Rav4 59 Plate Dab Radio Conversion

[charlieboy]

Does any one know how much it costs to convert a radio on my 59 plate Rav4, to Digital. The radio has already got a push button on it for DAB but it does not work ?

[shcm]

It won't. You'll need this adapter which plugs into the existing radio (also an idea on price in link):

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/TOYOTA-RAV4-GENUINE-DAB-RADIO-TUNER-/250749233414?pt=UK_CarsParts_Vehicles_CarParts_SM&hash=item3a61d1a906

[bothwell_buyer]

I fitted a new head unit together with a DAB unit onto one of my RAVs just recently... so thats a 1994 model caught up to date

[crofter]

It won't. You'll need this adapter which plugs into the existing radio (also an idea on price in link):

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/TOYOTA-RAV4-GENUINE-DAB-RADIO-TUNER-/250749233414?pt=UK_CarsParts_Vehicles_CarParts_SM&hash=item3a61d1a906

Surely there are other/cheaper options shcm, to hook up to Toyota's CD changer.

This is not a statement,but a seeking of opinion

Del

[bothwell_buyer]

My whole set up cost a good bit less than £400 and it gave me DAB; ipod control; handfree mobile phone and a range of other connections. The DAB bit was less than £100 all in.

[crofter]

My whole set up cost a good bit less than £400 and it gave me DAB; ipod control; handfree mobile phone and a range of other connections. The DAB bit was less than £100 all in.

That sounds(gedit?) better.

Cheers

Del

[abraxas]

Aye. I have been trying to talk shcm into designing and building us a simple AUX interface that just channels the incoming signal through the amp/speakers. 'bout time we put his immense knowledge to use. :)

So, shall we add DAB source inegration to the list, then ?

See, mate, when you procrastinate the specification creeps

Seriously though... 400 quid!!! For what is basically a tuner, the rest of it is already there the amp n'all... Damn, I remember stretching a length of wire and putting together a few components to create an basic radio tuner in school.

400 quid!?

[Big Kev]

Aye. I have been trying to talk shcm into designing and building us a simple AUX interface that just channels the incoming signal through the amp/speakers. 'bout time we put his immense knowledge to use. :)

So, shall we add DAB source inegration to the list, then ?

See, mate, when you procrastinate the specification creeps

Seriously though... 400 quid!!! For what is basically a tuner, the rest of it is already there the amp n'all... Damn, I remember stretching a length of wire and putting together a few components to create an basic radio tuner in school.

400 quid!?

aye....those were the days when we all sat round a candle.....if it got really cold we lit it.....

Take it from one of yer Naim / Linn vinyl heids....no way would ah pay that to put in a momo car !!!!

Big Kev

[shcm]

Surely there are other/cheaper options shcm, to hook up to Toyota's CD changer.

That does connect to the "CD Changer" input. Charlie (you don't own Cornwall do you? ) was asking about the DAB label on his radio and that how it activates. Otherwise, go buy a Pure DAB Highway or something else or similar

My whole set up cost a good bit less than £400 and it gave me DAB; ipod control; handfree mobile phone and a range of other connections. The DAB bit was less than £100 all in.

So are you going to tell the Ladies and Gents what it is, or is it a secret?

That sounds(gedit?) better.

Unfortunately, yes I did :D.

Aye. I have been trying to talk shcm into designing and building us a simple AUX interface that just channels the incoming signal through the amp/speakers. 'bout time we put his immense knowledge to use. :)

So, shall we add DAB source inegration to the list, then ?

See, mate, when you procrastinate the specification creeps

Well, it is already in hand. The major bits of silicon are already purchased. Although it's a bit more than a simple AUX interface.

I've got more and more disappointed with DAB to be honest. Had one for years. It was good to begin with, but then to squeeze in more stations (that are not long term commercially viable, because they are all competing for the same advertising revenue), they drop the bit rate meaning at present FM still sounds better. Then a lot of the "new" stations disappear and you are left with nothing particularly great in my opinion. Maybe "Planet Rock" is one exception and things like "Classic FM" sounds better on FM. Maybe the local selections are better elsewhere compared to round here. Rant over.

Anyway, kind of got me a bit interested, so a bit of googling/surfing while I eat my sarnies. Frontier Silicon http://www.frontier-silicon.com/index.htm seem to have a large market for producing DAB modules that go in most radios. Don't expect they would sell or send even me samples - not my section of the industry. Other alternatives - buy a cheap radio like one from Tesco and strip out the module. Possible module protocol comms headaches with that approach. This looks OK:

http://www.coolapplab.com/ultimate_computer_dab_fm_radio_unit_usb_stick_windows_car_pc_centrafuse_ride_road_runner_frontier_silicon_venice_verona/index.html

Pity it is not a bit cheaper. Looks like it talks reasonably easy serial stuff. Aimed at PC use (USB), but my planned hardware uses a LPC1768 microcontroller, so USB host would probably be OK from that. So connection (with a bit of software) to my planned module, might be possible.

Anyway, the RAV will probably have turned to dust by the time I get around to doing finishing all this. Allegedly I have a day job to keep down, plus 1001 one other things to do. So, If you want to speed this up a bit just provide:

• About six months salary - I'm cheap compared with some and maybe work will let me take a sabbatical (Fat chance)
  
• Nurse to care for apparently increasingly frail OAP (I'm thinking of "Young Mr Grace" type nurses from "Are You Being Served" )
  
• Chef
  
• Bog Cleaner
  
• RAV Cleaner and polisher (to my own exacting standards)
  
• Somebody to post s*ite on TOC for me
  
• er.....Gardener, Garden will have erupted again within six months
  
• 994 other things I haven't thought of.......
  

I remember stretching a length of wire and putting together a few components to create an basic radio tuner in school.

Components? Damm luxury. A piece of rusty drain pipe should do the job.

Don't know why I'm posting this, will go over a lot of people's heads I expect. Yeah, so you lot, just go grease your nipples or something (If you have any to grease).

.....Ah, "Nipple greaser", add that to the list ;)

[crofter]

ssssssssssssssooooooooooooooooooooo far over my head its leaving a vapour trail in the stratosphere

What a can of worms has been opened here

I might qualify as the bog cleaner tho.

Anyone else up for helping out here in shcm,s six months of need

[abraxas]

Cool. I made it almost t o the third paragraph be fore I got completely lost. And seeing how I got the mother of all colds I am well proud of that. In fact, I'd give myself a good pat on the back, but that makes me cough. :)

I never thought of DAB like that but that is a really good point about the same revenue stream being split between increasing number of stations, making the expansion unprofitable for all. And I also agree on the choice of station. It is Alice Cooper on Planet Rock in the morning that would almost justify the outlay. Plus, to be honest, I don't really _listen_ to the radio when I am driving. I seem to be constantly pressing the "next station" button. Someone once told me that to men it is not important what is on the channel we are watching/listening. What is important is what is on all the other channels. With my goldfish-sized attention span, I am defintely a subscriber to that theory.

oooh, look, shiny thing! :)

That USB thingy looks cool, if only I had me a car-puter. :) I like how the new RAVs come with an AUX and you can also put in a USB port if you wanted. MAybe I should just trade my one in and plump up another 10k... missuz'd love that idea.

[Despite being quite "corned beef" (Kev will translate the Scots rhyming slang)] someone once bought me a projects book for, amongst other things, a guitar distortion "pedal". Which I proudly built myself. Improved the way my playing sounded no-end too. OK, I had to delegate the etching of the PCB to someone else, but I did everything else. Now that is about as good as it gets, so my help would be marginal at best. :)

Now a-greasin' things, on the other hand...

[shcm]

And seeing how I got the mother of all colds I am well proud of that. In fact, I'd give myself a good pat on the back, but that makes me cough. :)

Well get well soon! (I'll send round the Young Mr Grace/Benny Hill Nurses if you like ;) - If your misses doesn't mind ).

I never thought of DAB like that but that is a really good point about the same revenue stream being split between increasing number of stations, making the expansion unprofitable for all.

I actually think it is the same to some extent with digital telly and not enough quality programmes as a result, but I better not start on that rant!

[bothwell_buyer]

Aye. I have been trying to talk shcm into designing and building us a simple AUX interface that just channels the incoming signal through the amp/speakers. 'bout time we put his immense knowledge to use. :)

So, shall we add DAB source inegration to the list, then ?

See, mate, when you procrastinate the specification creeps

Seriously though... 400 quid!!! For what is basically a tuner, the rest of it is already there the amp n'all... Damn, I remember stretching a length of wire and putting together a few components to create an basic radio tuner in school.

400 quid!?

should have explained that the cost was absolutely everything apart from the Speakers. The amp etc from the old unit got stuffed into the garage. The reception on the DAB radio is good even in the hollows where the FM didn't receive much. The wee box that is the DAB receiver/tuner was a good make and was less than £100 - the rest cost £299 I think.

[bothwell_buyer]

I'll need toi get the car back - its on loan - so I can rember the make !! haha !

[abraxas]

Well get well soon! (I'll send round the Young Mr Grace/Benny Hill Nurses if you like ;) - If your misses doesn't mind ).

ooo-err. Thanks, but I think that the missuz may object somewhat. :)

Well, it is already in hand. The major bits of silicon are already purchased. Although it's a bit more than a simple AUX interface.

Do tell us a bit more, then. :)

I am bored senseless sitting at home and watching constant re-runs of "how stuff's made"; And I don't dare to change channel as I may stumble upon neds shouting at me in whatever replaced that orange man Kilroy(?). So I can afford to look things I don't understand up on t'internet. That'll be a larf, I can start by a-googlin' word-by-word. :)

I noticed you had fings connected to other fings when you fixed that SatNav unit for Vikki. [in the thread which I just spent an hour trying to find, but got nowhere. I hate this search facility.] And it seemed to be working rather well there. Is it going to be "backwards compatible" for the poor cousins with a non-SatNav headunit? :) Obviously, I was going to suggest economies-of-scale :) Making one or two is not that different bulk buying / spreading the cost of parts, etc ... :)

Furthermore to my hatred of search facility, what is going on with this forum? Keeps logging me out every couple of minutes and if I clik on any links it opens a new tab and goes to target URL in both original and the new tab. That is a bit useless, innit? :!Removed!: This happens on IE (I just installed IE9 Beta and it happens there too. Didn't try with Firefox.

[abraxas]

should have explained that the cost was absolutely everything apart from the speakers. The amp etc from the old unit got stuffed into the garage. The reception on the DAB radio is good even in the hollows where the FM didn't receive much. The wee box that is the DAB receiver/tuner was a good make and was less than £100 - the rest cost £299 I think.

My fault, Bothy. My comment was in relation to that eBay listing for the tuner-box only. 400 for the lot sounds much better. I would have thoght that about 50 -> 100 would be reasonable for the DAB tuner seeing that the same component is used in most sub-50 "portable" DAB radios. Except you don't need to manufacture the PSU, amp, Speakers, "front-end"/ user interface, etc...

" 369.51 quid!? "...just doesn't carry the same gravitas does it?

[shcm]

I'll expand on it a bit later, maybe today - must get back to work.

You're right about the search facility. It's ****. Well, perhaps quirky at best. I find very often straight to google will pick stuff I want up off TOC, better than TOC's search.

[abraxas]

Here we go! Free ...ummm... fings: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=2119.0

Says me, nonchallantly passing a tentative link to a "microcontroller" and "USB" for actual knowledge. :)

No idea what it does, I was just looking up your microcontroller you mentioned and came across this. Told you I was bored senseless. Any use?

Update: DOH! Expired :( Sorry.

[anchorman]

WTF is DAB? Does it have the Archers on it?

[Davrav]

WTF is DAB? Does it have the Archers on it?

Dunno - can you get the Home service and the Light Programme

[abraxas]

Well, it is, of course, the "Derbyshire Association for the Blind".

Or alternatively: "Limanda limanda", an edible flatfish of the family Pleuronectidae.

:D

That's what you get when you google "DAB -radio" Coz' the obvious answer is so boring ? :)

Whats Archers? :)

[Davrav]

Whats Archers? :)

It's what he drinks when he runs out of Pear cider

[shcm]

Done A Bothy i.e. souped (Cream of Tomato) up a RAV. A DABrav then? Hang on, that's a member in southern most Glocingcestershire.

Right, first let me apologise for the following. It probably belongs on an electronics forum, or something worse, but not here. It is to keep Mr abraxas entertained.

Mr Abraxas is probably going to regret this anyway ;).

Where to start? This latest satnav system is OK, but you can't do things like load music files directly onto the hard-disk. Possibly I could disassemble the head-unit and probe the hard-disk to see if the file format is anything like readable/understandable, but it is not exactly user-friendly for adding more music files.

The satnav has an aux input, but having a dedicated audio unit (like a CD changer or ipod adapter) attached is so much nicer than that, as you can then control the audio source from the head unit keys and do stuff like automatically pause the music if you use and want/get RDS traffic reports. Likewise for the latest RAVs with aux inputs and of course the earlier 4.3s don't have an aux input at all.

There is audio bluetooth streaming available on my satnav unit, but I don't have anything that supports the version of the bluetooth protocol (AVRCP 1.3 and above) which gives full text capability. Also, if I want to hack something myself I've either got to wade through tons of bluetooth spec or base it on something else and there's not a lot of code out there to do that as far as I can see. It is being upgraded slowly in linux. I've streamed music from a laptop, but there is only basic control of the pc from the head-unit and no text display. There are commercial bluetooth stacks for windows which support the correct AVRCP version. So, in some respects going the Toyota "CD changer input" route for an aux box is a bit simpler.

I also want to mix in receive audio from my amateur radio stuff, so that it comes out of the vehicle Speakers.

Nothing really so far that you can't get with a commercial unit. I've also got a load of other ideas to play with though. So, this board will also be a bit of a development play thing.

If I talk about the main microprocessor I intend my "aux adapter" have, it will lead on to most of the other ideas. PIC micros (www.microchip.com), are quite popular with both professional Engineers and hobbyists. I was all set to use a PIC32 micro, but then discovered the mbed site (http://mbed.org/) and the rather nice LPC1768 (http://ics.nxp.com/products/lpc1000/all/~LPC1768/) processor they use. The thing I like about this is I don't have to faff about loading development tools onto a windows PC. I can compile software via their web-based compiler and work on it from anywhere. Plus, there are software libraries for various functions. This can sometimes be more trouble than just writing you own, but it can be useful as well. The LPC1768 is also an "ARM" core processor. ARM effectively grew from Acorn computers and you would be amazed how many ARM based processors are in phones/gadgets and also automotive ECUs. It is a huge percentage, plus they are British!

So, in it's features it has (and what I have ideas to do with them):

• USB capability - Can possibly use this for reading music files off USB based storage devices. i.e. sticks and maybe caddy based harddrives. Also a possible control connection to a in-car netbook PC. Also for controlling USB DAB modules. ;).
  
• Ethernet - Another car PC control possibility and also a way of waking up a suspended PC @ ignition on via "wake on lan", without hacking the PC about too much.
  
• CAN - how about engine parameters displayed on your radio, via the OBD connector? The protocol is well known, so should be implementable. How about fault codes too? i.e. a bit like a "scan guage". What about a "calibrate-able" mpg readout (like the scanguage does) on the radio display also?
  
• Serial interfaces - A way to control an ipod from the adapter. The Apple accessory protocol is out in the open (http://nuxx.net/wiki/Apple_Accessory_Protocol) so should be DIY doable to control the ipod from the radio.
  

There's a lot of different audio source in there which I will want to select at different times and/or mix together. So, I've got some of these:

http://www.national.com/mpf/LM/LM4550B.html#Overview

Which are intended for PC sound card type stuff, but should make various audio source selection straight forward and there are enough audio inputs to play with ( so a simple "aux in" can be included ;) ). That needs a bit of logic around it, but see below.

On the Toyota side of things, the communication protocol with the radio is easily done in software, but when I was experimenting previously, I did the protocol in a FPGA (google that), just because I can and I felt like it. :P. It is sort of a way of producing hardware with "software". Google "VHDL". So, I will include a small FPGA, because I already have the Toyota code done, it is a useful thing to have for modifications and it can also be used to keep the audio source mixer (LM4550B) happy.

Not sure whether the processor has enough horse power to do the mp3/ogg/flac/aac decoding in software and I can't be bothered to try and implement all that in a FPGA, but this chip does the trick:

http://www.vlsi.fi/en/products/vs1053.html

In fact that beast is used in the Grom unit. Just feed it data to keep it happy. It is also firmware upgradeable (note to me: I need to get some serial flash memory chips for that).

This is not going to be cheap, but that was never my intention. Probably more in the cost region of a commercial unit and it is something I can tailor to my own exact requirements and perhaps others. Keeps me out of trouble too :D.

It can probably be made to work with the standard radio too. I think the text handling is slightly different to my satnav, but it should be doable. It would be nice to have a display like the Xtenza on the old standard radio:

http://www.xtenza.eu/product.html

rather than just text. I expect that is done by emulating a "turn-by-turn" sat nav as well as a cd changer. I don't know how to do the "turn-by-turn" emulation at the moment.

Bit of "professional"(?) pride - rather than just throwing together a prototype or etching my own PCB, I'll probably get some made. It's not that cheap, but much cheaper that the tooling used to be. People like PCBPOOL (www.pcbpool.com) provide a good service.

Assembly is a pain, but I'll probably have a go at "pizza oven" reflow soldering, which makes things a bit less hassle. Google for that.

Then there is something to house it it. Always a bit of a pain to give a nice professional box. I'll probably just stick to a standard off the shelf box.

I'm buying 3 sets of major components, because I always do, in-case I kill something during development. So there may be 1 or 2 spare boards available. Once built, it just becomes steady software development, which is a nice virtual environment :).

This is all well intentioned, but I don't normally like talking about such stuff, until I have something to show for it. Circumstances may chance and the thing may not get completed. As I said, the RAV could be dust and/or things may have moved on before I've finished. Guess I better get my finger out ;).

I thought about using the "blog" section on here rather than posting in the main forum, because I don't think it interests many and there's probably a lot of stuff I've forgotten to mention that I could add. I think the personal "blog" bit has gone now though with the latest forum software? couldn't find it anyway.

Any constructive comments welcome.

[anchorman]

I agree with every word for no other reason than you said it.

I don't understand many of them, that is the trouble but whatever it is you make can I have one?

[Big Kev]

Where's the Landrover shop....need to escape, fast.....

Big Kev....ex owner, Rav 4