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Old 20th May 2014, 16:05   #1
RandyRover
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Default HiLine Head Unit replacement ///Avin Avant-2

Hi Guys,

I own my 75 Diesel for 8 years now and have done about 315’000 happy kilometers of driving with it (total odometer reading is 533’500 now!). My car is still in excellent shape (actually never had any problems worth mentioning with it) and since this is such great car I’d like to enjoy for many years more, I’ve decided to give it a great maintenance overhaul and interior uprate!

Other than the more/less standard things like inlet manifold cleaning, PCV valve replacement, intercooler hose & O-rings replacement I repaired the
IPK message center display,
LED panels in the interior lights
HiLine navigation replacement with the AVIN Avant-2 Android navigation head unit with rear view camera.

On the first two topics I prepared a How-To and in this thread I’m going to share with you my first impressions on the AVIN unit. Later I will add some short videos about this unit.

Unit fits very well in the dash (after cutting off both ‘ears’ on the unit’s sides, that are required only for BMW fitting; top screws are an exact fit) and runs very smoothly. The display is nicely big (7”!!!) very crisp and bright! The buttons and knobs feel high quality, much better than the original unit where the selection knob was about the weakest point of the original HiLine headunit.

The AVIN Avant-2 is a state-of-the-art CarPC, offering (analogue)Radio, CD, DVD, SD, USB and iPod playback, Internet access, offline navigation functionality, optional rear view camera and OBD diagnostic info connectivity (through optional OBD-bluetooth module).

The Avant-2 is equipped with a 1GHz Dual-Core processor, 1Gb of RAM, comes with Android 4.1.1, built in WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth. I was impressed with the display quality, which has a 1024x600 resolution and the best of all: a multi-touch capacitive touch-screen which responds quickly and precisely.
Internet can be obtained via WiFi (at home) or through a WiFi/Bluetooth connection to a mobile phone while driving. Optionally a USB 3G modem can be connected.

The sound quality seems to have improved quite a bit compared to the factory fitted radio. The unit produces a sound that is much more open and more detailed and works very well with the car’s factory fitted Harman/Kardon Amplifier and subwoofer. However, a slight hiss/hum through the car speakers is noticeable, even with the engine off, which disappears when muting the unit’s output. It is not disturbing when listening to music or when driving but its noticeable while sitting in the car with the head unit on while not listening to music. This will need some improvement, either by software(update) or adding an extra filter in the power supply.

Radio reception is of good quality and gives slightly better reception than the original factory-fitted radio, where radio reception slowly degraded over time. Setting up favorite stations under the preset buttons is easy. Only noticed a couple of times the radio changed frequency all of a sudden and found that the TA (traffic announcement) option was active, probably causing this change of station. Radio offers same radio functionality as the original radio, 3 times 6 FM presets (FM-1 to FM-3 and 2 times 6 AM presets (AM-1 to AM-2), option to switch to radio station with active traffic info (TA), RDS station name and RDS additional text broadcast. It is nice that the Station Name and Text broadcast are displayed on individual lines allowing for the station name always being visible and scrolling the RDS text display (like “now playing” info or traffic info) on a separate line.

Especially the USB/MicroSD card playback feature is very convenient, it allows up to 64Gb media and up so far this is sufficient to carry my complete music collection. Since I’m an iPhone user I’m very impressed with the iPod connection which charges my iPhone and plays my music on my iPhone through the unit with excellent sound quality.


Back on the Home screen the unit shows the active sound source in a nice and modest way:

The installation process was a more-or-less plug-and-play operation. I only changed the illumination wire in the transparent connector behind the unit in the dash to connect to the car’s illumination wire that is located in the original HiLine harness (The unit comes supplied with two different BMW connectors; I took the long wire from the adapter with the square pinned BWM connector (which we don't need on our cars) and put it on the connector behind the head unit. (details in my yet-to-be-posted Installation manual)

Since the original radio and video module are located in the boot I had to bring a wiring loom from the front into the boot. I’d done this before for my Parrot handsfree set, which I could remove from the car now. So I replaced the Parrot wiring with the AVIN loom. Running wires through the car is always a pain, but the whole process can very well be done in a day.

Connected the illumination wire to the car’s illumination wire. Unit’s button illumination nicely comes on with the interior illumination of the car. The amber illumination color is an exact match to the car’s amber interior lighting. (took the picture while driving at night).

When setting the units’ illumination setting to headlight link, the units’ backlight inverter doesn’t seem to like the car’s PWM dim signal and starts blinking. Setting the unit’s illumination setting to time gives a better result, however I have no clue to how to set the times for the backlight to dim (I hope it retrieves info about sunset in the selected timezone). The PWM signal on the illumination wire causes background noise through the car speakers. The frequency of the noise changes with the adjustment of the interior illumination and disappears when selecting full brightness of the interior illumination. Also something that is up for future improvement.

Through the Google PlayStore I could choose my preferred navigation software (not included with the unit) and I chose to install Sygic GPS Navigation.

It is a very well developed sophisticated 3-d navigation software with nice features like lane assist and online traffic service.

The output volume level of the radio and navigation software (Sygic) seems to be slightly higher than the volume level of the SD/USB/iPOD sources. At the moment I haven’t found a way to control the output levels of the different sources. It would be nice to have access to some sort of equalizer to correct the output levels of different applications to the users preference. Especially video playback tends to have a lower level output.

I had the auxilary input socket which hosts a USB connector and an AV-in connector included in my order. I've mounted this one inside the cubby box in the position where the auxilary power supply can be mounted. The supplied cables are long enough to feed them into the back of the headunit.

The rearview camera gives a very clear image but finding the right location for installation of this camera on the tourer was not so easy. I’ve decided to mount it near the tow bar and routing the cable out from the boot towards behind the rear bumper is fairly easy. I made a custom stainless steel bracket for this and fitted the camera to that bracket. Electrical connections needed for the camera like power and reverse detection are all present on the wiring of the original navigation computer.

A neat feature is to download Torque, an app that connects to the ECU via the diagnostics port through an optional OBD bluetooth dongle. Torque enables us to perform some basic diagnostics on the cars' engine ECU as well as display several sensor data used for engine management. Also Torque can replace some of the onboard computer features that were specific to the HiLine system.

To be conclusive, I’m very impressed with the touch screen quality, resolution and responsiveness to operating the touch screen. The unit gives a high quality look-and-feel and is a solid good replacement for the original HiLine SatNav system.

Unique is the feature that the unit is ready for use even before I've turned the key to start the car! It pairs automatically with my iPhone when it is in reach and resumes playback from the last used source automatically.

The Android operating system is not as robust as Apple's IOS but offers great flexibility. I've been in contact with AVIN USA about the reported issues that are up for improvement and a software update is about to be released end of this month. I'll keep you updated as I'm gaining more experience with this promising unit!

Please note that I've put an anti-glare screen protector on (3 pieces came free with the unit), which makes the screen look a bit faded on my photos. In reality its readability is very good, even in bright sunlight. The screen protectors take away the glare the screen may have under sunny daylight conditions.

Last edited by RandyRover; 20th May 2014 at 17:41..
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Old 20th May 2014, 16:06   #2
RandyRover
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Default Some short videos about the unit

Space reserved for future posting of the videos to keep them together
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Old 20th May 2014, 16:21   #3
versus
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Nice unit! It looks similar to Navall. How much is it?
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Old 20th May 2014, 17:38   #4
RandyRover
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It's about 800 USD, with free shipping to your address. Not the cheapest, I know, but for what I could find on my search for a OEM looking in-car PC promising the best-value-for-money! Let me know if you're interested in this unit!
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Old 20th May 2014, 18:18   #5
versus
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Rover 75 V6 Auto, 2000 year

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Quote:
Originally Posted by RandyRover View Post
It's about 800 USD, with free shipping to your address. Not the cheapest, I know, but for what I could find on my search for a OEM looking in-car PC promising the best-value-for-money! Let me know if you're interested in this unit!
I'm not interested. I have Navall unit with android from last year, very good unit
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