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      02-02-2012, 04:19 PM   #177
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Originally Posted by spmd11 View Post
Solved hissing noise. My relocated factory head unit in trunk was powered up in tuner mode. Turned off tuner, hissing gone. Duh!
so what's your opinon now after a few days of playing with it?
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      02-02-2012, 10:33 PM   #178
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Here are the issues that I have at the moment.

1. Screen glare is ridiculous. I mean, in the daytime, if it is not cloudy, forget it.. you can't even see the screen. Even if it's cloudy, you must squint to see anything on a Navigation display, and forget about wearing sunglasses as you drive! LOL! I spent the whole day taking my sunglasses off and on, trying to make out the screen. I also tried different map colors on Co-pilot to try to find something that is usable. This one issue all by itself kills this system usefulness. The brightness controls have very little effect... and it seems as though they don't even make a change. Then at night, the screen is so bright, it's blinding. And there is no real substantive way to turn down the brightness. It is so ridiculous that all you can do is really laugh about it. It is so inferior to iDrive and the BMW OEM nav screen. I have 3 other BMWs with the iDrive, so I have a direct comparison, painfully....

2. My FM radio works, but the reception is so poor it is unusable. Trent has let me know that we should try a powered antenna adapter. I am going to have my installer put this in tomorrow. fingers crossed. Do you think the supplier of the D99 could tell anyone this? So, I went from Satellite radio pre-install, which we really enjoy, to post-install, no sat radio and no radio at all.. Oh joy! My wife is really pleased.

3. My constant 12V wire is not in the correct fusebox slot, so every time I power up the car and the D99, I lose all my settings. This is enormously frustrating. But who would know? There are no instructions from the supplier. I am having this resolved tomorrow, hopefully.. but it took me 3 days of painful play testing and complaining to Trent to get to the bottom of this issue.

4. The touchscreen is horribly sensitive and makes for very difficult screen navigation. Makes one wish for an iDrive type device. One has to have a stylus or you cannot scroll and select on the touchscreen. If you must use your hand, you have to turn your finger upside down and use your fingernail. Is this stupid or what? I can only imagine the engineer who designed this...many times, because of the screen sensitivity, you get a selection that you do not want.. and better yet, many times, you select something on the screen and it doesn't work, so you end up double pressing everything! Perfect frustration! So you get things you don't want on the touch screen and you have to tap many things twice that you do want!

5. The D99 screen location is low on the dash.. this is problematic and very distracting. It works.. okay? But it is vastly inferior to the iDrive screen setup that is more in line with the outward view out the windshield..or the lesser option, an iPhone or similar portable nav on your dash.

6. This one is fun.. the Android (not sure about Windows) version has 2 sound boards.. one for media and one for the radio/iPod. Each time you switch between the two.. for instance from Navigation voice to the radio or iPod, there is a loud pop noise out of the speakers and there are 2 volume controls!!! LOL! So, the radio/iPod volume is the physical knob, but the media volume is a screen touch item! This is a perfect example of how unergonomic and complex this unit is.

Bottom line, this product is really a shame. I would be so embarrassed if I was responsible for bringing this thing to market. It has plenty of potential, for sure.. but terribly executed.

So, what to do? I cannot recommend this unit to anyone. In fact, I say if you are thinking about it for your e90/92/93, run away as fast as you can. Right now, I have lost 4 days of productivity, A LOT of cash and some major headaches. It really hurts to spend this kind of money and be so disappointed. If I had it to do over again, I definitely would have put this money to better use and gone the iPhone on the dash route. I guess I never learn... I'm a sucker for technology and the after market. Can the D99 be useful at all? Yes, but it is comes with very much compromise... and if I was ever able to talk to the guy(s) at Dynavin, man, would I give them an earful. I have no respect for what they have done.. It is bad enough that this product has so many short comings... it is absolutely unethical that they have no real literature for operation or installation, relying on the consumer to do ALL the work in understanding how it should operate and be installed in our cars. Someone is taking advantage and making lots of money at our expense. Shameful, really... what a shame.

Once again, this is no dig on Trent at CarAudioCraze. I know that he is just as frustrated as the rest of us with the Dynavin. In fact, I am thankful that I bought it from Trent because he has promised me to make everything right.. so relieved about that.... now the Dynavin people... I have nothing good to say about... I have no respect for what they have brought to market.
Okay, here is a status update....

I believe that I have all issues resolved to a point that I can use this device and I am fairly certain that I will keep it in my car. This purchase has been the most difficult of any aftermarket pursuit that I have ever experienced. I still feel the same about the Dynavin people... The system is workable. I plan to post all of the traps and pitfalls and necessary information to make someone else's purchase far smoother, but it will take me several days before I can do this properly. I am an apple/iphone/mac guy, so the Android hurdle was immense.

All of my resolutions have come from my installer and Jeff at J&T Distributing (Jeff has been very gracious to help me solve problems, even though I did not purchase from him. Huge kudos for his efforts to help me out!) Trent at CarAudioCraze (who I bought from) has not been very responsive in communication. My last issue remaining is that my radio reception is poor. I believe that this is due to defective radio hardware and I am hopeful that Trent will provide me an exchange. Resolutions to my biggest obstacles in order of my laundry list post above of complaints:

1. Jeff showed me a trick for setting screen brightness/dim through one of the hard keys. This info not documented. It helps a lot.. however, there is still a glare issue in direct sunlight. In these cases, one needs to put hand over screen to make out anything. This would occur with sunroof open, for example and sunlight is directly on screen

2. Radio reception is poor. We tried an antenna amplifier but this did not work. My installer believes that we have bad hardware in the radio

3. We finally found a fuse that provides constant power. This helps immensely as before, every time I shut down car I lost all settings.. hugely frustrating. This took phone calls with Jeff and 3 visits to installer over a 3 day period. I have the secret on this move and will submit this in my future instructional post (2011 335i)

4. Touch screen sensitivity. I have overcome this one. Although not ideal, I have learned how to deal with it.

5. D99 installation location. Same as above. Learning to adapt with location

6. Multimedia sound vs. Radio/ipod sound. This one is a steep learning curve. All that is required is understanding how to set the volumes. Discovering this info is the hard part (no documentation)

I have changed my opinion on purchase worthiness, but it depends on several factors. I am so upset with Dynavin for the lack of documentation for installation and operation, I would boycot them if I was in the market again.. BUT, if one were to have a BIG heads up on all of the issues that I have encountered, it would dramatically reduce the frustration levels and might make the purchase reasonable.

Pros:

The Android software is very powerful and once you figure it out, is pretty fun actually. If you have never experienced Android software though, be prepared for a big learning curve.. patience required. I installed Co-Pilot Live Premium for my nav software and I am very happy with that product, especially the text to speech software that gives you street names required for your turns

Internet capabilities on the go is a big, big plus. I now have my iphone tethered to the D99 and this capability exceeds OEM BMW technology. It opens up a whole new dimension in what can be accomplished

The ability to put all of your mp3 songs onto a card and view them and play them on the D99 is a nice feature. Artwork is available and I'm not sure how the D99 does this.

Resolutions:

My installer successfully relocated my factory head unit to the trunk, underneath the trunk floor.. took extra fiber optic cable. This preserved my BMW assist and BMW dealer diagnostic capability (2011 335i). More on how we did this in later post
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      02-02-2012, 10:40 PM   #179
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BigDog View Post
so what's your opinon now after a few days of playing with it?
My hissing issue was a goofy one.. my relocated factory head unit was powered on in "tuner" mode and was causing the hiss. Easy fix. Turned off turner in trunk.
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      02-02-2012, 10:43 PM   #180
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Quote:
Originally Posted by spmd11
Quote:
Originally Posted by BigDog View Post
so what's your opinon now after a few days of playing with it?
My hissing issue was a goofy one.. my relocated factory head unit was powered on in "tuner" mode and was causing the hiss. Easy fix. Turned off turner in trunk.
Can you post a picture of how you relocated it?
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      02-02-2012, 10:49 PM   #181
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Glad you got it mostly worked out and your assessment is fair. As I said earlier, the dynavins do A LOT of things and its easy to get overwhelmed, take your time, play around with it for awhile, most end up really enjoying the product.

If you read my writeups on the the dynavin android you will see that I experienced the same "android shock" coming from an iOS background, the learning curve is steep if you dont know android. But eventually I got it figured out and now I know my way around both android and iOS.
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      02-03-2012, 08:10 AM   #182
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Quote:
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Can you post a picture of how you relocated it?
Yes, I will post later today
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      02-03-2012, 08:12 AM   #183
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Quote:
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Glad you got it mostly worked out and your assessment is fair. As I said earlier, the dynavins do A LOT of things and its easy to get overwhelmed, take your time, play around with it for awhile, most end up really enjoying the product.

If you read my writeups on the the dynavin android you will see that I experienced the same "android shock" coming from an iOS background, the learning curve is steep if you dont know android. But eventually I got it figured out and now I know my way around both android and iOS.
True statement.. however, this does not relieve the burden on Dynavin for providing proper documentation on installation and operation. Dynavin gets a total FAIL in this department
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      02-03-2012, 11:10 AM   #184
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Quote:
Originally Posted by spmd11
Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffb335 View Post
Glad you got it mostly worked out and your assessment is fair. As I said earlier, the dynavins do A LOT of things and its easy to get overwhelmed, take your time, play around with it for awhile, most end up really enjoying the product.

If you read my writeups on the the dynavin android you will see that I experienced the same "android shock" coming from an iOS background, the learning curve is steep if you dont know android. But eventually I got it figured out and now I know my way around both android and iOS.
True statement.. however, this does not relieve the burden on Dynavin for providing proper documentation on installation and operation. Dynavin gets a total FAIL in this department
We need to have someone from Cyanogenmod to write up a new honeycomb for dynavin. Optimize everything
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      02-03-2012, 09:20 PM   #185
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffb335 View Post
Glad you got it mostly worked out and your assessment is fair. As I said earlier, the dynavins do A LOT of things and its easy to get overwhelmed, take your time, play around with it for awhile, most end up really enjoying the product.

If you read my writeups on the the dynavin android you will see that I experienced the same "android shock" coming from an iOS background, the learning curve is steep if you dont know android. But eventually I got it figured out and now I know my way around both android and iOS.

Jeff you are a class act. Helping someone so much that hasn't even purchased from you gets big points in my book. Hurry up and get vendor status. If anyone is going to buy a unit they should buy from Jeff.
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      02-04-2012, 01:26 AM   #186
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Checkout my DIY on using Sharkfin GPS Antenna for better GPS reception
http://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=643971
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      02-04-2012, 07:41 AM   #187
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Did you do this to your car already?
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      02-04-2012, 08:24 AM   #188
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Quote:
Originally Posted by krnet2dboi View Post
Checkout my DIY on using Sharkfin GPS Antenna for better GPS reception
http://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=643971
I would like to proceed with the DIY you posted on my car for the Shark fin antenna to the Dynavin. I looked at your DIY and it appears very straightforward. I contacted my installer and told him the instructions. He doesn't understand how you connected the coaxial cable to the Dynavin itself. You say to use a Farka connector on both ends, but the Dynavin GPS input is a screw on connector like one would see on a cable TV coaxial, only smaller. So, we are confused about this...

Steve
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      02-04-2012, 10:12 AM   #189
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interesting......i might have to pull my car apart this afternoon.....
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      02-04-2012, 10:17 AM   #190
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same here!

If anyone is in the Ventura California area and wants to check out the D99 before buying one, let me know.
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      02-04-2012, 10:34 AM   #191
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hey cudabnu,

My wife and I just bought an X5 a couple weeks ago down in your neighborhood at Steve Thomas BMW in Camarillo. I had not ever really spent much time in that area, always just driving through....its REALLY nice out there there, the hills, farmland, and coast, NICE,.....we drove back through the hills back over to 126 and back to 5, great drive, especially in a BMW!

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      02-04-2012, 10:42 AM   #192
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That's where I got my E91, my brother bought his 135i there also. I take the 126 to the 118 home everyday, nice relaxing drive, if I want to have some curvy fun I go over the 23 from Fillmore.
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      02-04-2012, 10:53 AM   #193
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GPS lock-on

I had to re-flash my ROM on Thursday (used Jeff's reference on the Dynavin website). Unfortunately, this ROM wiped out my ability to get a GPS lock. So now I have no GPS. anyone know where I can source a ROM flash that works?
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      02-04-2012, 10:56 AM   #194
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Quote:
Originally Posted by spmd11 View Post
I had to re-flash my ROM on Thursday (used Jeff's reference on the Dynavin website). Unfortunately, this ROM wiped out my ability to get a GPS lock. So now I have no GPS. anyone know where I can source a ROM flash that works?
That is the ROM that is on every dynavin device...And I flash units with it every day...so I dont have any idea why yours is doing that. I would say flash it again, check to see that you get reception, then proceed. If you still are not getting reception I dont think the ROM is the reason. Did you try moving the antenna yet, or at least check to make sure it is still where you put it?



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Originally Posted by cudabnu View Post
That's where I got my E91, my brother bought his 135i there also. I take the 126 to the 118 home everyday, nice relaxing drive, if I want to have some curvy fun I go over the 23 from Fillmore.
Yeah, 23 was pretty awesome, roads dont get much curvier than that, interesting terrain there too, not to mention all the stone "carvings" on the side of the road..... anyway, enough tangents....back to the OT....

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      02-04-2012, 11:38 AM   #195
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Trying to create Custom Rom, but Ubuntu keeps on crashing on my laptop. Gotta go get a desktop to finish this off i guess
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      02-04-2012, 12:03 PM   #196
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Trying to create Custom Rom, but Ubuntu keeps on crashing on my laptop. Gotta go get a desktop to finish this off i guess
Ok. Heading to installer to re-check GPS antenna
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      02-04-2012, 12:15 PM   #197
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When I check GPS State in settings it shows 12 satellites visible and satellites used at 0
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      02-04-2012, 12:20 PM   #198
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That tells me it sees the says but the signal strength is too low.
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