Now I'm mystified. I checked, and yes indeed I can adjust bass and treble. But I am almost sure that I couldn't do so while driving at some point in the past. I think I checked it more than once. My mind must be slipping. In any case, thanks for making me check again. I'm happy the feature works while driving since I do use the tone controls frequently.

 

On page 216 there is a settings adjustment for aspect ratio adjustment I believe should help. I know my Android Note 4 will change the HDMI mirror based on phone orientation portrait or landscape. a bit annoying but disabling the screen rotation option prevents this from happening.

 

In my question about "aspect ratio," I used the term incorrectly. I was asking about screen orientation, a related idea. iPhones, other than the iPhone 6+, cannot display the home screen in landscape orientation, only in portrait. After doing further reading, I now know that this cannot be overcome without jailbreaking the phone. The fixed portrait mode for the home screen is a programming decision by Apple, not a hardware limitation. What this means for use in the Fit is that the home screen will appear on the car's head unit in portrait, and it is too small to see well. Many apps have landscape capability, so they will fill the screen. I think Google maps does, but I don't recall at the moment. For an app to to truly useful in the Fit, it will need to have a landscape orientation mode. Since the touch screen in the Fit cannot communicate with the iPhone, I suppose the fact that the iPhone's home screen is locked in portrait doesn't really matter much. Home screen is of little interest. So the limitation is only a minor frustration.

 

Ahh that makes sense. Yeah a minor annoyance for sure, but can be worked around.

 

Unfortunately the HDMI input isn't perfect, even when it is working all the time. The resolution from my iPhone is a little weird, and the colors seem off for some reason (although it could be due to the image scaling going on). This is one of the topics I'm interested in working on later on. If anyone is interested, I think that the resolution of the display is 800x480 (WVGA), which is a 5:3 aspect ratio.

Also, I did some more testing with my prototype last night and I was able to disable the speed-lockout of the features on the head unit. I had to modify another CAN data frame to do so. Unfortunately, I believe this will disable the speed-sensitive volume control of the unit, but I'd say that's a minor inconvenience.

Interestingly enough, if I only modify the CAN frame with the shifter position so that the car thinks its in park permanently, HDMI is still disabled if the car is moving at any speed! Works great in the driveway though . This is what motivated me to change the speed value. Once I did that, everything works as expected - HDMI and all of the features are enabled while driving!

Next week I am going to get another one-day subscription to the Honda service website and look into the wiring differences between the models. If it's easy, I want this device to work on any of them! I think I will have a problem with the Navi models however, since the nav system requires the speed input to calculate the car's position. I doubt that's much of a problem since we want this for Google Maps, right??

 

You can adjust the HDMI color matching within the diagnostics menu. I dont remember exactly where its located, but I shall make a video how to get to it. Quite simple really.

No love loss here for that! I dont need something to raise my volume at highway speeds, i do that myself already!

BOOYA!

Agreed!!! its most certainly an inferior product.


On a side note, curious, in your travels with the B-CAN and F-CAN decoding. Did you find any signal code that would somehow tell the ECM to shut down? Disable the starter, etc? I've heard big brother has used the GPS receiver to send such commands to disable vehicles if you are late on your car payments.

 

Would it not be possible to take the data coming in and create a relay that would enable the stock back-up camera and lane watch on an aftermarket head units?
Seems like a device like that would have a wider appeal and there wouldn't be the worry of legal ramifications.

 

Hi guys, I think there has been a wiring kit developed so that we can use hdmi and usb video while driving. People have already been posting videos of them using iPhone mirroring and using waze while driving..

 

Easier said than done. Both the cameras are tied to the B-CAN of the car. what you suggest requires a great deal of programing to interface an aftermarket HU with the stock OEM CANBUS network. Ideally you would need to directly connect the backup and lanewatch camera to the headunit for it to accept input based on the reverse light signal and right turn signal. Lets not forget that the dynamic backup guidelines are operated by a steering angle sensor connected to the B-CAN processed by the control modules.

You have any examples? I've searched and found nothing here in the US.

 

Hey everyone, time for me to come out of the shadows and say hello. I've been helping ductapemaster on figuring some of the CAN stuff out behind the scenes via email and working another software based path of solving this problem. I'm slowly working multiple other attacks avenues here:
1. Modifying the firmware (probably not very easy at all), I'm not even sure if I can get it at this point without risking bricking the HU.
2. Replicating a mirrorlink connection by looking how a valid app does it (I have a decent plan and some small initial progress on this method).
3. Understanding the hondalink app unlock code and using this with other inputs. (I have a plan for this, but buying everything to try it will cost $200+ so I haven't wanted to go there).

I'm looking for people who
- can help me acquire the HU firmware
- specialize in Android app coding and security (especially if you have worked with MirrorLink)
- have the hardware necessary to sniff bluetooth connections

If this is you, please contact me on twitter @JHub908 or by private message on the board here.

 

My electronics background is limited in coding, though I understand a lot of it.(C++, SQL, etc) All my tools are oriented towards SMD rework and diagnostic. Through hole components too.

Your Item#3 I know you are trying to avoid due to the cost, however, what i can do is make a donation to the cause. I could pledge $20 via Paypal to work towards it. If we get a few other people to contribute I'm sure that could help offset the cost for you. The hope and expectation would be to see some sort of result from the research (positive or negative) would be seen. I almost lose $20 in poker every weekend with the guys so I'll chock it up to a one time expense for a good cause that I'd like to see to completion, at the very least some vigorous development/discovery on.

 

I appreciate the offers for money, but at this point since I have absolutely no idea what to expect out I don't think I want to go that way yet. If at some point in the future I'm more certain that cash is the only thing holding me back perhaps I'd investigate the option.

Some clarification, for the Hondalink method, I would need...

- Hardware to sniff Bluetooth connections ($120) - I'm ok buying this since I can use it for other projects later.
- An Apple lightning to HDMI adapter ($50) - Great if it works, perhaps not wasted money if I ultimately go with the custom hardware route instead.
- And an app that shows something on the screen that uses Hondalink I can reverse engineer traffic for.

The app is my holdup, and I have a question on this, will the aha radio app give me what I need here? Or will I need to buy that garbage $60 navigation app? I haven't been able to test it since I haven't bought the HDMI adapter yet.

Another question, how sure are we that bluetooth is involved in "unlocking" the screen for the Hondalink apps, is it possible that it's done over USB? If so, I would need different hardware for analyzing that and don't want to make an expensive mistake.

 

Sounds fair!


AHA I don't have any experience with. I'd imagine it operates similar to Pandora. there is no HDMI functionality with either of these programs. You may wind up having to purchase the shitty HondaLink navi app. :-(

Ducktapemaster should hopefully be able to answer this. My initial assumption would be yes. There is no mention of the USB being required for the navi app to work. There is a Hondalink launcher app that generates the authentication (assuming via bluetooth) and unlocks the HDMI input on the HU.

Let me know if I can be of further help!

Bass

 

Hello Ductapemaster, everyone,
I've got the 2015 CR-V with navigation. My car doesn't care about the parking brake or the shifter. It's lockout is strictly speed based. And that is through the CAN bus. I experimented one day. I don't have an accurate wiring diagram, so I pulled out Head Unit connectors one at a time. When I pulled out what must have been the CAN connector, I got locked out at any speed, parked or not. The GPS antenna was still plugged in and functioning. So I know the lockout is CAN based and not GPS. The Honda Nav is not the nicest, but if I can have my wife use the GPS while I drive I guess I'd get by. Honda says drivers can use the voice commands while driving, but they are awful! The voice menu is overly cumbersome and it often doesn't understand me. I had been using a Garmin and with it I can use either direct input or voice commands. And the Garmin voice system is fantastic! Anyhow, I've got some experience with Arduinos. I'd think your microprocessor solution would be the way to go. It would unlock all the functions and preserve some of the nicer features. I'm willing to support the effort. If you need some test data on a car with Nav I can help. If you are willing to share your circuit design and code I can buy, build and test it on my car.
Thanks,

 

This looks awesome! I have some concerns about this method, maybe you could address them.

It looks as though the chip you are installing reads ALL the CAN bus data and passes everything through, only changing the vehicle speed items. What would happen if this chip malfunctioned/died and stopped passing that info through? Would the head unit stop receiving all the bus info, and what would that mean for normal operation of the car?

Thanks in advance for your reply and your work on this; I would LOVE to be able to have useful apps displayed on the screen.

 

Hey guys, I live! Sorry for being quiet for so long - I was overseas for 4 weeks on business.

The good news is I have ordered some custom PCBs for my prototype hardware! They should be arriving in just over a week. I appreciate all of the interest in this project and I can't wait to start putting things together in a more useful form for everyone.

Yes, this is possible. I may look into this in the future if there is enough interest, but for now it would require a lot more custom hardware as there are multiple communication lines for the cameras (not just BCAN).

If this chip 'dies' and stops passing data, little is lost. You can operate the car normally with no head unit (I drove around a lot like this). Obviously there is the possibility of a total failure, like shorting the BCAN lines, which could be more catastrophic. I've actually accidentally done this before and it was weird. The horn started blaring and the car wouldn't unlock with the remote (presumably because the safety system wasn't getting the right signals).

We're playing with things we aren't supposed to touch, so I won't say its without its risks. However, the failure modes should be relatively sane barring some electrical short.

 

UPDATE: PCBs have been shipped to me as of this morning! I am getting 6 custom boards in. I just ordered all of the parts yesterday, so by mid-next week I should be having an assembly party.

If you look closely, you can see some issues with via sizes and spacing, but I think everything will be OK. I screwed up when I submitted the boards - I forgot to run the design rules check file for the board house, so some things got resized automatically, resulting in the weird spacing and whatnot. Things to fix in V1.1


V1.0 board top


V1.0 board bottom

Also, on another note, I have some additional thoughts on a "failsafe" for the device, as per the discussion in my post above. I'm going to put a couple miniature relays on the board which, when power is disconnected, will make the device electrically "invisible" to the car. Basically, they will just short the CAN lines and the other two signals across the board and the head unit will be connected directly back to the car.

I think that this will help alleviate some possible failure modes.

 

Awesomeness!

 

You're incredible! How can we get in line to purchase a kit?

I'll call "dibs," if thats all it takes!

Sign me up

 

I'll be putting together a poll to gather interest in the next few weeks, assuming my hardware checkouts go well!

I will need to do some checkouts on other trim levels as well before I start putting together kits. Once I have some pieces of working hardware I will begin to address that.