There are no wires. It is all encased in a cardboard like ribbon connector. There is no way to tap into said wires. It would be a great idea and easier to do if it was possible. But I think Kevin went this route due to the fact that the wires are not accessible.

 

Soldering really is not that hard at all, but for those who have trouble with it I would take the NAV board out and to a stereo install shop. They could solder it on for you in under 5 minutes.

The car works and drives fine without the board in it, NAV even works you just have to use voice commands and the touch screen to set up destinations etc.

Kevin, make sure you hit up the G37 boards for interest, I believe all 07+ NAV units use the same board.

 

That doesn't even make sense...

I know what board you're talking about, but what I'm saying is that you're going into the contacts on the board where the connector comes in. The way I see it, that's a 20 pin connector going to the board, so let's say red goes to # 5 and black goes to # 6 or something... why wouldn't it work if you just tap the same red/black wires into the wires that go there?

Again, I don't see why it wouldn't work...

 

A little connector could be made, but we won't make it. It would cost more then the module itself costs to make the plugs, plus hours upon hours or R&D to find plugs and contacts that will work. Then, you'll have custom tooling and labor for a niche product that there is little interest in.

I don't think anyone could justify buying a $99 module and a $150 "plug in" harness when you could simply solder two wires. We tried a while ago to do a 'plug in' version for a VW application and we wasted many, many hours and not many people were happy with the end result, because you still had to solder the power and ground wires. They wanted a simple plug and play solution for all the wires, but weren't willing to pay for the development of the harness. I guess for people who have never tried to make an OEM patch cable they don't realize the extreme time and cost involved.

 

Tear apart your car and look at the wiring between the two components. You will see what I mean, it won't work. You have to solder it.

 

Sounds very promising ... I'm interested but would like a little more detail please.

Do you have detailed install instructions yet? Will the stock wire harness need to be cut? If I wanted to pull the module out for what ever reason, will everything look stock again (Just thinking ahead if my a/v nav unit ever needed servicing)?

 

I'm not going to write up detailed install instructions before we even decide to build the module.

The install isn't that difficult - pull apart the center console, which is fairly easy.

Pull out the bezel that surrounds the screen, open it up, and solder the two wires shown above.

Pull out the A/V controller (its located right behind the stereo buttons, right under the screen). There are 6 harnesses on the back of it. One of the bigger harnesses contains all the other wires you need. Switched 12vdc, ground, speed sense, and reverse signal (if you have a backup camera). The speed sense wire will need to be cut in order to allow programming while moving. The only thing that makes this at all difficult is the fact that you can NOT start the car with everything unplugged. We did and found out the hard way that it will throw lots of codes, and cause lots of lights to come on on the dash. We spent probably close to an hour resetting everything from SES to airbag to a little key light that we had no idea what it was. The other thing that made this a bit harder then it should have been is that the service manual I was using had 2 of the wire colors incorrect. The pin numbers were right, but the colors were wrong.

Your warranty won't be void simply by installing an aftermarket product. The dealership would have to prove it caused the malfunction. In close to 5 years of selling all sorts of modules we have never had a customer be denied warranty service because of one of our products. The only thing I could see them denying is if your 'OK' button quits working or something like that - something that I have never heard of happening.

 

Kevin .. my bad .. I looked more carefully at the pictures. I originally thought they were of your new board when they were really of the nav control panel. Looks pretty straight forward. I'm interested.

Let me know if you need any hook ups with other board houses or mold tooling for enclosures.

As for the OK button failure ... wouldn't that depend on how often I pushed it to use the bypass?!

 

Kevin, I will most likely be in on this, I have one last bit of hope that maybe the updated Nav software which is coming out very soon, fingers crossed that it may actually fix the issue with not being able to scroll or access certain screens.

If the new software does not fix then I am definitely in on one of these units.

 

Quick question, and it might have already been asked, do you need to turn off the car in nav mode so that the ok screen comes up when you turn the car on? Or does it press the ok button whenever the screen comes up? Like I could be on status for a while then when wanting to call someone or go to nav it will not come up.

 

The OK pulse is time based, so if the correct screen is not up, it won't work.

 

We came to a "half" decision yesterday regarding the future of this module.

We are going to build a few prototypes just to verify that they work as well as our first module did. After the testing is done we will then make a decision as to how to proceed.

We will most likely be looking for 5 people who can perform the installation themselves (we don't like our test units to be professionally installed) in a timely manner. In exchange, we will offer the unit at a big discount. If you are interested and capable of testing the unit please add your name to the list:

We will contact people when we get closer to having the actual modules.

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Count me in ... list updated.

 

I'm good right now too. But I don't like waiting for mods. :-)

 

I am in.

Thanks,

Joe
Levelpar1@aol.com