Electronic upgrades to a Mk1 Auris, with dashcams, reversing camera and new headunit

[Guest]

This summer I bought a 2009 Auris TR (1.33 vvti, 6-speed manual) for my family "pandemic car".

I love this vehicle. The particular one I bought was dirty, a little smelly and worn, but had a full service history from a single owner. I thought I would make one post to detail all the fix-up I have done to the car. You might consider one or two of these if you have been driving your Auris for years and it no longer feels so new to you.

Funky smelling aircon
I took the car to Halford's where for £20, they sprayed a can of alcohol in the car and ran the air conditioning on recycle for 20 minutes. Because of a slight misunderstanding about the nature of the service, I also asked them if they could hose out the air vents with some compressed air and they happily complied with my request. They tried to sell me a £40 pollen filter, but I believe it had very recently been changed and they confirmed that for me, leaving it in place. I was really impressed they didn't try to rip me off more.

Would I do it again? Since finding out that the can of ethanol costs about £1, I might have tried it on my own, but remember they were willing to hose out my air vents and take the system apart at least as far as exposing the pollen filter. So I think it was a £20 well spent, to de-stink and probably sanitise the car.

Mobile phone holder and charging
Before I bought the new stereo (see below) I found a pretty good combination for navigation using my smartphone in a cradle that fits into the CD slot (Amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07TF7K2CH) and a double USB charger that supports two phones at "fast charging" rate (Amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B089KNLCDH). This worked fine for me, because I don't plan to listen to music while driving. Whereas I definitely do make use of the heating and cooling system! So I didn't like that most phone holding solutions rely on clipping to an air vent.

But read on, because eventually I got a different (CarPlay) solution that I'm happy with. (lower down)

Dash cameras
I searched on which.co.uk and browsed around a bit, finally settling on Blackvue for the dash camera. I thought the new prices are unbelievably overpriced for what you get, but instead found some very good prices with a little research and careful bidding on eBay. In the end I got two independent dashcams instead of an integrated unit for front and rear. I bought a DR600GW-HD and a DR-500GW-HD. Both of them are basically the same, discontinued units with GPS, 1080p video at 30fps, and act as WIFI access points to monitor the camera image in real-time, something useful for positioning of the cameras.

The use of two cameras rather than a set ended up cheaper in my opinion, and actually simplifies my wiring because I only need to route a power cable to the rear instead of power and video. I also read that the latest video, a digital coaxial link, interfered with other electronic equipment. Keep it simple, I say. Once the cameras are configured, I only expect to pull the SD cards in the event of an accident.

For the power, Blackvue sells an overpriced kit that keeps power to the cameras in the shut-down car only until the Battery voltage drops below a set level. Well I found functionally the same thing, in the form of an aftermarket OBD2 plug on sale for £10. https://www.blackvue.uk/products/conecta

The power specification for these older cameras at least, is 12VDC with 3.5mm X 1.35MM barrel connectors. eBay came to the rescue, with a Y-adapter splitter https://www.ebay.com/itm/222849733987 from seller Plugz2go and also two spans of longer wires of the same spec: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0768ZRLY2 for another £10 with next day delivery! So the logical diagram is:

[OBD2 power connector]----[Y adapter]--(3m span)--[dash cam front]
                                 |
                                 +----(3m span)----[dash cam rear]

Reversing camera
I bought the following product (Amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07T8Z7FDT) which fit well in the older Auris, although it did not include the foam gasket that comes between the vehicle body and the plastic lens. I washed the old tired gasket in soap and water, and it seemed to come back to life. We will see how watertight the seal remains. I noticed from the service history that the number plate illumination bulbs were replaced every year. and the lenses were full of mould and dirt. Toyota doesn't seem to sell the gaskets separately. On several sites I have also found the incorrect part number correlated with my E150 car, so beware this item a little bit.

Would I do it again? This particular reversing camera works OK, but doesn't have a particularly high quality image, nor is the image exactly centred. The camera superimposes red, yellow and green guide lines onto the image but they don't appear to be adjustable; they work OK for me as a visual guide to judge how close I am to the curb. This is after all secondary to using my eyeballs and mirrors to ensure I know what the car is doing. More luxurious would be one of the solutions that predicts where the wheels are going to roll, based on the steering wheel position. There are apparently products on the market that do this from the camera image movement alone, but not available in the product I chose.

Console screen
I researched a bit, and if you haven't guessed by now, I don't like to part with gobs of money to buy luxury products. After buying a cheap no-name Chinese thing that ended up not working, I decided I wanted the discontinued Sony XAV-AX100, which is a double DIN capacitive touch screen, with a volume knob, and that supports both Apple Carplay and Android Auto. I found one on eBay although I note at the moment there is also one for sale on Facebook Marketplace: https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/980514129073527
I got mine for £205. You can see in the EBay completed auctions (log in and choose advanced search) that they are going for anywhere between £150 and £300, depending on how desperate people are to win the auction.

Would I do it again? The Sony? Absolutely. This is a gorgeous piece of equipment and, once installed with a good quality kit, looks beautiful in the car. The installation kit I used was https://www.dynamicsounds.co.uk/toyota-auris-2007-double-din-stereo-fitting-kit-fascia-and-steering-stalk-control-silver.html which, I think of all the purchases I have made, is probably the single most luxurious. It included quite a few parts I didn't end up needing.

I think the only con of this particular Sony stereo is, the USB port is in the rear which means I will need to identify and cut in a location for a USB port. For the time being, we have a cable strung into the lower glove box. Which is ugly and kind of inconvenient. There are Sony models with a front USB, but there was always at least one other key feature missing for me (volume knob, for instance). I studied the whole product line, so ask away please.

I would love to see how other Auris users have addressed the USB port.

Don't make my mistakes

It's probably worth sharing my mistakes that didn't turn out. First, I bought the absolute cheapest 2DIN stereo that claimed to support CarPlay and Android Auto. The device is labeled with SWM 7013B and although I have seen videos of this thing functioning, it certainly did not work for me and after paying a professional to install it, I removed it to install the new stereo myself.

The other thing that didn't work out for me is the cheapest 2DIN fascia which I found on Amazon (product code B07L4TSZZD - don't buy it). The outer shape perfectly fit the dash, but the inner hole was a non-standard size which meant either a 5-8mm gap all the way around, or else cutting some of the decorative plastic. No thanks.

Installation

Because of the safety issue of working around the many explosive charges around the vehicle, particularly the SRS curtain airbags, I handed off my stuff to an auto electrician. They are the ones who recommended I go with pluggable Y-adapters, etc. instead of expecting them to solder the 12V connections for the dash cams. Wiring up the dash cams and reversing camera took them seven hours! I don't know whether I got conned, or whether as they said, for them at least, a small car such as the Auris with the hatchback posed particular logistical challenges for them. My other option was a local car stereo shop. They quoted £315. Maybe that was a reasonable price. (I'm in London)

As for camera positioning, I put one on the windscreen, hidden from driver's view behind the rear view mirror. The other one, I installed actually on the plastic trim instead of on the window glass (see the attached photo). The cameras come with little strips of sticky tape, very expensive to order as spare parts but you can order gobs of the stuff on its own. The product is called 3m VHB and you can find detailed usage instructions (youtube.com/watch?v=LNCY7bfmFik) and very reasonable strips you can cut down to size. Just search "3M VHB" on the online shopping sites, as the particular item I bought is out of stock).

To prep the plastic material, I first scraped/buffed out the grain with sandpaper, then cleaned with isopropanol and a microfibre cloth. It's been over a month and the bond is still holding. You can see, I didn't do a very careful job with the prep. Would be (mildly) interested to know how one can prep a neat spot without scratching up the nearby surfaces.

The professional installer chose to pull the headliner down to install both the reversing camera cable (left side and under the glove box) as well as the Dashcam power (along the right side). I liked this approach, as opposed to under the floor which is probably what I would have tried. The reversing camera takes its power input from the reverse lamp which is on the left side. Whereas the OBD2 port for the cameras is on the right side.

Conclusion
Well I bought this great car for only a few thousand £s, I thought how nice it would be to add in all the modern comforts of a new car, for a fraction of the price. You can see my approach is very functional - I'm more interested in what the car can do and how it is used, than how it looks.

If anyone shows interest, I can add additional photos or maybe even a tear-down HOWTO for the stereo install. It was not nearly as complicated as I feared.

Missed goals
Maybe in the future I can update on two goals I reached for, but did not attain. One is cruise control. I found many dead ends in this regard. My car has the 1NR-FE engine and probably doesn't have a CC compatible ECU. The other goal was ADAS (driver awareness and alerting system). I have yet to evaluate a product I have bought in this regard. 

 

Edited September 14, 2020 by Douglasheld
Clarify title, add additional info