Android RNS-E

docurley

docurley

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Well I took the plunge and splashed out on a new Android radio which looks like the stock unit and at $386.90 delivered I thinks it's a good price mind you the TAX man will want their pound of flesh when it arrives.

Should have it within the week and I can't wait as I hate the stock unit, it's like something from the dark ages in my book.

The option for this unit are eminence compared to the stock RNS-E:
touch screen
wifi
3G
Loads of Apps Torque being one of them
verity of different navigation:Sygic, IGO, TomTom, Route66,Google map and so on
1080p playback (not so important to me)
I can even connect a 1TB drive to it so music and videos are almost limitless
Oh and CANBUS

Once it arrives I will feed back how good it is once I have it installed.

http://www.alibaba.com/product-deta...0257939675.html?spm=a2700.7724838.35.1.MzZqPI



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I wish you luck, get ready for low volume from rear speakers & poor radio reception!!

I know as Iv'e just purchased a similar unit.
 
john777: 2502531 said:
I wish you luck, get ready for low volume from rear speakers & poor radio reception!!

I know as Iv'e just purchased a similar unit.
Click to expand...
I already have a solution for the speakers and the arial so hopefully all good but I will post my results when it arrives.
 
I have ordered these to deal with the rear speaker issue PAC SNI-35.

The arial issue I'm sure is either a setup issue or the arial amp in the car not being powered correctly.
 
Found an adapter lead that sorts out the speaker problem the Connects 2 CT51AU02 speakers are now perfect after trying many different options, this gives you full sound front & rear. You have to swap round the red & yellow to get the right permanent live to the unit!
 
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Never came with the aerial adapter, that's my next project!
Have ordered AAN2203 as I can only get a couple of FM stations & nothing on AM
 
Ah OK, I have a couple of aerial adapters on there way and one as been recommended but its coming from the US but I will post up if they work or nor but nice find on the Bose speaker loom fix.
 
audi upgrades
I've only just seen it today getting in to the office and I just found out I did not have to pay important duty as they sent it as a monitor worth $50..... result.

Anyway I have to say it looks good loads of connection wires including an ipod connector and a canbus decoder and a 8gb micro card all reasy fitted.

I did make a book book on my order as I ordered a duel core unit and not a quad but they assure me there is very little difference in the performance, a little gutted on that but I will get on with it.


Here's some pics with all the bits and bobs.

20150708 083904

20150708 083926
20150708 084629
 
Ok it's installed and like other I have glitches and issues.

First off I have a faulty volume knob so it may be going back.

The other is the Bluetooth pairing is locked out to any other app so I can't install my obd bluetooth dongle.

The other is the crap built in eq and poor quality. Now I know it can give out good sound as the app poweramp has a eq and that plays sweet on the bose but for everything else like the radio it reverts back to the built in eq.

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TimWills12 said:
Wow so you'd advise against, I take it.
Click to expand...
Right now...... No

Its not because of the volume knob it's more a case of the sound quality I.e. the built in eq and the lock down of the bluetooth to two apps. The knob I just think I was unlucky but then one would put it down to there quality control checks or lack of. But no right now I would say there is better options.
 
What's the radio quality like?
Mine locks-up when you restart the car, have to do a soft reset to get it to fire up, which means you lose all your settings.
 
Radio is fine and the quality seems OK and ive not had no issue with it locking up just sound quality and the other points. I'm still waiting on feed back but think there stalling because of the cost.

john777w said:
What's the radio quality like?
Mine locks-up when you restart the car, have to do a soft reset to get it to fire up, which means you lose all your settings.
Click to expand...
 
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I am tempted by a double din android stereo would you recommend this and how much did it cost you? ive seen that site before is it worth getting from there rather then Ebay for example?
 
Mines going back due to the faulty volume knob, but I was getting there ironing out a lot of the qwerkes.

I will be ordering another unit from another supplier and have now have a wifi obd dongle to get round that issue. I found a great eq which got round the sound quality issue bar the radio which it could not override.

I paid for mine through PayPal so you get your protection as normal.
 
Last edited:
Thank you for honest statement of this, will be getting an android stereo, are double din installation straight forward I'm not fussed anyway I don't use the radio for anything just plug the music in and on my way!
 
audi upgrades
If you have a double din then it's a doddle almost plug and play depending what you fit. Look up the S100 units this are the most common Android head units, I will sort out a link later.
 
@docurley Thanks for posting this! How are you getting on with your head unit so far? I'm about to install a similar setup, not an Audi-specific one, into my car and wonder if you had any further updates :)
 
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Mine went back due to a faulty volume control. Had some issue with them as they wanted me to pay theirimport tax which I blankly refused to pay and had to get Alibaba.com to intervene and sort it out.

I have another unit I want to buy from but I'm going on me hols so it will have to wait till I get back.
 
After thinking about what I want out of my next HU, I decided to buy the one for A/S3 listed on ebay from a UK supplier in my previous comment and installed it the moment it arrived :)

20150908 164124 HDR


Only messed about with it for a few hours so far and it's been relatively pain-free and managed to impress me with what it can do and how fast it is.

Biggest issue so far has been the bottom fixing brackets, which refused to disengage and release the HU with the stereo keys. I had to remove the centre trim around the coin tray, hazard and ESP buttons in order to get to the bottom of the HU and push the tabs in from underneath to take the HU out. Part of me thinks that this may be an undocumented "security" feature, but in reality it's just bad workmanship/quality control :) This adds a couple of extra minutes to the process of removing the unit and after figuring out how to do this, it's not that much of an issue given that once installed it will not be coming out that often.

Other than skip forward/back steering buttons not being recognised by Google Play app it's actually been very good from a functionality perspective, with radio reception being pretty decent, although I did use my own radio aerial adapter, because the included item only uses one of the OEM diversity aerials.

I've been reading the XDA developers forum section that deals with modding these units and there is a small group of people making customised OS images for them and this opens the door up to fixing much of the software issues I've experienced so far. Judging by how things are going, I'm probably going to install a rooted OS image and customise the hell out of it very soon.

Would I recommend this unit to just anyone? That would probably be a big NO... But if you like gadgets, extremely comprehensive feature set, tinkering and customising things, then this would be perfect for you as long as you accept that this will not have the quality, support (or the price tag) of any of the established HU makers.

Remember - this HU costs £340 with almost all of the adapters you need, plus none of the big names offer anything like this and if they did, it would be close to £1000!

Then there's access to any app from Google Play Store - any of the music apps for local mp3s or streaming work, so you are free to use Spotify, Soundcloud, Google Music, YouTube or many other online radio apps... The many online or offline Nav apps seem to work fine with the GPS receiver. Youi can use its built-in nav app with offline maps or Waze, Here Maps, Google Maps with on-line traffic updates and very up-to-date maps and local POI search, it all works very well and is fast :)

I'll throw some more updates in here as I have them, as long as OP does not mind me hijacking his thread :)
 
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leshkin said:
After thinking about what I want out of my next HU, I decided to buy the one for A/S3 listed on ebay from a UK supplier in my previous comment and installed it the moment it arrived :)..................
Click to expand...

When you say Google Play, you mean Play Music? How are the radio apps? Do they work with the steering wheel buttons? When they scan, do they recognise station names, or do they only display frequencies?
I've been looking into these for some time, but however I have only recently purchased an Audi, previously owning an RX8.....
 
fakker said:
When you say Google Play, you mean Play Music? How are the radio apps? Do they work with the steering wheel buttons? When they scan, do they recognise station names, or do they only display frequencies?
I've been looking into these for some time, but however I have only recently purchased an Audi, previously owning an RX8.....
Click to expand...

Yes, I meant Google Play :) I since found a fix for the skip buttons being passed via a mod on XDA and will look at sorting it shortly, so may not be a problem anymore.

Radio app is OK and does support RDS, but seems to update saved station names frequently, so you will find that it sometimes loses the names because the station you saved is not accessible at that time - at least that is how it feels. Modded radio apps are floating about on XDA and these fix many of the problems people have experienced.

Another issue I have is rear speakers and sub having ground loop interference - will install a ground loop isolator to try and resolve the issue, but that will be permanently fixed soon with new speakers, sub and amp to replace the Bose stuff.
 
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Awesome, I'll have a look out for this on xda-devs, I may end up sending you a bunch of PMs - if that's ok? i've been a member on xda-devs for many years (a decade maybe?) so will have a search for myself!

I had a Nexus mod on my RX8, however that was just for satnav, and kept the original bose unit in place still... so this is a very new thing :)

Do you know what the model is under the hood though? I've had a brief look a few months back and noticed there are different models/rebranded etc... does it include wifi/bt? just wondering if i'd need a separate bt module for my odbii :)

Doe sit interact with the DIS?
 
The unit I have is a KGL variant, 1024x800 screen and RK3188 SOC and is pretty much an Android tablet, mated to some extra hardware for GPS, sound, amp, radio and various USB and SD card ports. In essence, it's not too dissimilar to many of the tablet-in-dash installs, but with all of the external amps, radio bits integrated into one box. Here is a picture of the settings page:
20150908 165147 HDR


No DIS integration at the moment, but if Alpine can do it, I wouldn't put it past some XDA member with an Audi to come up with a solution for it at some point in the future :)

The XDA thread you want is this - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2660662 It contains everything you will need in one place.

Feel free to PM me, but for the benefit of the forum we may want to keep things public, so that others can learn from our experiences/mistakes, plus I can't guarantee that my assistance will be correct as I'm also just starting to learn about these HUs :)
 
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So, installed rooted firmware with some extra tweaks and improvements - full details listed here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=58249825&postcount=7614

How to do it:

Custom OS images for this HU can be found here: http://huifei.fs-fileserver.de/content/firmware/KK 4.4.4 MALAYSK Custom ROMS/Malaysk Quadcore RK3188/1024x600/09.09.2015/

I am not a fan of the NEXT launcher, so went for the ROM that does not have it installed, but it's your choice.

Process to install update below, but for custom Android ROM users this will be familiar:
1. Download the correct OS image and save the unzipped 'update.img' on to the root of a SD card (formatted as Fat32)
2. Insert the SD card into the spare SD slot on the HU and after a little bit of waiting, you will be prompted to install the detected OS update
3. After some waiting and a couple of reboots you will be met with a slightly new launcher and a completely clean HU (you lose all of your settings)
4. Delete the update.img file from the SD to prevent future prompts for updates
5. Got to settings and perform a factory reset & reboot
6. Your OS is now rooted and contains some cool tweaks for you to enjoy - configure to your heart's content :)

You do not need to update your MCU, I didn't bother (the current MCU version was later than the ones on XDA. Unless you want to tweak the way hardware works (sleep instead of complete power off when key is taken out to speed up boot times, etc)

Have to admit - this unit is getting better by the day :)
 
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For you people who changed the standard HU for a aftermarket one, How are you getting on..?

I want rid of my original fit item as I find it **** tbh, Just not sure what to replace it with..?
 
I love my unit. It's not without its issues and quirks, but you will not find a better set of features for the money.

Good points:
BT works great
Lots of NAV apps to chose from
Lots of available music apps
Great storage expansion
Some integration with mfsw
Lots of inputs for video, as well as reversing and dashcam support
Fit is as close to OEM as you'll ever get without it being OEM
GPS reception and speed is very good
I can go on....

Not so good:
Cold boot is about 30 seconds, although reverse camera works almost immediately and warm boot is instant (5 minutes or so). Can be changed to be longer on some units
Radio reception is OK, but not as good as stock unit
Build quality is a bit meh - it feels on the cheap side
I have very Intermittent screen flicker when it's cold (maybe just my unit)
My unit does not like to come out of the dash due to bad latches, so needs some 'persuasion'
I'm not impressed with sound quality out of the box, from the built-in amp, but this can be fixes as per my previous post

Not for fainthearted - if you never used/rooted Android or don't know how to wire car stereos, this may not be for you
 
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Well on my unit (non-android) I was given a Denison DAB usb unit, so took the opportunity to fit a rear roof DAB/FM/MW aerial, as I needed a DAB aerial, so I now have perfect DAB & good radio reception from the HU should I need it!
 
Hi you mention rooted android I have a custom rom kernel etc what sort of things can you do with the stereo? Can you root the stereo and sideload apps etc?
 
I'm pretty sure that my stock ROM allowed side-loading of apps anyway. The main benefits to a rooted ROM and updated MCU are mainly to do with adding ability to modify settings that are not exposed in stock. Some units allow you to change the time out for deep sleep, so you could get instant power-on after hours of unit being switched off, at the expense of extra car battery drain. It also allows for extra mods to be added that require root privileges and many more... Check out the mods section on this page: http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/Hui_Fei_Type
 
Thanks! I'd mainly be sideloading cracked apk (spotify) etc however along with adblock to prevent ads can imagine this would be fine do you know if the roms work for any double din android stereo 4.4?
 
Oh, Android Apps store works just as well on any stock ROM, so you may find that sideloading is not required.

Edit: sorry, didn't see the cracked bit :)

I think Adblocker may need root, so you would need a rooted one. Malaysk makes the most popular ones for most versions: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=60591423&postcount=12068

As far as finding compatible units, you have to know three things:
  • Chipset version - RK3188(quad-core) or RK3066 (dual-core)
  • MCU variant (very important)
  • Screen resolution - 800X480 or 1024X600
Start with this page as it will answer many questions: http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/Hui_Fei_Type
 
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