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  #61  
Old 09-16-2020, 04:56 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sunny_j View Post
It's been awesome! Only complaint is it lacks a light sensor other than that it's been flawless. I bought a GPS splitter and auxiliary mic.

Here's a video on it
https://youtu.be/c583Bd8Uwk8
This works through your CIC with no problems? Thinking about something similar.
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  #62  
Old 09-16-2020, 12:31 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by eskirvin View Post
This works through your CIC with no problems? Thinking about something similar.
Yes it does
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  #63  
Old 09-16-2020, 09:20 PM
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Actually got so fed up with no light sensor on the Android unit, I added one myself with an arduino. If you are feeling adventurous and have decent soldering skills I could share the details. Alternatively if your device is rooted, there is a byte command you can send from Android to the mcu to adjust the brightness with say tasker or macrodroid. Downside with that is Android has to boot first to control brightness as opposed to instantly with the ldr/arduino setup.
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  #64  
Old 09-16-2020, 09:24 PM
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Yes it is! Pm me your phone number
it says you have exceeded their stored private messages. maybe PM me your number?
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  #65  
Old 09-17-2020, 12:20 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mistercamp View Post
Actually got so fed up with no light sensor on the Android unit, I added one myself with an arduino. If you are feeling adventurous and have decent soldering skills I could share the details. Alternatively if your device is rooted, there is a byte command you can send from Android to the mcu to adjust the brightness with say tasker or macrodroid. Downside with that is Android has to boot first to control brightness as opposed to instantly with the ldr/arduino setup.
Can you please share the arduino method? I'm definitely interested
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  #66  
Old 09-17-2020, 12:21 AM
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Originally Posted by ricksta View Post
it says you have exceeded their stored private messages. maybe PM me your number?
Try again. I can't message new accounts
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  #67  
Old 09-17-2020, 03:56 PM
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Ok, I will try to write up a legible post later tonight. Need to grab some pics/videos.
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  #68  
Old 09-18-2020, 04:42 AM
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Ok, here it goes. So first, as I mentioned, I started with trying to automate the brightness with tasker and time profiles. Since the MCU is what controls the brightness, you need to send serial commands to do so. The unit already has this serial comm, on my particular device is ttyS3. This method did work fine, but requires android to boot before the profile becomes active. Also, there are only 4 brightness options - 33%, 50%, 66%, 100%. This can be accomplished in tasker using the Run Shell task with the following commands

33% brightness:
echo -e "\xf2\x00\x6c\x01\x21\x71" > /dev/ttyS3
50% brightness:
echo -e "\xf2\x00\x6c\x01\x32\x60" > /dev/ttyS3
66% brightness:
echo -e "\xf2\x00\x6c\x01\x42\x50" > /dev/ttyS3
33% brightness:
echo -e "\xf2\x00\x6c\x01\x64\x2e" > /dev/ttyS3

This grew annoying when driving at night time, although I was feeling to lazy to actually do anything about it.

So for the next part of this there are two ways to go about this. One is to use the circuit on the board and control it with the arduino, or alternatively use an external boost converter and control that with an arduino output. I chose the latter. Reasons being I was having some screen flickering and it was slightly too dim during the day. The external boost converter will allow you to up the voltage if desired, and is ideally less prone to damaging anything on the unit.

Credit goes to twoface over on the f30 BP forum, as they detail pretty well how to do the first option. Link is here. I did not personally try this method so cannot speak to how well it works, but I would imagine is just as good as the route I went.

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(photo credit: twoface)

So the output to the black/white connector is what we are needing to control. In my case the screen was dim around 23.5V and bright around 26.5V, although I am boosting it to 27.5-28V as this is more appropriate for daytime and the screen should handle it fine. You will need to measure this voltage on a bench. In the link above the feedback pin is controlled on the headunit, but the same principle applies with external screen power. I chose the 2 pack for $7 on amazon to get the job done. The datasheet for the converter shows pin 5, circled in red, as the feedback.
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The In+/- should be a 12V input coming from somewhere on the board. The potentiometer will need to be adjusted to the output appropriate for your device, in my case 27.5V. If you try to power it up from 12V on the harness the screen will not sleep as it is supposed to and stay on for a while after the car is off. My thought is there is some CAN message received telling the screen to turn off which has now been bypassed. Doesn't really matter as this is pretty easy to fix.

There should be a couple 12V sources on the main board, you may need to probe around for it so be careful. I chose 12V of a pin on the built in converter, circled in blue. I forget which pin I used. Be careful with this chip as it is very small and you could easily short it.
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(photo credit: twoface)

Now that we have all that out of the way we can move to the arduino. I chose the $5 China arduino nano (CH340). You can get a 3 pack for like $13. You will also need some resistors (I used 10K) and an LDR (photoresistor). The analog in doesn't really matter, I used A3. The out however will need to be one of pins 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, or 11 to get a PWM out. I used D10. The 5V will need to be wired to a 5V source within the headunit to power the arduino. I found several that are easy to access and solder to. I used one that had a big pad and no components soldered to it (maybe some sort of test point). You will need to do the same with ground.
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Everything after this is just putting it back together nicely and mounting. I chose to have my boost converter external to the unit in a small box I 3d printed with some wire run inside. The arduino was mounted inside with a sticky pad. The reason for this is the caps on the converter are big and I couldn't get to fit nicely. You may have better luck. The nano fits very nicely inside. You may want to consider running a USB cable from the nano and out of the unit so you don't have to pull it all apart if you need to debug

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5V pad for arduino power

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Nano placement in the headunit. Disregard the glue, it was there to keep strain of the 12V connection on the IC as it was hard to get a good connection.

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Everything put back together. I just put the converter back behind the dash where it won't rattle. The LDR sensor I routed to the empty center speaker since I have the base audio

All in all this works pretty well, much better than how the unit came. I am still playing with my arduino code to get it just right but it is very much usable as is. I will probably add an actual hysteresis instead of just a 3 second delay. Also need to finagle the sketch to compensate for the darkness of the sensor being inside the speaker grill or alternatively find another place to mount the LDR. Haven't decided yet but just minor finessing from here.

Good luck if you try this.
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  #69  
Old 09-18-2020, 05:01 AM
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Here is a video link to see it in action.

Here is a night shot
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Both the picture and video don't pick up the contrast very well, but the night time is spot on with it's brightness level (looks brighter in the image than it really is at night).
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  #70  
Old 09-18-2020, 06:58 PM
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Wow thank you so much for this Mistercamp
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