KCJAZ Communications Upgrade project - 2013 LC

[kcjaz]

Thought I'd document this one as I go. I'm at the completed research stage (research may be too strong of a word) and have ordered stuff. Here's my plan:

Add cell booster, ham radio, and change out the head unit. Here is what is currently being shipped my way:

1. Cell booster: Drive Reach OTR
2. Ham: Yaesu FTM-400DXR, antenna, mount/cable
3. Head Unit: EC Offroad 16" Tesla style head unit. There are 3 versions of this by model year. A little confusing as the model year ranges overlap. For my 2013 (manufactured 2/12) they told me to select 2012-2015 (not 2009 -2013). The difference is a camera module which makes connecting the cameras plug-n-play. Its @250 AUD more.

Wish me luck. I'll need it on the head unit for sure. That one's got me the most nervous (right after telling my wife how much money I have just spent.)

 

[grinchy]

Good idea to group the spend, only have to ask one time

 

[kcjaz]

Got the Yaesu today. Ordered Monday and in my hands Wednesday. I'm impressed by DX Engineering.

Got email from EC Offroad today and they now say the head units are out of stock and it will be 8 to 12 weeks. I have IMs from them before I ordered saying 3 to 4 weeks and I called and spoke to then before I clicked "submit order" and asked and was told they were in stock. It took less than a minute for my CC to be charged the $2K. A bit annoying. I thought going in there was a good chance Chinese made electronics would be out of stock and delayed. That is why I asked before ordering. $#%@#

 

[kcjaz]

Update: Finally got the EC offroad unit on May 17 and had time to install it last week and monkey around with it most of the weekend. the install went OK. I took my time and did it over 3 evenings.

Day 1: take OEM head unit out. This is fairly straight forward. You need interior panel removal tools. I bought these from Amazon: Amazon product ASIN B085XSSR88
Its a pretty good kit for the price. The biggest help were the install videos EC Offroad sent me. I watched them first, then played then hitting pause as I took the dash apart. EC Offroad Install Videos. It took me about an our to remove the OEM unit. The air vents were the most difficult. I used a thin wide tool from the kit to push the clips in as I pulled.

After you get it all out it looks like this:

You need a 10mm socket. A small impact makes removal of the two head units fast and easy. After the screws/bolts are removed, the units just pull out with even force. Just like the video. You will not reuse any of the hex screws/bolts as the new one just clips in.

 

[kcjaz]

Day 2
There are a lot of separate harnesses included.

Several are not needed like this one for the air bag:

Don't use this part of the main harness:

Use this one instead:

I suggest marking the ones you use and don't use with a sharpie so you don't get mixed up. The two grey plugs above connect the HU to the amp. If you mix them up as I did the first time, you will get no sound.

Others are for separate audio out for external amps and connecting a CD player. You also end up with many OEM plugs that were used with the OEM head units but that are not used and just abandoned with the new HU.

This first thing to put in is the 360 degree camera box. Pay attention to which plugs attach to the box. Just listen/follow the video. Lots of room where the lower OEM unit was:

I ended up rotating this 90 deg to get the wires more manageable. All of the plugs to the new HU attach in the upper part. There are parts of the main harness that isn't used and many OEM plugs not used. The best strategy is to put the stuff that doesn't get connected below and the plugs you do need up high. You also need enough slack in the wires that connect to the head unit to be able to push the unit all the way in place and clip in. There is another little box related to the canbus that needs to get stuffed in but it is fairly small.

When you get all the harnesses connected and routed, it will look something like this:

 

[kcjaz]

Day 2 continued:

Here are more pics of the plugs used for reference:

It probably took my 3 hours or so to get the unit wired up and turned on for the first time. It booted right up but no sound no cameras. Ugh. I gave up for the night.

 

[kcjaz]

Day 3:
I called EC Off-Road to get help with the sound and cameras. They were helpful and asked me to send pictures of the plugs I had used so they could try and diagnose the problem. As my issue was the wrong grey plug, that wasn't obvious so they were stumped. I went down the path that I may have blown a fuse or something. I pulled the unit out and reinstalled the OEM unit to check and it all worked. Its when I went to reinstall the Tesla unit I figured out what I had done with the grey plugs.

For the camera, there. you have to tell it what model year cruiser you have. I knew this but the video only showed one of the places you have to set this. There are two places in settings where you do this. While I have a 2013, I needed to set it to 2016 to get the cameras to work. This is the screen to make it work:

After I set that, it all worked:

 

[kcjaz]

After I got it all running, here were my first impressions that I posted in a separate thread:

Here are some thoughts/current issues I'm trying to figure out:

1. Apple Carplay is pretty good. Never used it before. The only thing I don’t like is the Apple dumbed down version of Google maps. Maybe there are some settings I have yet to find but I like the full version of Google maps I can run directly on the Android unit better.

2. Wifi will not auto connect to iPhone. It does autoconnect to home wifi. After forcing it to connect to iPhone it works but when rebooted, the wifi is off and I have to delete the saved iPhone and reconnect it manually. This is my current biggest annoyance.

3. Altitude is in meters. Was able to change to US units for everything else but not altitude. Can this be changed to ft?

4. Clock is off by 13 hours. I reset it to local time but after reboot it reverts to +13 hours ahead. I have toggled DST on and off, no difference.


I have sense fixed the clock. There are two settings screen where you can set the date/time. Only one will permanently set your clock. You have to tell the unit what time zone to use. Funny as it has its own gps.

 

[kcjaz]

Update on Tesla unit:

I've pretty much got all of the settings figured out and it all works! Even the stuff that other Tesla HU threads say don't work, work for me:

1. OEM temperature buttons work.
2. All climate controls, front and back work.
3. All steering wheel buttons work.
4. Ambient temp works and is correct.
5. Cameras work. now need to upgrade them for better resolution.
6. Initially, the stereo volume would drop at low speed when the front camera or reverse camera came on which was horribly annoying but I found the setting and fixed it.

The only thing that doesn't work is the rear DVD. I didn't even try to mess with it or connect it. It may be possible to get it to work but I don't need it. I have never, not even once used it. I made my kids listen to my music.

I'm down to two "features" that are annoying.

1. The altitude shown on the gyro screen is in meters and can't be set to feet.

2. I'm using my iPhone as the hot spot for wifi for the unit. That works fine but not with Apple Carplay. When I try to do both Apple Carplay and Wifi, one or the other drops. I like CarPlay except for Google maps in CarPlay. I will try a separate phone/hotspot and see how that works. As I have played with it, I am starting to think I may just forget about Apple CarPlay and just go with wifi. With wifi, I can do even more than Apple CarPlay. The only thing I really use in CarPlay is Spotify an I can run that directly from the Android unit.

A few more pics of why I went this route in the first place:

 

[kcjaz]

Installed and powered up the Weboost today.

My initial test was disappointing as I didn’t see any different in bar strength turning it on or off. How can you tell if it’s working?

 

[grinchy]

Signal strength app. Or carrier menu on phone.
Try some downloads . . .

 

[kcjaz]

Now for the Yaesu. Where to put the actual radio? I’m thinking here but only because it will be the easiest for wiring. The rear is probably where it should go but I think I will need antenna extension and microphone extension wires plus I’ll have to run power all the way back there.

I don’t really wanna drill holes in the plastic either. Velcro maybe?

 

[grinchy]

Under the passenger seat?

 

[kcjaz]

Under the passenger seat?

Thought about that but I’m going to try this first.

 

[MrCWineMan]

Your first spot is where I put mine!

 

[kcjaz]

Moved my Weboost external antenna. Way to floppy in original location.

Cell booster antenna mount location

Is this a bad idea? Seems to work with no interference with swingout. I know it would work better getting it mounted higher but I also don’t want it getting hit constantly with trees and I want to be able to get in my garage.

forum.ih8mud.com

 

[linuxgod]

I'm itching to check out your tesla screen install in person next week

 

[kcjaz]

Finally. It’s all in. Including Gamiviti speaker cover with ram mounts.

 

[kcjaz]

Did LCDC and then Ouray Friday and Saturday. Ran with a Verizon hot spot and didn’t use CarPlay. Connected phone via Bluetooth. Overall the unit worked pretty well on the trip. There were a few times where CarPlay would randomly try to connect wirelessly. Sometimes the Bluetooth would not auto connect. At one point all going from Breckenridge to Lake City the screen just went black. I still had audio in the unit was running it was just the screen is completely black. There is a screen off button in the upper left but you can’t see it on the screen is black. I could turn the unit on and off because there’s also not enough putting in the upper left. But the only way I got the screen back on was to stop disconnect the negative battery terminal and then power it back up.

Overall the unit perform pretty well on the trails for navigation. I like having the large screen for the overall map and position on the trail while simultaneously using the turn by turn view on my phone.

The ham radio was awesome to much better than a handheld.

I also tried to put map files on a USB thumb drive. I bought a cheap one terabyte thumb drive on Amazon it works but I can’t figure out how to save map files from within the applications directly to the thumb drive and have the apps read from the thumb drive files. I emailed EC off-road about this and all they said is they don’t think you can do that. They’re not all that helpful.

 

[greynolds]

Did LCDC and then Ouray Friday and Saturday. Ran with a Verizon hot spot and didn’t use CarPlay. Connected phone via Bluetooth. Overall the unit worked pretty well on the trip. There were a few times where CarPlay would randomly try to connect wirelessly. Sometimes the Bluetooth would not auto connect. At one point all going from Breckenridge to Lake City the screen just went black. I still had audio in the unit was running it was just the screen is completely black. There is a screen off button in the upper left but you can’t see it on the screen is black. I could turn the unit on and off because there’s also not enough putting in the upper left. But the only way I got the screen back on was to stop disconnect the negative battery terminal and then power it back up.

Overall the unit perform pretty well on the trails for navigation. I like having the large screen for the overall map and position on the trail while simultaneously using the turn by turn view on my phone.

It sounds like your overall experience was similar to mine with the 2016+ unit on the trip I just returned from - pretty good, but not perfect.

I also tried to put map files on a USB thumb drive. I bought a cheap one terabyte thumb drive on Amazon it works but I can’t figure out how to save map files from within the applications directly to the thumb drive and have the apps read from the thumb drive files. I emailed EC off-road about this and all they said is they don’t think you can do that. They’re not all that helpful.

Contact the app developers as the ability to do this will be backed into the app. Just as an example, Google maps has an option buried somewhere in the settings that allows you to pick the storage drive for the offline maps. If they don't already have the ability to do so, I suspect Gaia and some of the other offline map app companies would be reasonably receptive to this sort of suggestion than many other app developers would be as they would most likely see the value in having more space available. EC Offroad definitely isn't going to have intimate knowledge of apps. They're pretty good at helping out with the initial install, but that's about it.

If you haven't looked into it yet, look into Sergey's custom firmware for these PX6 based units available via the Tesla Style Firmware and HeadUnits Facebook group. Send him a private message after you join the group and he'll work with you on getting the custom firmware purchased and installed. This might actually improve the issue you had with the screen going black as his firmware is supposed to address a number of issues in the stock firmware. Just be aware that EC Offroad might cut you off from support / warranty if you install this, which is reasonable as they can't reasonably be expected to support firmware that didn't come through them.