Sebastian Woodhouse

Thanks 🙂 The comment on the ChinaBay units is what I expected and based on everything I’ve scraped up here seems to back it up. First impressions are great, but weird doco, minimal support and then no further comments. I have no desire to experiment with $500+ units - I’d rather speculate on Bitcoin. I spent some time today trying to correlate all the wiring pinouts that the Kenwood unit mentioned above has versus the Aurion. I think they’d match up, or a bit of fiddling they would…. But also spot on, it’s an expensive RRP and still needs some integration extras, and I’m on my own with wiring (not a problem, but Sebastian was purchased to reduce my automotive derived stress not add another project to the family). So that leads me standard Double-DIN and Aerpro stuff that I’m very familiar with. Our other cars have Alpine ILX-W650 units fitted and they’re perfect for the minimalist vehicles they’re fitted to. Want something higher featured for Sebastian but stepping to a regular double din does open the field of options quite a bit. I’ve got a strong “bargain hunt” gene so while I’m keen to get to work, I’m also going to wait until there’s some “deal” that gets me a 20% plus saving on the hardware. They’re never far away. With that said, anyone else got any ideas or examples? 🙂

Sebastian Woodhouse (yes that’s my Aurions name not mine) has the standard Prodigy 2011-2014 headunit with reverse cam, 6 speakers and all the limitations that go along with that. As he’s a new acquisition I’m planning to address all the service/reliability and driveability things first, but there will be a time when I quite simply will have to knuckle down and put a modern headunit with AndroidAuto/Carplay support. I’ve got no problem executing the swap, but what I am looking for is input on the hardware choices. Do I: Stick with a pretty standard Aerpro Fascia, interface pack and DoubleDin unit? That’s about $250 worth of adapters plus the $500-$1000 that brand name double units cost. Or Grab a Fascia and use a “200mm” Kenwood DMX820WS which has almost complete plug and play compatibility with the factory loom (I think I’d need to tweak the steering wheel control plug?) That’s a $799 headunit at RRP, and if I don’t need all the Aerpro adapters it’s quit cost effective as well as fitting perfectly in the fascia with no “ears”. Or Spend $500-800 on a ChinaBay Androi unit and hope it’s not a complete Turkey 🙂 I’ve read all the headunit threads and for the most part they’re a mess of old/dead links and GSV40 tips. All great but not outright helpful to a GSV50 😉 Thoughts? Suggestions?