Interesting journey.....Long time since I had my S8 but i did swap the head unit in it for a high end Kenwood flip out unit as the sat nav was soooo dated even back then. I've still got the unit but it's roughly installed in my Jeep as that had a very dated unit too. Has a music keg phatbox with flac, iPod, usb and a separate break out unit that would take video and all sorts. Was a bit of a pain to install as i needed to run the wires all the way to the boot of the car, needing a coat hanger to feed them through tricky spots and taking out the back seats to even access a route through!

The bose was tricky iirc and it needed some suppressor or impedance matching thing to make it work. I also initially got the wiring wrong which would leave the boss amp on and drain the battery

About the only thing i never got quite to my liking was steering wheel control. I looked a few times at swapping steering wheels but never quite made the jump - Irritatingly the stereo was in the wrong position in relation to the steering wheel to use a cheap remote. That does however work in my jeep. Little stick on the back of the steering wheel thing and works with IR, nice and hidden and SO useful!

Love the OEM style look to the facia though. Mine was some trimmed back cardboard :ROFL:

Also did a silly install in my RX8, fitting a Nexus pad into a rotating sat nav unit. That looked cool, but never quite did get the powering correct using OTG cables and a usb dac, but that could use all sorts of different sat nav, audio players and all sorts. Even have a wifi ODB2 adapter which would work with Torque and the like and give cool displays of revs and stuff!

A little update for you all
the code for factory settings on this head unit is m123456

It allows you to mess with all kinds of settings like CANBUS options, or teaching the HU your steering wheel buttons.

I'll be trying to get a noise cancelling app installed on this radio, to see if it'll make the cabin noise much quieter, it works the same way as those fancy noise cancelling headphones, playing the opposite frequency of the 'noise' to cancel it out.

Wouldn't that require a microphone near the source of the noise though?

Noise cancelling headphones have a microphone outside of the headphones, which is amplified, inverted and then subtracted from the signal that drives the headphones. Doing something similar to reduce cabin noise would surely require microphones that are external to the cabin, otherwise you'd create some kind of noise cancellation loop that perpetually removes and re-adds the noise.

the HU has a built in microphone and I can also add one to the dome light, I will try it as-is for now and report back. I suppose the microphone would hear the actual cabin/tyre noise from inside the car, and then cancel it out with the speakers, the newest A8 has this technology too. And I suppose if a lot of the noise doesn't get inside the car, it would make sense to only work with whatever's left getting inside.
The only way to find out is to try it haha.

Useless update:

Amps have returned from service and repair.


Updates on development of Android to DIS gmaps and track info display in near future.

Minor update:

After talking with other Android HU users on the internet it was found out that if we remove the GPS antenna PCB from its casing, and install it in the gutted A8 antenna box located in the rear the GPS signal will improve significantly so I'll be trying this tomorrow, I already have the android gps antenna removed from its casing.

Would something like this be the solution?

https://www.kufatec.com/en/car-hifi/...-audi-vw-38717

I have completley removed the Bose amp as its a DSP piece of crap amp with floating ground so whatever aftermarket HU you will connect it will always pop etc because of potential difference between ground..

All these bose adapter with big 'black boxes' have capacitors in them which get rid of the popping but also cut top end and low end of the sound by the nature of how they filter, so they dull the sound down terribly.

Thats why I went with 2 period correct amps for the car a 4 channel for all the doors and a 2 channel for the rear subs, all can be controller by the dsp equaliser in the radio. The amps share the same ground as the rest of the car inc. the android radio so all those issues have gone away.

Which begs the question, actually, what would the RNS or Symphony sound like with decent aftermarket amp and speakers? An aftermarket dongle which can play FLAC through the cd changer port might actually yield decent results and look OE.

Hmm...

That's true and dependant on the DAC those units use, but with the Android you can get wireless carplay and android auto, you can get noise cancelling aps that make the car even more quiet inside, TPMS, front and rear camera all in the radio, digital TV and so on... all these options need weighing up.

Also the plastic finish/colour/surface is a perfect match with the climate control plastic so it looks perfect. The RNSE has a different finish so it always bugged me

I started researching getting the right android .apk's to get the radio to display to FIS..

Getting dynamic reverse camera projection lines is also just a matter of making the radio read off the steering wheel angle sensor...

I have all these ideas for the car but I keep it on a farm, im very limited in terms of what I can do because of Welsh wheather haha.

I have also just bought another 2 din facelift stereo cage, I will use it to create a proper set of brackets to mount the radio perfectly in it with bolts and rivnuts. Currently it sits on about 6-7 layers of sound deadning matt which doesn't help the panel gaps between the radio and the fascia and cooling too.

Once I have it down to perfection I will publish all the dimensions and sizes of everything.