Corolla Hybrid Media System

[AndrueC]

47 minutes ago, myriagon said:

Thanks - that's disappointing. So technically it's possible but there will be a line of code in the software that's stopping it. I wonder if Toyota have nobbled mirror link as they have legal concerns over someone watching a video and having an accident?

Could be. Honda's infotainment system had an HDMI input and could play videos that way but only when stationary. Their MirrorLink did work while in motion .. or at least it probably did. Unfortunately I don't think anyone ever managed to get it to work at all. With my S7 Edge both the phone and infotainment screens would just go black, but they did it while stationary and on the move so it looks like it should have worked.

[myriagon]

Apparently on VWs it's possible to use an OBDEleven to unlock the "Video in motion" option so MirrorLink works even when the car is moving. Unfortunately i can't find anything for Toyotas although I wouldn't be surprised if there is some way of allowing video in motion but probably not publicly accessible.

So if MirrorLink is useless then we are left waiting for Android Auto/Car play that are apparently arriving later this year. I just hope there's a way to retrofit and that it's not too extortionate.

[Heidfirst]

23 hours ago, myriagon said:

 I wonder if Toyota have nobbled mirror link as they have legal concerns over someone watching a video and having an accident?

Yup, that & other things but MirrorLink is withering on the vine anyway ...

[Chippy01]

A little hi-jack, if I may …...

I collected my new Corolla Hybrid Saloon last Wednesday. Over the weekend, I familiarised myself with it's settings, etc.

Once I'd dealt with the settings, I decided to look into the infotainment.
My other half now has my 2011 T-Spirit Prius, with all my music downloaded onto it's HDD drive.
Alas, the saloon does not have a HDD, but a couple of usb ports instead. Reading the manual, it appears that the usb in the centre console is for charging items, while the usb beside the glovebox is for connecting a device that holds ones music.

I found a 32gig small memory card in the house, formatted it, and loaded about 2,000 tracks onto it. Pushed the card into a usb card reader, and plugged it into the port by the glovebox. WAY-HAY … yes, it works ……. but the system only pulls out/reads 500 tracks. Back inside, I changed all the tracks to MP3 and then to WMA? to see if it made any difference. Nope, still only 500 tracks, no matter which format I use.
I also have two old mp3 players with around 2,000 tracks each installed. 
The first one, a Creative Zen player, when plugged into the car, turns on and starts playing, but again only 500 tracks are recalled. When shutting the car off, the Zen carries on playing and probably will do until the Battery is exhausted, before shutting down.
The second one, a Sony Walkman player, when plugged into the car, turns on and starts playing, BUT this time ALL tracks are recalled by the system. When shutting the car off, the Sony will shut down also after about 20 seconds.

OK, job sorted via the Sony, but that means leaving it in the glovebox out of sight, with a cable coming out of the corner of the 'box and into the usb port.
I was hoping to use the mini usb card reader, as it's virtually invisble (being so small).

Would anyone have any idea why the card and the Creative only manage to get 500 tracks read, while the Sony has all tracks available?

[Sidrat]

46 minutes ago, Chippy01 said:

A little hi-jack, if I may …...

I collected my new Corolla Hybrid Saloon last Wednesday. Over the weekend, I familiarised myself with it's settings, etc.

Once I'd dealt with the settings, I decided to look into the infotainment.
My other half now has my 2011 T-Spirit Prius, with all my music downloaded onto it's HDD drive.
Alas, the saloon does not have a HDD, but a couple of usb ports instead. Reading the manual, it appears that the usb in the centre console is for charging items, while the usb beside the glovebox is for connecting a device that holds ones music.

I found a 32gig small memory card in the house, formatted it, and loaded about 2,000 tracks onto it. Pushed the card into a usb card reader, and plugged it into the port by the glovebox. WAY-HAY … yes, it works ……. but the system only pulls out/reads 500 tracks. Back inside, I changed all the tracks to MP3 and then to WMA? to see if it made any difference. Nope, still only 500 tracks, no matter which format I use.
I also have two old mp3 players with around 2,000 tracks each installed. 
The first one, a Creative Zen player, when plugged into the car, turns on and starts playing, but again only 500 tracks are recalled. When shutting the car off, the Zen carries on playing and probably will do until the battery is exhausted, before shutting down.
The second one, a Sony Walkman player, when plugged into the car, turns on and starts playing, BUT this time ALL tracks are recalled by the system. When shutting the car off, the Sony will shut down also after about 20 seconds.

OK, job sorted via the Sony, but that means leaving it in the glovebox out of sight, with a cable coming out of the corner of the 'box and into the usb port.
I was hoping to use the mini usb card reader, as it's virtually invisble (being so small).

Would anyone have any idea why the card and the Creative only manage to get 500 tracks read, while the Sony has all tracks available?

According to the Touch 2 Book -

Maximum Folders - 3000

Files in the device - 9999

Files per folder - 255

MP3/WMA/ACC files in folders up to 8 levels deep. 

Have you got any folders with more than 255 files in them?  If you have maybe it only reads the first 255 and ignores the rest !

[Chippy01]

25 minutes ago, Sidrat said:

According to the Touch 2 Book -

Maximum Folders - 3000

Files in the device - 9999

Files per folder - 255

MP3/WMA/ACC files in folders up to 8 levels deep. 

Have you got any folders with more than 255 files in them?  If you have maybe it only reads the first 255 and ignores the rest !

No folders. Each track is individual. 

[AndrueC]

1 hour ago, Chippy01 said:

No folders. Each track is individual. 

Try splitting your files into folders and see if that helps although presumably that will change how the random shuffle feature works.

One thing bugs me about mine is that it doesn't automatically start playing from my iPod. Most of the time I have to manually select that as the source when I start the car. I think it has something to do with the iPod powering down because if I've only stopped for a short time - like to get fuel - it will resume playing without me having to do anything.

I've also had a couple of cases where I've manually selected iPod and it's started playing but the music has come through the iPod speaker, not the car Speakers. Unplugging then plugging back in fixes that but it's odd.

I also don't think Toyota thought the placement of USB sockets through very well. Honda put three in the Jazz. They were all data and all capable of full rate charging. Two were in the centre console, and one on front of the gear lever next to the HDMI socket. Having data sockets in the centre console meant I could leave my iPod in there totally out of site whereas with the Corolla my iPod is visible from the outside if someone looks close enough.

[Chippy01]

3 minutes ago, AndrueC said:

Depending on how the software is written that might be the problem. Rather than utilising a proper indexing algorithm they might just have coded it to process each folder separately, load the list of files in the current folder into memory and iterate through them. If that's the case they might for a variety of reasons have decided to limit the size of the list to 500 files. I'd actually have expected 512 as a more likely cut off in such a case but that's old school. Try splitting your files into folders and see if that helps although presumably that will change how the random shuffle feature works.

One thing bugs me about mine is that it doesn't automatically start playing from my iPod. Most of the time I have to manually select that as the source when I start the car. I think it has something to do with the iPod powering down because if I've only stopped for a short time - like to get fuel - it will resume playing.

I've also had a couple of cases where I've manually selected iPod and it's started playing but the music has come through the iPod speaker, not the car speakers. Unplugging then plugging back in fixes that but it's odd.

I don't have a problem with either of my 'devices' starting automatically. 

The music files I have were ripped from CDs years ago. I ditched the tracks I didn't like, and also the duplicates that invariably show up, and saved the rest.
When I got the Creative Zen, I just imported the saved files from my PC to the Zen and it played away when needed. Later, I was gifted the Sony Walkman, and did the same to it, just imported the files and it played, no problems.
I did the same with the memory card, just imported the tracks, put it into the reader and plugged it into the car.

Why I only get 500 files read off of the memory card and the Zen, but ALL of the files off of the Sony is the mystery.

[AndrueC]

13 hours ago, Chippy01 said:

I don't have a problem with either of my 'devices' starting automatically. 
Why I only get 500 files read off of the memory card and the Zen, but ALL of the files off of the Sony is the mystery.

I wonder if it's an attempt to fix an earlier issue where Apple users complained that it would randomly start playing music from their phones? Or it could just be specific to the Apple connection protocol. I don't own many Apple products but their iPods have generally been very good (apart from having to use the awful iTunes). And actually what I'm finding is that the Audio is actually off whenever I start the car. I'll try a different source and see if that's always the case or if that's because I'm using an iPod.

I wonder if the Walkman is using a special protocol? Perhaps the car sees it as something other than just a plain ol' USB stick and consequently doesn't suffer from whatever this limitation is. What happens if you create a subdirectory off the root and move all your files into their. The older versions of the FAT file system (12/16) didn't support more than 512 files in the root and whilst FAT32 removed that limitation perhaps somewhere in the Infotainment unit's code they still have that limit imposed.

[Heidfirst]

13 hours ago, Chippy01 said:

Why I only get 500 files read off of the memory card and the Zen, but ALL of the files off of the Sony is the mystery.

Try asking multimedia@toyota.co.uk ...

[AndrueC]

1 hour ago, Heidfirst said:

Try asking multimedia@toyota.co.uk ...

Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting Toyota GB.

Unfortunately, this email address is no longer in use. We would like to advise you to fill out our contact form on our website.

The form can be found at the following address: https://www.toyota.co.uk/contact-us/email-us

[Heidfirst]

they obviously got fed up with being messaged direct (until recently the staff on the Toyota UK blog were promoting this) ... 😛

 

[Sidrat]

23 hours ago, Chippy01 said:

I don't have a problem with either of my 'devices' starting automatically. 

The music files I have were ripped from CDs years ago. I ditched the tracks I didn't like, and also the duplicates that invariably show up, and saved the rest.
When I got the Creative Zen, I just imported the saved files from my PC to the Zen and it played away when needed. Later, I was gifted the Sony Walkman, and did the same to it, just imported the files and it played, no problems.
I did the same with the memory card, just imported the tracks, put it into the reader and plugged it into the car.

Why I only get 500 files read off of the memory card and the Zen, but ALL of the files off of the Sony is the mystery.

Collected my Corolla TS today, put the USB stick from my traded-in Auris into the Corolla read the stick and all my music was there.  Mine is arranged in folders, one for each album.  Maybe worth trying to re-arrange your card into folders etc.

[Chippy01]

I'm going to have to look at this over the weekend. I thought it would be easier to have each track as a standalone, rather than in files.
I'll have try and find out what tracks aren't being read, and then check if they are different in any way to those that are being read.
But that will even throw up an anomaly. Mainly, why are all the tracks available on the Sony player, but not on the Creative or the memory card.
I'm probably overthinking things, and the solution is simple. I just can't figure it out.
It would help if I was more computer literate but ……………………………. lol.
Thanks for the help so far guys. Any more tips, send them on.

[AndrueC]

Well if we're all going to do some investigating I'm going to try and see why my audio system switches off. I think it must have something to do with the iPod powering down because if I stop for fuel the audio doesn't switch off and resumes playing when I pull away. With such a short stop the iPod probably stays powered up Yesterday I woke the iPod up before starting the car and it didn't make any difference but I seem to recall that plugging the iPod in causes the audio to wake up.

It's interesting that USB sticks don't have the problem but then they are accessed differently than an iPod would be. There might even be a dedicated 'iThing' chip inside the infotainment system.

[vjekan]

On 5/14/2019 at 10:10 AM, JoaoM said:

Outdated because if we want to update maps we'll have to pay for it every 2 or 3 years while you can have it for free on your smartphone. I've spoked with a local dealer and they've told me that while they're still waiting for carPlay, android auto is ready to go with a trick. When I have the car I'll try it.

What kind of 'trick' does enable Android Auto? Have you collected your car and tried it out?

[Chippy01]

On 5/30/2019 at 9:22 PM, Sidrat said:

Mine is arranged in folders, one for each album.  Maybe worth trying to re-arrange your card into folders etc.

This weekend has not been easy. Picked up some bug, and it's really had a go at knocking me for six. I'm still not over it, but through the haze I think I have a result of sorts.

I probably went overboard on the preparation, but I picked out 505 tracks (just a couple more than the 500 that was being read), converted them all to MP3 and changed their bitrates to 128kbps. This was to make sure that all tracks were of identical properties - so to speak.

I reformatted the card I was using, then loaded the 505 tracks onto it. Out to the car, but still it only read 500.

I remembered in these posts that folders were mentioned. OK, it was worth a shot.
So I split the 505 tracks into two folders. One containing 236 tracks, the other holding 269.

This seems to have worked. When opening the source to USB, I can now choose between folders (duh, yeah - you're supposed to). The first folder is showing 236 tracks, the second is showing 269. A quick scan/search shows that I can access any of the 505.

Now to try putting some more tracks in folders, and loading them up to see what happens.

[Chippy01]

Well, it worked.
Looks like the system will only read 500 tracks (standalone), or 500 tracks per folder, when using a plug in memory stick/card/reader.
Splitting my song tracks into seven different folders has cracked it. I now have access to all my songs.
Thanks to the guys that suggested splitting things up.

But why the Sony would play all straight off the bat, is still unsolved.

AndrueC, I have no answer for your iPOD issue.
A friend of mine had an iPOD Shuffle years ago, and even that little thing had a mind of it's own. Admittedly, he never had it connected to his car, but if he was shutting it down after using it, he would have to remember where he left off, because when he switched it on again he could be anywhere in the song menu.
Personally, I never did like Apple stuff.
From their smallest player to their top of the hill phone, they are too expensive, and have too many glitches and 'pin me downs' involved in using them.

[AndrueC]

I've got a USB stick arriving today to see if my infotainment unit will stay(*) switched on when that's plugged in. With the iPod it seems determined to switch itself off when the iPod powers down.

From their smallest player to their top of the hill phone, they are too expensive, and have too many glitches and 'pin me downs' involved in using them.

I'd generally agree but I wanted to have my entire music collection available and I wanted random shuffle by album. A few years ago when my iPod Classic began to fail the only way to come close to that was an iPod touch. Since the Toyota offers shuffle by album with a USB stick (the Honda didn't) I might be able to ditch the one and only bit of Apple kit I have at home. Yay!

(*)Obviously it will power down when the engine is turned off but hopefully I will no longer need to turn the audio on when I start the car.

[Sidrat]

5 hours ago, Chippy01 said:

Well, it worked.
Looks like the system will only read 500 tracks (standalone), or 500 tracks per folder, when using a plug in memory stick/card/reader.
Splitting my song tracks into seven different folders has cracked it. I now have access to all my songs.
Thanks to the guys that suggested splitting things up.

But why the Sony would play all straight off the bat, is still unsolved.

AndrueC, I have no answer for your iPOD issue.
A friend of mine had an iPOD Shuffle years ago, and even that little thing had a mind of it's own. Admittedly, he never had it connected to his car, but if he was shutting it down after using it, he would have to remember where he left off, because when he switched it on again he could be anywhere in the song menu.
Personally, I never did like Apple stuff.
From their smallest player to their top of the hill phone, they are too expensive, and have too many glitches and 'pin me downs' involved in using them.

Glad you got there.

[AndrueC]

The USB arrived and a test this evening seems to confirm that I will no longer have to manually switch the audio on every time I start the car. I reckon the problem with the iPod was that it took a while to power up and in the absence of 'the last played source' the audio just turned itself off.

Now if only I didn't have to keep manually activating Park Hold every time I turn the engine on.

Sadly that is specifically mentioned in the manual so I'm probably stuck with that.

[Chippy01]

38 minutes ago, AndrueC said:

The USB arrived and a test this evening seems to confirm that I will no longer have to manually switch the audio on every time I start the car. I reckon the problem with the iPod was that it took a while to power up and in the absence of 'the last played source' the audio just turned itself off.

Now if only I didn't have to keep manually activating Park Hold every time I turn the engine on.

Sadly that is specifically mentioned in the manual so I'm probably stuck with that.

Happy days.

[AndrueC]

10 hours ago, Chippy01 said:

Happy days.

Well..almost. I tried to set up shuffle by album but it didn't seem to work. Supposedly there are three shuffle modes. The second of them shows a folder symbol but whatever it's doing it's not shuffling by album. I'm going to leave it on 'don't shuffle' as hopefully that will play folder by folder which ought to yield artist then albums. My main objection to random track order (aside from not being what the artist intended) is that the volume levels vary which is annoying.

But yet again I find myself wondering why computer technology is so rarely perfect. As a lifelong computer programmer that annoys me.

Incidentally, does anyone know what (if anything) the home screen setting does? The manual is of course useless on the subject but as far as I can see it does nothing at all. I'd like to have the unit set up with audio as the default screen if possible.

[Sidrat]

9 hours ago, AndrueC said:

Well..almost. I tried to set up shuffle by album but it didn't seem to work. Supposedly there are three shuffle modes. The second of them shows a folder symbol but whatever it's doing it's not shuffling by album. I'm going to leave it on 'don't shuffle' as hopefully that will play folder by folder which ought to yield artist then albums. My main objection to random track order (aside from not being what the artist intended) is that the volume levels vary which is annoying.

But yet again I find myself wondering why computer technology is so rarely perfect. As a lifelong computer programmer that annoys me.

Incidentally, does anyone know what (if anything) the home screen setting does? The manual is of course useless on the subject but as far as I can see it does nothing at all. I'd like to have the unit set up with audio as the default screen if possible.

The shuffle button does go through three modes, 1 album shuffle, all albums shuffle and off.  If you go to the Toyota website there is a more comprehensive manual there.

Whilst we are on the media system, I have raised a question through my dealership about a setup setting on the navigation system that they are going to raise with Toyota UK.  If you press Setup, Navigation, Map, Map Layout and change the view to 3D it should now stay at this whenever you are using it (full screen).  If you turn off the car and restart it and use the nav system again it defaults back to 2D north.  You then either change it in the setup screen or from the navigation screen which is one button press but what's the point of having a setup if it ignores it!

[AndrueC]

29 minutes ago, Sidrat said:

The shuffle button does go through three modes, 1 album shuffle, all albums shuffle and off.  If you go to the Toyota website there is a more comprehensive manual there.

Whilst we are on the media system, I have raised a question through my dealership about a setup setting on the navigation system that they are going to raise with Toyota UK.  If you press Setup, Navigation, Map, Map Layout and change the view to 3D it should now stay at this whenever you are using it (full screen).  If you turn off the car and restart it and use the nav system again it defaults back to 2D north.  You then either change it in the setup screen or from the navigation screen which is one button press but what's the point of having a setup if it ignores it!

Yup, I've also noticed that 2D default. Also - I'm not convinced that it's getting traffic information. The window alongside the map never seems to show anything (I assume it should be like TomTom or Copilot and show events ahead). I haven't used it much and to be fair it has once or twice claimed to be recalculating the route based on traffic information but I'm intrigued where it's getting it from. The manual talks about a DCM (nope - we don't get that in the UK) or HD Radio (nope pretty sure no stations broadcast that in the UK).

I tried both the first shuffle mode and the second shuffle mode (the 2nd one has a folder icon) and they seemed to just play tracks from different albums. But I can live with unshuffled for now.

As regards a more detailed manual I've found the Entune PDF for the 2020 Corolla on their site (in the same place as the car's manual) but nothing else.