An OE looking deck that does not suck...maybe.

[AndrewBird]

No, missed that somehow, but almost all decks do something like that, but since its per folder, with a 999 folder limit, I think it will do fine for most people.

Personally, I will be switching to a bunch of 8GB thumb drives for my car music. Even my 16gb takes too long to read, my 32gb was miserable...4 or 8GB fits enough to read and flip through quickly. I would like to have at least half of my 350GB collection, but until access gets way faster and easier, no thanks.

I found if I didn't put my music in different folders and just had it all in the main directory, it loads WAY faster. When it was in folders, it would take at least a minute for a song to start playing after I started the car. Now it is almost instant. Searching for a song still takes a minute or so because it has to index everything, but it used to take closer to 5. This is with about 16GBP on a 32GB drive.

[EyExR]

I'd say close but no cigar. If it matched the other dash lights perfectly with a dim-able display down to 0% that would be ideal I think. Plus Pandora or Spotify compatible... So close!

[Victell]

Modding the backlight LEDs to 605nm orange to match the E30 interior would be a very good thing on this. If I can find wiring diagrams for this radio, I will probably give it a shot.

That would be awesome

[StereoInstaller1]

I'd say close but no cigar. If it matched the other dash lights perfectly with a dim-able display down to 0% that would be ideal I think. Plus Pandora or Spotify compatible... So close!

For lots of people, I agree. Probably most people, in my experience. For me personally, I only listen to my own music, so its no biggie. You can always AUX in, but IMO phone control sort of sucks.

I just cannot wait until we can release a head unit.

One annoyance is the LCD display. LOTS of backlight bleed-through and sort of crappy viewing angles. Modding the backlight LEDs to 605nm orange to match the E30 interior would be a very good thing on this. If I can find wiring diagrams for this radio, I will probably give it a shot.

That would be awesome

Agreed 100%. Wish I had time to get this E24 deck to you.

BTW, I am once again smartphone equipped so I will be doing lots more photos. I will get some good shots of this installed in this E24, should be pretty sweet.

Luke

[henryki]

My head unit is LCD and it's backlit red it's not the ideal set up I want but I have no complaints with it other than the annoying volume wheel that you use to also scroll through the menus. But I don't know what this black light bleed through is, so I don't know if I'm getting it or not haha

[BlackSpeed66]

Ok, I picked up one of these guys a few weeks back. Modded the HVAC panel to get a flush-fit much like one would need to with the CD43. Here's a mock-up of how it looks in an e30. Still gotta wrap up some wiring and such for some other stuff I'm working on in the dash. If anyone decides to buy one of these - they do come with the removal "keys" so you don't have to buy any (I have 2 pairs now ).

[august125]

That looks great!

Now we just need someone (hopefully bmwman91) to take it apart, solder some 605nm SMD LEDs in there for illumination, and paint the chrome part of the volume knob and the glossy bezel flat black. (It's not like anyone won't know what VOL, SD, AUX, and USB are without the labels.) Then it will look like it was meant to be!

[bmwman91]

That actually looks pretty good in there. Like august125 mentioned, a little bit of paint & some soldering could get this thing looking pretty damn stock.

Is the LCD screen backlight white? And, does the stock dimmer control work with the unit's lights? Also...got a wiring diagram?



Sidenote:
Luke, I know I said I'd call ya and never did. Sorry about that, shit's been super busy. I'll give you a ring soon.

[ecsk]

Does it has amber display that match BMW dash ? without that, it's hardly be OEM lookalike.

[BlackSpeed66]

The screen itself is white backlit with LCD dot matrix. The rest of the button illumination is red. I'm going to leave it as-is for now... the interior illumination in my car seems to have "more" red in it than my e34, so it doesn't bother me yet. Plus, I'm not brave enough to start taking it all apart when I haven't even confirmed everything works yet! I'm in the process of installing an amp too and ran into a few issues with that - hopefully I can get stuff up and running this weekend.

The stock radio illumination wire does not "dim" and neither does the feed for the fader illumination. I'll work on that later once I've made sure everything else works - the radio harness does have a connection for the dimmer though. This unit uses the ISO 10487 connection on back.

http://pinoutsguide.com/CarAudio/car_audio_iso_pinout.shtml

[august125]

When you say the illumination wires "do not 'dim'" do you mean that they have a constant +12v with the lights on, regardless of the position of the dimmer knob?

There may be no point to trying to find a "dimmed" illumination wire. A lot of head units, and quite possibly this one, look for any voltage at all to be present on the illumination pin and go to a predetermined brightness, rather than adjusting the brightness according to the voltage level. Sometimes this predetermined brightness can be changed in a menu somewhere.

[StereoInstaller1]

).

Totally dig it, way better than most anything.

Nice!

That actually looks pretty good in there. Like august125 mentioned, a little bit of paint & some soldering could get this thing looking pretty damn stock.

Is the LCD screen backlight white? And, does the stock dimmer control work with the unit's lights? Also...got a wiring diagram?



Sidenote:
Luke, I know I said I'd call ya and never did. Sorry about that, shit's been super busy. I'll give you a ring soon.

looking forward to it...you do Raspberry Pi stuff, don't you?

When you say the illumination wires "do not 'dim'" do you mean that they have a constant +12v with the lights on, regardless of the position of the dimmer knob?

There may be no point to trying to find a "dimmed" illumination wire. A lot of head units, and quite possibly this one, look for any voltage at all to be present on the illumination pin and go to a predetermined brightness, rather than adjusting the brightness according to the voltage level. Sometimes this predetermined brightness can be changed in a menu somewhere.

I think what he was referring to is the normal "dim" feature, ala Kenwood, etc, that drops the brightness when voltage is applied to the "dimmer" lead.

What I am hoping for, and cannot seem to find an answer to is if it will turn on the face lights with +12V applied to the decks dimmer wire, like old Denon and early Alpine did.

[bmwman91]

Hey Luke,
Never worked with the Raspberry Pi, but the stuff I have worked with probably has me set up to figure it out.

[01rs25]

An OE looking deck that does not suck...maybe.

Love it!!

[jd_e30]

Hey Luke,

Any updates on your customer's install? I have been scouring the forums (a lot of your posts) for a well-performing, non-sucky head unit, and your aforementioned prospect seemed the most promising that I've come across. I am very much looking forward to more details and your impressions!

Thanks!
jd