Small update from me:

Spent a a few hours in the good weather (starting to become summer here in norway now, nice and warm :-) ) inside my car today.

I wanted to go over my wiring to the head unit, checking every connections and to make sure nothing seemed foobar connected. At the same time I tapped the orange cable from the HU plug into the red power cable from the harness to get illumination on buttons to work (tip: found on internett and confirmed by Eonon). This worked great, the orange cable is a bit short, so I extended the red power wire with a cut of the extra harness I got in the package.

http://test.nilsdahl.net/bmw/mod1.jpg
Testing the solution

http://test.nilsdahl.net/bmw/mod2.jpg
Made it permanent with proper 3 way "wire connectors", finished of with some tape

Fired up by the illumination success I decided to make the installation permanent and went for adapting the cage to the GA5166 unit.
This involved some more cutting, so after some 3x measurments. I cutted out the rest and I went from this:

http://test.nilsdahl.net/bmw/mod3.jpg

to this:

http://test.nilsdahl.net/bmw/mod4.jpg

Test fitted it, now the unit slided straight in to the correct position. And the unit really locked itself solid and tight to the correct position, was difficult to get it out again. Better this way than having a rattling HU in my dash. (FYI: I did not installed the brackets, the unit sits so tight, that I going try with this for sometime.)

http://test.nilsdahl.net/bmw/mod5.jpg

The HU form factor fit almost perfect into the interior, edging nicely with side trims and the top vents. If I would be super critcal, I would say the front curve could have been a few more degrees lesser. However I'm pleased and happy that my "budget" gambled paid of so far.

More pictures here for you to enjoy.

http://test.nilsdahl.net/bmw/boot.jpg
Booting up

http://test.nilsdahl.net/bmw/mod6.jpg
Stock radio app

http://test.nilsdahl.net/bmw/mod7.jpg
CoPilot navigation

http://test.nilsdahl.net/bmw/mod8.jpg
Live norwegian kids tv, via Airplay from my iphone

Here is some more picture of how it fits in the car interiorwise (correct word?):
http://test.nilsdahl.net/bmw/mod9.jpg
Drivers view

http://test.nilsdahl.net/bmw/mod10.jpg
Close up

http://test.nilsdahl.net/bmw/mod11.jpg
All 4 corners are nice and tight

http://test.nilsdahl.net/bmw/mod12.jpg
Night view, not is not dark at 17hour here :-) . I parked the car in garage to test the illumination and setup the correct "orange" color on the backlight .

Things left on my todo list now is:

- Improve the radio reception
- Install 3G/4G dongle. Discovered that this is best with a "Rear USB cable" connected (email sent to Eonon), was not in the package.
( this usb cable is not same as the ipod/generic usb cable provided)
- Install bluetooth ODB2 gadet (ordered from ebay, waiting for it...)
- Upgrade to Kitkat 4.4.4 and start tweaking on the OS itself to suit me personal needs.

Cheers
FxSlin

Wow. Thanks for doing all of this. It is nice to see a detailed alternative for an aftermarket player.

Brilliant! Sounds like an Android unit is the ideal one for the IT savvy folks. Might just get the eonon GA5165 (3 series version of your GA5166) for my e92 335i. I'd be keen to hear about your customizations and how that bluetooth OBD2 reader works out.

Thanks for this! I'd love to update my headunit and the idea of a backup cam is awesome because I do a lot of towing.

Small update here regarding the poor radio reception issue on the Eonon GA5166.
After trying all possibilties and solutions I could think of with the provided Fakra radio cable. I decided to go ahead with next option and ordered a Metra 40-EU55 from a local provider.

Once arrieved I replaced the Fakra cable that came along with the unit, with the new one. And YES, now I got crystal clear reception and could recieve all the radio stations I had with stock radio (MID).

So if you strungle with poor radio reception, this could be a possible solution for you. But leave the blue power wire disconnected.

I went from this:

http://www.xoutpost.com/members/fxsl...1-img-3980.jpg

To this:

http://www.xoutpost.com/members/fxsl...2-img-3977.jpg


A side note - looks like Eonon is following this thread:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?...4128701&type=3

thx for all these updates ,you should get some credit from eonon for all your hard work you are doing for them ;)

Thats true!! They should send me the new GA5166F :-) But I can't really take credit for this, since most of the info is found online. It's just scattered around, what I've done is merely to collect the info/solutions to this thread.

However I would expect my challenges/solutions can be applied to many of these cheaper head units. As I have discovered that most of these units is made by same producer (they have same HW parts and configuration).

As I now start to get HW working fine, I'm off to the fun part. To start tweaking the software and play with the unit.

I installed an "Erisin" headunit in my E39 about 3 years ago and installation was plug and play, however it now keeps resetting itself when trying to listen to music via micro sd card or usb (keeps turning off and going back to first song), also every time I turn the car off, it cycles to the next menu item when I turn it back on (e.g - jumps from radio to SD card). When I first installed the Erisin I was impressed by the improvement in sound quality over the stock business radio. I suspect the current problem is a dry solder joint. I will endeavour to fix when I get the E53 next week.

I was looking at putting an Android aftermarket unit in my E53 and looked at the Eonon units. I am impressed that you get delivery to Norway in 5 days. It takes 4-5 weeks to get delivery from Hong Kong to Australia.

How do you find the difference in sound quality over the stock system?

weird to me that all the pics on page 2 of the thread show up but not the ones on page 1. hmmm.


lol, but then you gotta wonder if they are taking your comments to heart or just shamelessly ripping the pics for publicity.

oh this guy really wanted instructions? ok, lets make instructions...NOT! hahaha

oh, our factory antenna cable sucks? ok, lets include a better one....NOT! hahaha

oh yeah, did your unit come with gps maps on a memory card? if not, how/where are you going to download them?

Regarding the Erisin, it sounds more like a software issue than hardware issue. Have you Tried to do a factory reset? ( make sure to backup any data u want to keep first )

Australia, nice! I lived and worked in Brisbane for 5 years. Back then my dd was a red soft top Jeep Wrangler TJ. Loved to drive it in the outback, 4WD parks and Moreton island. Simple but tough car :-)

Regarding the sound quality I don't really hear any difference, however I listen mostly on radio. The only thing I noticed is that the volume level increments on the volume knob was smaller on the stocks radio. So that was better on the stock MID, easier to find a decent volume level.


The pics are behaving bad yes. I'll need to look into that once again.

Regarding using the pics from this thread, they can do as they want. As long the credit goes right and they link back to this thread. (So this forum get the credit, after all it was here I found most of the tips&tricks)

But yes, I agree the antenna part was a bit downer. Had to spend time and money to resolve this issue.

I didn't get a memory card with gps software, this I knew wasn't included. However I wanted to use favorite GPS software anyway (from play market), which I had on my previous GPS solution. Google maps was installed tough.