Carplay, Android Auto headunit, front/rear camera upgrade journey!

[grog]

I finally finished a reasonably involved upgrade to my LE headunit.

When I got the car, the alpine w505 had been upgraded to a budget ebay android unit. I would not recommend this.

It needs you to hotpot you phone for data, then it's very slow almost unusable for Google maps etc. 

 

I decided that if I'm going to do this, then I should do it right!

I settled on an alpine ILX-705D which has wireless carplay, android auto, multiple camera support, DAB etc.  There were cheaper options but few had wireless carplay. I like the fact the alpine is in keeping with the OE options, a natural progression rather than 'aftermarket'

Things I wish I knew at the start....

I probably should have taken the dash trim off, in my car the red countered band the full width of the dash. But it's possible without doing this.

Take out the glovebox, it's not hard and makes the job 10x easier .

The 200 cables ties bundled behind the headunit and glovebox need snipping off.

The headunit brackets from the OE headunit don't work for the ILx. I needed a pair of generic ones and drilled extra holes.

 

I removed the old headunit and the short adaptor loom which connected HU to car loom.

I then proceeded to snip off a bunch of cable tied to release the cables going to the imprint unit. 

I looked for BT and NAV units but no trace, they might have been taken out when the android unit was fitted it they were easily accessible.

The imprint unit is bolted to the underside of the dash pax side. Only reachable in the lotus position, very uncomfortable but managed to free it and the cables going to the headunit. This was a pain to do, and could be skipped but I really wanted to remove the unused redundant parts.

It's a shame to lose the imprint as it allowed fine control over the DSP EQ, the recent HU's don't have the ai-net connector needed.  And the built in EQ is more basic. It's probably fine for 95% of people, unless you have measurement microphones and sw to really understand what's going on in car.

The HU comes with a specific GPS antenna, I stuck this under the lift off cover over the speedo/clocks. It works great in this position.

Cameras..

I'd decided that a front camera would pay for itself if it stopped me clipping 1 kerb.

I went for the alpine multi view camera.

The front was surprisingly easy to fit. Undertray off, fed the wire from behind dash to pax footwell fusebox area, then through the grommet blocking the unused LHD steering column hole, from here cable tided it to the other wiring harnesses up to the pax side of the grille mouth. We managed to feed this through behind the grille and out the mesh in the center top. Tucked the wire over the cowling to hide and used the VHB stick on camera mount to put the camera in the top center of the mouth as far back as possible.

In this location  it shows the top edge of the numberplate, pretty much perfectly aligned.

For the rear, I decided to upto the latest multi view model "as it should be simple"

Warning.. its not as simple as you think!!

Mounting the camera too 3 of us 3 hours on a ramp.. the bumper has to come off to access the camera mount bolts.

Once off, simple job to swap the new camera onto the old mount, it's the same size. 

For the cabling I decided to use the oem cable. The connectors are the same, 5 pin camera end and 6 pin the other end. 

The old camera uses 4 pins. 0v, 12v, vid, vid-gnd. The new ones adds a 5th pin for view change I assume.

Luckily I thought, the cable in the boot has the 5th wire fitted. 

New cameras go direct to the HU ideally. A composite adaptor is available but I think you lose the mode switching.

Going direct means the camera converter box needs to come out (more weight saving.)

So after stripping the rear seat upper, lower, rear screen trim, both headrests out, I could release the rear quarter trim and see the camera box tucked in by the sub. 

Sub comes out easy, and so does the camera box.

I ran the cable from this point forward, there was enough length in the original cable to reach under the carpet alongside the drivers seat. 

I'd hoped I could use the cable that came with the camera to go from here to the HU. But as they have 5 pin one end and 6 pin the other i couldnt. 

2 options from here,  1 cut the plug off and join it to half of the supplied cable , or option 2.

I desoldered the female connector from the camera control box and soldered this to half the supplied cable. This means the original cabling is untouched and I have a connection by the drivers seat under the trim.

1 point of caution, the 5th pin (position 3) from the boot end of the cable appears at position 6 at the end by the sub/seat. 

This needs to be in position 3 at the headunit end. I made this change in the extension  cable so the original wiring still all original.

The extension cable route is following other cables under drivers footwell carpet up behind the a pillar trim past the speaker crossover through the dash to the headunit.

With all that done,  all that was left was to buy the loom side connector from RS and fit this to the loom supplied with the headunit and add a antenna splitter for FM/DAB I went passive as it was avaliable quicker, but I could really do with an active one as signal is a bit marginal.

After all this, I have a working sub, and headunit with the latest functionality of a new car. The improved reversing camera and front camera are well worth it!

Despite the work involved, I'd really recommend this upgrade.

 

[randomusername]

Thanks for the great post!

I've just fitted the same HU in my new (to me) 400, replacing the factory Alpine 990 Nav unit - the fitment is a lot more straightforward in a 4xx series car - for anyone else going down this route:

I didn't take the glovebox out - just removed the plastic surround around the radio (pull towards you)

You can reuse the plastic brackets that mount the head unit into the dashboard. The 990 is double DIN all of the way back and has 4 screws each side, the 705 is single DIN apart from the screen. I just used the bottom mounting screws and made sure the bracket was on 'square' before tightening them up. 

The GPS receiver puck from the 990 has a different connector to the 705. I tucked the old cable out of the way and used the supplied 705 puck. I stuck it to the top of the receiver as there's not a lot to block the signal above it (just the switches). It's probably not recommended but it's easy and seems to work alright

To reuse the factory reversing camera you need an adaptor - I believe it's https://www.alpine.co.uk/p/Products/SingleView/kwe-cam1d but I'm waiting on one to be delivered to confirm. 

The factory fit handsfree mic appears to work, even though it's got a stereo 3.5mm connector compared to the 705 being supplied with a mic with a mono connector. It picks up phone voice commands well enough, but I've not tested it on a call when driving to check the quality 

The gap in the plastic piece you pulled off right at the beginning of fitment probably is too small for the screen on the 705. I had to carefully sand off approx 1mm all the way round to get it to clear the new screen. It appears that there may be a factory fascia available with a slightly larger aperture (https://www.bellandcolvill.co.uk/product?qs=1&MAK=1&MDL=47&TBL=12780&SMA=0&SMO=0&ST=&SC=0&PBID=1092646) but sanding isn't too complex, just time consuming...

I hope that helps someone further down the line

[grog]

I'm glad the info was useful. 

My facia fitted perfectly to the 705 radio front, I didn't fit the alpine supplied trim round the screen.

For the camera I had to run the direct wires up to the head unit for switching the modes with the later multi mode camera.

If reusing the original camera the adaptor will be needed. If you have any trouble let me know. I have the connectors needed to make up that adaptor for you.

 

[randomusername]

I think the 400 has a slightly different fascia setup - the Alpine supplied trims don't seem to be used on any models, but there's a faux trim surround moulded into the fascia itself, which needs sanding back a bit...

Hopefully there's a camera adaptor turning up today or tomorrow, but if I run into any problems I'll let you know - thanks for the offer

Next plan is to get the startup logo updated with a Lotus one - but the Alpine logo generator online seems to generate an error every time I have tried it  

Edited January 4, 2023 by randomusername

[grog]

ah, i haven't braved up to even looking at the startup logo. 

 

[randomusername]

I tried the logo creator (https://cbc-configurator.alpine-europe.com/logo/) a few times over the past few days and it kept throwing up errors..

Tried it just now and it's worked fine, so guess it was hung over from the new year  

[Anthony Edward]

I'm reviving this thread because I just bought a 2010 Evora with a single DIN unit and I'd like to upgrade to a double DIN.
(1) How easy is it to remove the plastic 'case' that is under the single DIN unit; and

(2) would a standard Pioneer or JVC double DIN be plug-and-play?

I'm not (at the moment) interested in removing all the trim to add a DAB antenna or cameras. I might add a mic below the sun visor but that should be easy.

 

Edited February 27, 2023 by Anthony Edward

[Jose]

On 04/01/2023 at 01:30, grog said:

I'm glad the info was useful. 

My facia fitted perfectly to the 705 radio front, I didn't fit the alpine supplied trim round the screen.

For the camera I had to run the direct wires up to the head unit for switching the modes with the later multi mode camera.

If reusing the original camera the adaptor will be needed. If you have any trouble let me know. I have the connectors needed to make up that adaptor for you.

 

Hi!

I just fitted the 705D to replace my INE-W990HDMI (Evora 400), did a straight swap with the previous Alpine loom, everything works perfect except the camera. I fitted the Alpine RCA adaptor, but the unit doesn´t detect the camera. I´m wondering if the harness fitted in my car is missing any connection needed for the camera...

I ordered the fascia for the "premium head unit", as the old one is too small for the 705D

On 04/01/2023 at 14:41, grog said:

ah, i haven't braved up to even looking at the startup logo. 

 

 

On 04/01/2023 at 15:22, randomusername said:

I tried the logo creator (https://cbc-configurator.alpine-europe.com/logo/) a few times over the past few days and it kept throwing up errors..

Tried it just now and it's worked fine, so guess it was hung over from the new year  

This is the one I used for the 705D, looks quite ok.

[grog]

For the camera, I also couldn't get it working at first. 

It needs to be enabled in one of the menu's,  some kind of setup/install menu from memory

[Jose]

Thanks! I will try to find out in the settings then, I will post pictures if I do.

[Jose]

Hi!, today I finally had time to check it, and yes, it´s just a simple setting on the head unit that comes disabled by default😅. Thanks Grog for the info.