Touch And Go: Album Artwork And Sms Problems

[NufcNeilo]

Hey guys!

I'm new to the forums, as I've just picked up my brand new Toyota Yaris today! (It's not my first one though, my second!). I was hoping that I could find some answers to a couple of questions/problems that I was having with the Touch and Go system, namely the lack of displayed album artwork, and the inability to send and receive SMS.

Firstly, I spent ages on my PC making an mp3 data cd, including making sure each file had the correct ID3 tag information and linked artwork. In Windows Explorer all of them have the artwork in the thumbnail, as well as all the relevant song info. However, upon putting the disc into my Touch & Go player, I was bitterly disappointed that the artwork didn't show, despite the square box on the left clearly indicating that it should. I was wondering whether I've done something wrong, or that it simply cannot read the artwork from an mp3 cd, but has to read it from a USB stick

Secondly, my phone connects fine to the T&G via bluetooth, being able to send and receive calls, as well as playing the small amount of songs/music I had on my phone. However, the SMS message option is unavailable. I though that there may be a setting I'm missing out on either the T&G or my phone; or that my particular model cannot send SMS. The second scenario seems unlikely to me, as why would I be able to make calls etc., but not send messages?

If anyone could help me out I'd very much appreciate it. If I've posted in the wrong forum then feel free to point me in the right direction!

Thanks very much!

Cheers

Neil L.

[Devon Aygo]

Hi

1. Displaying album artwork, there is a setting within T&G to allow artwork to display, Press "Setup" then press "General" there is a setting "Display captured images" turn this on

2. SMS on T&G is entirely dependant on the phone having the ability to send SMS info over bluetooth. Alot of phones don't seem to be compatible but it is getting more common on newer phones.

Here is a link to Toyota's compatibilty charts this shows what phones can do what http://www.toyota-eu...th_connect.tmex

Cheers

[NufcNeilo]

Hi thanks for reply.

I checked up on the site about my phone, and you're right, isn't compatible, but never mind, that wasn't a biggie.

However the other point about the artwork, your suggestion was good, but when I went to my settings, that option wasn't there. I also had a look in the booklet to see if it was in there, and the option isn't there either. So I'm rather puzzled!

On a related note, I thought putting the files on a USB memory stick would work, but the system doesn't want to recognise that it's plugged in. Is there something I'm missing there, or am I doing it wrong?

Thanks

Neil.

[Lustral]

I think album art is only supported by USB memory stick or iPod plugged in and not from CDs.

[NufcNeilo]

I think album art is only supported by USB memory stick or iPod plugged in and not from CDs.

Do you know the correct way to format/create the files? Either by ID3 tags alone or by putting a .jpg in the folder?

Cheers

[JSHarris]

Sorry to ressurect an old thread, but I've been trying to solve this same problem for the past couple of days, with no success.

My other half bought a 2014 (pre facelift, ex-demonstrator) Hybrid Yaris earlier this week, with the Touch system. I have a 2013 Plug-in Prius, with the Touch and Go system (which is virtually identical to the unit in the Yaris, except for the sat nav).

I made up a USB stick for her by ripping a load of her CDs and tested it by plugging it into my Prius. It worked perfectly, with the correct album art being dislayed at the left of the screen. When I plug the same USB stick into the Yaris it works OK, all the artist, title and track information comes up, just as it does on my Prius, but the album art doesn't display.

I've tried all the tricks that have been suggested, making sure that as well as the art being embodied into the MP3 files it is also in every folder as a "folder.jpg" file, tried different USB sticks and have tried copying from a Windows machine with the "show hidden files"option, as suggested in another thread. The option to "Display captured images" is set to "on".

I'm at a bit of a loss to understand quite what I'm doing wrong. Clearly the system in the Yaris is the same as that in my Prius (as far as the audio side goes) as the screens look identical, yet for some reason I can't get the artwork to come up on the screen in the Yaris.

It seems a bit improbable, but does anyone know if having the "Go" add on box for sat nav also has some sort of impact on the way that the system displays album artwork? That seems to be the only real difference between the Yaris and my Prius; as you can perhaps tell, I'm clutching at straws a bit here!

Any suggestions for things I've not yet tried would be most welcome.

[Devon Aygo]

Sorry to ressurect an old thread, but I've been trying to solve this same problem for the past couple of days, with no success.

My other half bought a 2014 (pre facelift, ex-demonstrator) Hybrid Yaris earlier this week, with the Touch system. I have a 2013 Plug-in Prius, with the Touch and Go system (which is virtually identical to the unit in the Yaris, except for the sat nav).

I made up a USB stick for her by ripping a load of her CDs and tested it by plugging it into my Prius. It worked perfectly, with the correct album art being dislayed at the left of the screen. When I plug the same USB stick into the Yaris it works OK, all the artist, title and track information comes up, just as it does on my Prius, but the album art doesn't display.

I've tried all the tricks that have been suggested, making sure that as well as the art being embodied into the MP3 files it is also in every folder as a "folder.jpg" file, tried different USB sticks and have tried copying from a Windows machine with the "show hidden files"option, as suggested in another thread. The option to "Display captured images" is set to "on".

I'm at a bit of a loss to understand quite what I'm doing wrong. Clearly the system in the Yaris is the same as that in my Prius (as far as the audio side goes) as the screens look identical, yet for some reason I can't get the artwork to come up on the screen in the Yaris.

It seems a bit improbable, but does anyone know if having the "Go" add on box for sat nav also has some sort of impact on the way that the system displays album artwork? That seems to be the only real difference between the Yaris and my Prius; as you can perhaps tell, I'm clutching at straws a bit here!

Any suggestions for things I've not yet tried would be most welcome.

Your assumption is correct the addition of the "go" navigation adds additional features and compatibilities not available on the Touch only setup.

I recently encountered something similar where a customer with touch was having issues with a USB not being recognised, customer came in with his car and his USB filled with music wshich would not connect with a message about checking the USB on screen, however when the same USB was fitted into car with GO the USB was instantly recognised and played/dsplayed music with album art. Trying the stick in another car without GO it would not work.

[JSHarris]

Very many thanks, it's good to know that it's not something that I was doing wrong with the music on the USB stick; I must have spent several hours trying everything I could think of to get album art to display! It would be nice if Toyota had put a comment to this effect in the hadnbook, as I suspect that there may well be quite a few owners who've been through the same fiasco, ending up a bit frustrated and perhaps less than happy with the car as a consequence.

I've now ordered a "Go" unit to add sat nav, so hopefully she should be able to get the album art display as a bonus to having the sat nav button working. The fact that button didn't work was another disappointment, as when we looked at and test drove the car we assumed that, as it had a button for the nav function, it would work. It was only after we'd picked the car up that we realised that the "Go" bit was a rather expensive additional box that has to be fitted. Luckily I've been able to buy a 2014 "Go" add-on unit, with all the fittings and the latest map download, for a fair bit less than the price that Toyota want for it, so will fit it some time over the next week and report back as to whether this then allows album art to be displayed. Fingers crossed that it does!

[JSHarris]

Just to close this off, I added the "Go" unit to the Yaris this morning (very, very quick and easy to do - less than 10 minutes, even though I'd not done one before) and can confirm that album art is now displayed, along with extra options on USB MP3s. We're still waiting for the GPS to initialise (seems to think we're a very long way away at the moment) but I guess as soon as the ephemeris table has downloaded from the SVs and the unit has set itself up it should work fine (all the nav settings seems to work OK).

[Catlover]

I am trying to think why I would be too bothered whether the album cover, artist, tracks etc are displayed at all - even if I was a passenger I wouldnt be too bothered, its the quality of sound I would be more interested in. Just my view point.

[JSHarris]

Adding the "Go" unit does allow much easier selection of albums, artist, genre etc as well as adding sat nav and cover art, so it's not just an expensive way to get pretty pictures!

We wanted to get the sat nav button to work (seems daft to have a button that just triggers an error message- must upset a lot of people, like us, who hadn't been told by the sales person that the button is a fake!) so finding that that adding this unit also gave added functionality to the USB MP3 part of the head unit was a bonus.

[Devon Aygo]

Adding the "Go" unit does allow much easier selection of albums, artist, genre etc as well as adding sat nav and cover art, so it's not just an expensive way to get pretty pictures!

We wanted to get the sat nav button to work (seems daft to have a button that just triggers an error message- must upset a lot of people, like us, who hadn't been told by the sales person that the button is a fake!) so finding that that adding this unit also gave added functionality to the USB MP3 part of the head unit was a bonus.

Imagine though if the button was not there, then the nav would be a factory only order, or massively expensive to add after manufacturing requiring a new headunit as well as navigation box. Also no one would ever buy a car if the sales person had to list what the car doesn't have!!

Toyota can't win damned if they do damned if they don't.

[JSHarris]

I agree, and it's wholly my fault for not having asked the specific question when we were buying the Yaris, rather than having just made an assumption.

In my defence, though, I will add that I've owned three Priuses, and none had buttons that didn't work, including my current Plug In, and, because the system in the Yaris Hybrid looks very similar to that in my Prius I had just assumed (wrongly as it turns out) that it had the same sat nav. It wasn't until we got the Yaris home that my other half was playing with the buttons and was disappointed to find that pressing the nav button gave a "system not installed" message. The salesman did go through all the functions of the car as a part of the hand over, and didn't press the nav button, but also didn't mention that it didn't work, either.

Not a major issue, as retrofitting the "Go" box was a very quick and easy job, far quicker and easier than I'd thought it'd be, in fact, so now the car has all the functions working OK.

[sjoerd22]

There is a nice program called BluMeUSB that solves problems like missing MP3 tags, numbers beeing skipped. It also set the overall sound level on your USB drive so you do not make sudden movements while listening to your music!

It has been specially developed for the Fiat 500 sound system, but works on any other equally good system.

Free download www.fiat500soft.com

[CPN]

Be aware that some of the latest large size USB sticks (>32GB) come formatted with either extended FAT or extended FAT32 by default and are not recognised by Toyota's T&G & Touch2 head units. (this is to allow storage above the single file 4GB limit for large video files) I tripped over this when I got a 64GB SanDisk Dual USB Drive and tried to use it for my music collection.

The cure is simple if you have a PC or Laptop. Just plug it into either and delete the original partition on the drive then re-create a new one that's formatted using FAT32 and you'll be good to go on the T&G(or 2) head units. This limits single file sizes to 4GB but for a music MP3 collection, this shouldn't be an issue...

[Catlover]

Wow, you must have a large collection of music to require 64gb

[CPN]

Every music CD my wife and I have accumulated over the years which is probably running close to 500 at the last count (and I haven't ripped all of them yet...) lol! In MP3 terms it's now getting close to 40Gb.... Took the Touch2 an absolute age to read it the first time I plugged it in! ;)

[Yorkie-Matt]

Very many thanks, it's good to know that it's not something that I was doing wrong with the music on the USB stick; I must have spent several hours trying everything I could think of to get album art to display! It would be nice if Toyota had put a comment to this effect in the hadnbook, as I suspect that there may well be quite a few owners who've been through the same fiasco, ending up a bit frustrated and perhaps less than happy with the car as a consequence.

I've now ordered a "Go" unit to add sat nav, so hopefully she should be able to get the album art display as a bonus to having the sat nav button working. The fact that button didn't work was another disappointment, as when we looked at and test drove the car we assumed that, as it had a button for the nav function, it would work. It was only after we'd picked the car up that we realised that the "Go" bit was a rather expensive additional box that has to be fitted. Luckily I've been able to buy a 2014 "Go" add-on unit, with all the fittings and the latest map download, for a fair bit less than the price that Toyota want for it, so will fit it some time over the next week and report back as to whether this then allows album art to be displayed. Fingers crossed that it does!

Where did you get the Go add in? I dont want to spend too much as its a company car but if its at a reasonable price i might just look at this.

[Heidfirst]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Toyota-Yaris-Auris-Hilux-Touch-Go-2-Sat-Nav-Module-RRP-700-/291621079546?hash=item43e5f889fa:g:dB4AAOSw4UtWT3mx

[Yorkie-Matt]

Thank you. Worth thinking about.

[Heidfirst]

a Garmin or Tomtom is the better value solution. You get more recent hardware, more current mapping now & in the future at lower cost (a Toyota update is £109). What you lose is the neater integration with your car.

The choice, as they say, is yours ... ;)

[Yorkie-Matt]

You are quite right. As I said above it is a company car, when they told me it didn't have the built-in satnav I did go out and buy a fairly decent Garmin (was about £170).

I guess I just like to have the gadgets. The album art, or lack off, does bug me but that being said i'm not going to pay £279 for it. If it had been around £100 I would have ordered it.

I think, like a few people I was left slightly disappointed with the Touch 2. Just the album art and the sms and email compatibility. I know that's down to the phone manufacturers but Toyota could push a little harder.

[Yorkie-Matt]

I came from Ford Sync and I feel they have just nailed it a little better. especially with the voice activation/dialling being standard.