Fiberoptic

This thread is for the discussion of the Guru Double Din Car Computer All-In-One 1.83 GHz, Intel Core Duo.

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kb9kst

Well I ordered one along with the Logitech diNovo Mini bluetooth keyboard. Bad news is that apparently newer Chryslers are not true double din height even though places sell double din kits for them. I guess I have to have my trim cut to get the Guru to fit along with some other minor mounting issues.

I have the Guru setup on the bench. Can't get the above bluetooth keyboard to pair with it. The Guru see's it and I can do the number sequence to pair them but after that it fails. The BT KB pairs up just fine on my Toughbook with built in bluetooth. Don't know why it won't work with the Guru. I don't want to use a wired KB on it!!!

I should add the diNovo works fine with its plug in usb BT receiver but why should I use that when the Guru already has BT built in.

Any ideas as how to get it to pair up?

Jason

kb9kst

Fiberoptic, question for you regarding the built in radio in the unit. I have wired the GURU into my 2007 Chrysler Sebring Limited using teh PAC C2R-CHY3. The way its wired in is with only the front left/right audio being hooked up. This is per the instructions of the C2R-CHY3 as the car has a built in amplifier and the CAN BUS controls the fade and balance. I am not getting any radio audio out of the built in GURU radio but I am getting computer sounds.

Does the GURU split computer and radio audio front to back perhaps or do I have some other problem at hand?

Jason

Jason

Fiberoptic

There is a volume slider and mute button in windows for the radio. I would imagine the mute box is checked. There is also a basic radio application on the hard drive that should work to allow you to do basic radio tunning using the scan/seek buttons on the front of the unit.

Fiberoptic

There have been reports of the Dinovo having mixed results with foreign blue tooth hardware (bt receiver other than the one that came with the dinovo) . We will test this as time allows. One would think the dinovo would work without a lot of pain.

jseaman

While I'm new to being registered here I've been visiting off and on for a couple of years. I was reading over the specs for this very interesting new piece of equipment and found the following a bit troubling:

Freq. Response -3dB 500Hz-10kHz

This is for the built-in 22 watt/ch amp. The 3dB variation I could deal with but please tell me that the frequency range of 500Hz to 10kHz is some sort of mistake! No bass and no highs.

The specs are not given for the pre-amp outputs - are they any better?

JasonMK

Thought it would be helpful to have a link for curious minds to find out more info: mp3Car Store

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Fiberoptic

This is a typo. The spec is 20~20KHz. We will fix this later. I assume the preamps are similar but i don't have that documented.

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kb9kst

I still am unable to get the internal car stereo to produce any audio. I am using the speaker outputs on the power plug (I am not using the 5.1 Surround Sound plug at all). Windows XP produces audio just fine though I have noticed that the volume knob goes from very quiet to loud much too fast.

I am running the car radio program. I can toggle the volume off and on with this application and I still get no audio. It locks onto a station when seeking so I know it is seeing the local station.

I tested all four speaker outputs while in Windows XP and all produce sound. Windows XP volume slider works just fine, and moves with the volume knob on the Guru. The volume slider in the radio program also moves with the Guru volume knob.

I am at a loss........

Jason

Fiberoptic

Right Click the volume icon.
Open Volume Control
Check Advanced Controls
Click Properties
Click Recording & Playback confirm that all of the sliders are visible and properly selected.

One of the sliders should be labeled FM radio. It is probably muted or the volume is very low.

The attached screen shots are from my desktop so you can't see exactly what I am talking about but it should get you started.

If you can't figure it out based on these shots, we can get shots of the actual unit within the next few days.

Attached Images

    

kb9kst

I follow what your saying now. I checked and the FM Radio was not checked so I did so and it displayed it. It showed as muted. I unmuted it, and STILL NO AUDIO.


Ok did some more playing. I had to go into the recording controls as well, enable the FM radio and make that the selected input. Now I am listening to tunes.

Is this supposed to be how the radio is setup?

Jason

Fiberoptic

Until this is integrated with a front end like Centrafuse, Road Runner or StreetDeck there is going to be some button clicking required to use the radio.

kb9kst

Well I have spent some time playing around with the GURU. This is my first time at trying a built in car radio/computer. I have always had a seperate laptop mounted but for space reasons I wanted an all in one unit. I am not looking to do CD/DVD playing etc. The car stereo is just fine for me along with mobile computer power.

The vehicle is a 2007 Chrysler Sebring Limited which has a built in "amplifier" for the facory Boston speakers. I have no complaints about the factory stereo audio quality. The first thing I discovered about trying to install the GURU is that Chrysler apparently doesnt have true double din sizing for the trim to access the stereo. An aftermarket double din kit made the GURU too wide to fit the trim opening and the GURU was too tall for my dash opening. So for now I have mounted it sitting back in the dash. No depth issues for attaching USB etc in the back of the GURU.

Maybe I missed something as far as the wiring for power goes but I have found that I needed to wire power a little different that the photo shown in the store. The power button is set to hibernate in the power options of Windows. I have the "Power" plug black wire going to ground as the picture shows. The yellow ACC wire is actually hot (+12V) and the "B/U" wire (which I thought stood for back up) actually is the switched B+ (accessory) and will put the unit in and out of hibernate.

Now for the built in AM/FM radio. What can I say, um it sucks!! The radio doesn't start back up when coming out of hibernate. You have to start the radio application even if you had the stereo going when the unit went into hibernate. I suppose I could just set the GURU to power off and on with the accessory wire which I may choose to do SHOULD I KEEP the GURU installed. The stereo will start up when the computer is started from a fresh boot.

Now for the audio quality of the built in radio. WOW is it bad!!! I say that when I am not even a music enthusiast like many of you on here are. I first hooked up the internally amplified speaker wires. I can hear a constant humming/whine in the back ground ONLY when the built in stereo is activated. The Windows OS sounds are superb. The volume control takes too big of steps if you ask me for the stereo. I have played with the audio sliders and you get very little volume control of the stereo audio. With FM radio input and output maxed you can get fairly loud audio out of the built in amp but you go from zero volume to loud in just one step. No soft music with those settings and if you lower the FM radio sliders then you get no top end volume.

Since my vehicle has a built in amplifier I tried hooking up the the 5.1 surround sound connector. I am using a PAC C2R-CHY3 wiring kit and since my car has the built in amplifier the inputs into the Amp are only left and right channel so I am limited to hooking up only the front right/left outputs (the same was true of the GURU amplified outputs). This factory AMP does put out sound to all the speakers though. The audio I got was amplified some but I have no top end audio at all. And yes, the background whine/humming is still present only in the built in radio audio. VERY disappointed.

I am now left with the decision of am I going to use the GURU or not. I am leaning towards it going on the work bench and staying there.

Jason

Fiberoptic

Two things here:

1. FM radio noise and poor reception - Lots of cars have diversity antennas. What does this mean? Well I am not an electrical engineer but the gist of this is that they don't work well with after market radios. From my understanding, they are designed to dramatically improve performance on factory radios as well as lower multi path distortion. Aftermarket FM radios work great in our scion with a single antenna. They work horribly in our Highlander that has multiple antennas. We found this out the painful way while doing HD radio testing. This can be fixed by adding a standard antenna to the car. There might be some other type of combining aftermarket solution that I don't know about as well.

2. The volume is VERY sensitive. This was annoying at first but here are several things we have done to work around this problem until front end software is developed.

My main advice here - Play around with the sliders - From memory, I believe the volume knob on the device controls the master volume. Fool around with the wav and FM levels. Set them as low as possible and use your master volume for controlling the radio. If your FM and WAV volume are all the way at the top you are going to have very little "master range" when using your knob.

Other FM noise - When not using the FM radio in our test car, we always mute the FM radio input in windows otherwise that audio source is always playing.

All of these volume and noise issues should be able to be fixed by using the sliders and using the FM Mute function in the control panel. Hopefully in the future these will be seamlessly controlled by a front end package like Centrafuse, StreetDeck, Roadrunner or plugins made by their developers.




It is possible we made a type there on the accessory vs. power. we will double check that.

kb9kst

Regarding the FM radio noise....The vehicle has a single antenna that has a powered amplifier for the antenna. The noise is there regardless of whether or not I have the antenna amplifier powered or not and regardless of whether or not I have the antenna plugged into the radio. The noise is a radio problem.

I can mute the radio audio and I get rid of the noise. The computer audio is crisp and clear.

Jason

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