is selected). The one downside to this is that if you leave your vehicle for a long time (i.e. - vacation), the phone will die and you will have to charge it up for a while before it will work again.
I really like the idea you're going for. Best of luck with it.
3.5mm plug to dual rca on the amp, most all aftermarket amps have L/R rca speaker inputs, oem may just be wires I'm not sure, I'd take a car charger for your phone apart and hardwire the two leads in it to 12v pos and neg...fairly straightforward, actually a pretty good idea, tuning may be a whole other aspect, you need probably at minimum 1.5v rca input for decent sound, guessing a headphone jack comes nowhere near that (measure with multimeter on full volume)...I would make sure you have voodoo sound and use analog volume om the app at 0db (or as high for little distortion)...keep us updated, you're going to have to do a little Google research
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App
Over on the eris forums cookieman made a super stripped down mp3 player rom for the eris. Maybe you csn talk with him a bit to get you started.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=979808
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I'd definitely recommend tasker to help automate some functions. I use it for multiple different things, including one that detects when my Bluetooth is connected along with 3.5 jack and power. I have that activate a custom state for my phone that turns on the GPS, sets the display to not turn off and other misc tasks associated with what I want the phone to do while in the car.
Does anyone have any experience/recommendations for an Android-based car stereo head unit? My old stereo has just died, so I am interested in what people think of the currently available ones. I have a double din space.
eBay seems to have several available that are similar to this: http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/15/ca-fi-is-an-aftermarket-android-car-stereo-that-wont-fit-in-you/
There are ones where the Android part is essentially a separate tablet (probably not what I'm after, judging by the videos) http://www.erisin.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=253
Parrot make this single-din stereo: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Parrot-Aste...?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1343930713&sr=1-24
There are no doubt many others too. Prices seem to be in the £200 - £280 range which is about my limit.
Nobody has any experience of these or opinions at all?
I think I'm leaning towards the Parrot as it's rootable, and the single-din size is more likely to fit whatever car I get after my current one.
Bump for this thread. I just recently thought about getting into one of these units too, my only concern is how "locked down" they would be in terms of getting rid of their default launchers and crap they have. I basically want a way to just have android by itself running on the car - I can get apps for just about everything else. Ideally I want a clone of my phone on the car that would sync with my phone. Or better yet, simply a way to have a "remote display" for my phone. That way, anything I'm doing on the car side of things would be the same on my phone, like a received email, new internet bookmark, or something like that.
~T.J.
I just picked up a "Road Cyberman" from China Jiaho (actually they call it something else, but it's the same as Chinavasion's Road Cyberman, except $100 cheaper).
It's running Gingerbread 2.3.5 and proving difficult to root. No adb on the usb (even with debug option), no google apps (although I found some apks that sort of work) and no adb wireless available.
The devices works fine, but I would like to have a little bit more control over it.
I've tried Gingerbreak and the other get root apks, but no luck so far.
Yeah, I have seen a lot of those units, but I kind of changed my mind. I have recently been looking into doing something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Q-UXDi3dm3U
I have been following that company for a while, and they just recently released that video and are taking pre-orders for the new board. My biggest hold up at this point is that I would like to use a single DIN stereo for the "amp" by running the audio from their device into the aux input of my existing stereo. I need to find room to mount both the double DIN screen and a custom spot for the single DIN stereo I already have. I would then have the choice of using the stereo without plugging in the phone if I didn't want to for whatever reason. Alternatively, if I can find a good FM tuner app for my phone and a good customizable dock mode, I could eliminate the stock stereo and just run the inputs into a standard automotive 4 channel amp. This of course means you get nothing for a car stereo unless you connect the phone though, unlike the other plan.
Of course, another thought I had was getting a used double DIN touch screen DVD player and using their interface board to convert it to run the Android screen through it, then run the audio straight into the aux input of the touch screen DVD player. That way you have the ability to use the system "as is" out of the box, OR run the Android device through the screen. I think this is the best option, but it also takes the most money since you have the expense of the used double DIN touch screen unit first. I also wonder about picture quality and touch screen sensitivity with the built in touch screens on those units.
Anyway, just food for thought!
~T.J.
EDIT: One of the other hold ups is the calling. I would like to use an external mic and have audio come through the car speakers, currently using that board you are still calling through the device, thus you would need a Bluetooth headset from my understanding. I would like to avoid that if possible also. This is another good reason to go with the double DIN stereo since some of those support Bluetooth calling already and you could probably make/receive calls that way completely hands free.
EDIT #2: If you were into car monitoring and such also, you could easily get a bluetooth OBD interface and run the software on the phone (such as torque) so you could display live data from your car on your dash also. Something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay-ZvTn3fLo&t=45s
I picked up one of these after my buddy sent me this thread. It's got the power, but needs a root bad. Wish I knew how to find root for an Android device.
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17228
Any idea if this would work?
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Hifimediy-Sa...n_0&hash=item20cb2a3799&_uhb=1#ht_1314wt_1271
if combined with this:
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Usb-type-A-f...s=63&clkid=4859388797714287148#ht_1424wt_1037
And this:
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Micro-USB-ha...ies&hash=item2eb8f6c584&_uhb=1#ht_4275wt_1037
I'm trying to make a one-connection, more or less universal, high quality audio and charger set up for my truck. Since the DAC is USB powered i'm not sure where the power would come from in this case. The phone or that adapter. I just like the simplicity of this unit for what i am doing (it's all going in my dash).
EDIT: I took the plunge and ordered a bunch of bits that SHOULD work (a UCA202 was cheaper, so ordered it). I'll take pics and document the setup and installation, post it all when its ready. It'll take a few weeks for the stuff to get here.
What are you trying to do? Give yourself an entertainment centre in your truck?
What I have done in my truck is use a Bluetooth stereo for streaming all audio from my HTC. If I were to install one HDMI screen I could have HD TV.
For charging, I just use a USB adapter in the cigarette lighter. Make sure you get one capable of outputting 1A or more, and also fools the phone into thinking it's connected to the mains.
When at a festival the other year, I used the tailgate as a makeshift bar, and the phone was streaming music over Bluetooth. I also had the stereo remote to control the volume, and used the air conditioning to chill some drinks. Although, will use a mini fridge next time as I used a shed loads of Diesel
I have a pioneer head ( http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Car/CD-Receivers/FH-P8000BT ) and an iBolt cradle. What I was hoping for was to use USB to provide power and use a DAC to get better sound quality from the tunes that I get over bluetooth. This deck also has an auxiliary in on the back, but trying to avoid using the amped headphone out. I went with this deck because of the connection options and didn't care about touch screens. That's what my HOX+ or Nexus 7 are for. So having a single USB connection for everything would be great. Pretty much the only thing that iFail devices have on us.
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Here is my start. I didn't get the DAC yet, and I need to wait for USB OTG with Charging before I can, but the set up is ready for it!
Sure looks good, but I'm unsure how the sound quality will be, I'm not sure how the DAC works by accessing the USB.. Does it just see it as a USB storage device? If you're playing MP3's anyway, why not just stream over Bluetooth. Once the track is digital, Idon't think that you would want to convert to analogue unless it's playing it directly.
Are your MP3's a decent bit-rate? I have never had an issue with MP3's over Bluetooth. I normally download weekly music podcasts and stream those.
I'm gonna chime in hear and say just bought the pioneer Afh x5500, and although my EVO LTE streams spotify and stock music player over Bluetooth, it does not send track info whatsoever. My note 2 did but, I prefer the EVO. So, I'm waiting for the 8500 to come in now because it has hdmi input onboard so it should be able to take hdmi to mhl and then perform correctly. As well as apradio functions. Anyone have any experience with this? Or, does anyone know how to get Bluetooth to stream song/album info to the head unit?
Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2
One of the #1 reasons I got the HOX+ was the 64GB storage for my FLAC collection. Originally this concept I started while I had the Galaxy S3, which with a kernel and CM 10 can enable the DAC output while allowing the device to still recieve the charge.
That said, the deck you mentioned with HDMI might just do the trick too. And it really would be universal. Hmm.... I like this deck (It was old when I got it) because I don't really care for touch/dvd in my dash. This has a big rotary control knob, and I even have the lights turn off at night so I just control everything from the phone (except Volume). But i'll look into the one you suggest.
Anyway. This set up will do the trick for now. I hard wired the charger and AUX into the stereo harness so it looks clean and stock. I doubt I'll really tell much of difference anyway without the DAC at this point. I'm not getting any line noise like I thought I might.
Well, ill write back after I get the new deck. I'm really hoping for all functions or ill have to figure something else out...
Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2
OP, any update on whether the DAC and cable worked with the HOX+?
I'm interested in getting a DAC to work with my high impedance in ear monitors. The driver in the phone doesn't have enough output power to adequately drive them.
BT is not an option otherwise such a question would not be needed. Yes, an aux cable can be used but that is not ideal but if it is the only option, it will have to do
The goal is to be able to mount the phone as mass-storage and control the tracks with the head unit rather than the device itself. The phone is rooted but running stock 4.2.2 and after some digging around, I am at the point of asking if anyone has attempted this and was able to achieve it?
The stereo it will be connecting to is an older sony cdx unit and it claims to support both mass storage and iDevices...thumb drives work just fine so the issue is with setting the phone up correctly.
If the internal storage is not possible to control, leveraging the media found on the sd card is 100% awesome too.
So if someone can point me in the direction of some help, I would really appreciate it!
I have done this myself on my kenwood as it has a usb port on the head unit, problem is it wont play just music itll also play your ringtones as well. Controlling them from the phone and using a 3.5mm cable worked the best in my opinion. Although I havent tried this with my gs4 thats how it worked on my droid x and with that minor annoyance I went back to using the 3.5mm option. Your unit could function differently though but thats how my experience was. I think when I get home later im going to give it another go and see how it works out.
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Im a bit lost as to what my best option is for a in car solution.
Im getting a car with a native double din slot. Which has started this all off for me again. As id quite like to have a double din that can work with my phone or something.
Ive got a Note 3. A Pioneer 80PRS, which sounds great, 3 pre outs, which i use all of. Its more of a sound quality unit, i generally listen to music on hard drive, or via my phone, which is usually podcasts, radio apps, soundcloud, mixcloud etc.
First thoughts were (ruled it out last time) something like AppRadio, but seems still very limited interfacing. ARLiberator seems to help, but has Knox issues? And then still leaves me weighing up sound quality, unless ARLiberator works on newer AVH-X8500BT or something with 3 pre outs.
Second thoughts, were a tablet in car. Which i know very little about. Seems you can either buy all the stuff to make that the actual headunit, like signal to amps etc.
Or have headunit behind, connected by bluetooth i assume? Which runs rest of system as usual ?
Is there anyway to have a tablet basically mirror my phone, just be a second screen if you like. Rather than having 2 devices, with obviously the ohone having everything i want to use on it, and worrying about trying to get it onto the tablet.
Whats my best option, to get maximum sound quality, using 3 rcas, 2 amps. Or should i stop worrying about that, and drop down to 2 rcas ? Seeing as bluetooth is lowering my quality. No idea how much vs 2 or 3 pre outs.
To also have maximum intergration and functionality.
Thanks