[IT]

Todays progress, another 3 hours spent on the car sorting out the RNS-E install, which is a lot further forward

First of all, the TV Tuner has finally arrived, hurrah:



Heres a quick reminder of what we currently have. This being an early facelift, I have a type A tuner, very square, and with 1 set of AV input phonos on the rear. Standard CD Changer, and the Phone amplifer on the left. Ignore the red wire, it was temporary about 2 months ago, and I'll be putting it away nicely very soon....



My RNS-E testbed, AKA my car..... You really need vagcom to code things up and get things working right, especially for TV / Phone functionality, so it was just easier to mock everything up in the passenger footwell. I'm pleased to say that once installed, the Sat Nav picked up its location quickly, and the radio works 100%, so no problems with any of those adapters then....



The next problem to get it all working though is to wire in the infotainment canbus to the RNS-E. Most people associate it with the bus that is used for displaying the radio stations / Cd tracks on the DIS, but its two way, and sends also important signals such as 'igntion on'. Devices like the TV tuner and Bluetooth module will only turn on with a canbus command, so until I get that working, I can't really test anything.

One of the oddities of the RNS-D install is that the Blaupunkt (aka bosch) headunits talk a slightly different canbus protocol to the rest of the car. This means that the RNS-D cannot connect directly to the instrument cluster, instead it must talk through the 'Can gateway' or as people probably better know it, the TMC module. The TMC module was only installed to allow the RNS-D to talk to the instrument cluster, TMC functionality was a bi-product as the TMC module for whatever reason, was designed with 2 canbus connections (4 wires) and can talk both protocols and convert between them.

The RNS-E however can talk to the instrument cluster, and doesnt need the TMC module, in fact, having that in the way will likely screw things up, so its behind the instrument cluster to deal with it....



I could simply tap the wires for the RNS-E into the back of here where the correct Canbus is presented to the TMC, but that means running a good length of twisted pair cabling from the head unit up to begind the instrument cluster, which is a bit messy as there is no easy official cable route for it.

Instead, I've taken a more radical approch where I'm going to take the connectors from the TMC module and connect them together, effectively bridging the Audi infotainment CAN with the BOSCH CAN, thus presenting the Audi CAN down near the head unit on the original wires where I want it...

We also need to sort out the aerial feed - As the TMC (when actually working as a TMC) needs to tune into Classic FM in the UK, then it has an aerial feed, but the main aerial goes into it, and then passes from it down to your head unit. If you simply unplug these connectors, you will lose radio reception so we just plug them into one another as they are a male/female pair



Here is the Canbus low from the Audi side, and the Canbus low from the Bosch side snipped off and twisted together. There is only 1 connector on the TMC, a 12 pin (2x6) and it comes apart easily.



Both high and low snipped, soldered and heat shrinked (shrunk?).



Down to the other end, and RNS-D owners may recognise this connector as being the multiplug that goes in half way down the unit. Well, it is also where the canbus goes in, so we can get our canbus from here now for the RNS-E



Connector dismantled, and the two stripey grey wires stand out from the (small) crowd...



So, snip them off, and I have my canbus available near my passenger footwell where I can continue my testing....