Originally Posted by ExSF

When I stop my engine, the music carries on playing until the drivers door is opened. That's how it's supposed to be I reckon.
Easy to try out on yours.
Also, if my battery is low, the info' screen is dull for a couple of minutes after starting the engine.

Les.

Originally Posted by lilo1980

Hi guys,

I just successfully fitted a 1280x800 IPS touch screen to my head unit and connected to Android. The screen can be switched to display Android or original factory system.

All original factory settings and controls are retained. The beauty of this system is that it is future proof. If your android is getting outdated, you can simply plug in a new unit. There might be some additional programming when you do the upgrade but it would be a minor task.

Inspiration and Credits go to Phaeton forum, Jaguar forum, and Russian firmware developer Andrey at openrtd2662.

This project is quite complex and definitely not a plug and play mod. It involved cutting, custom firmware, custom android drivers, soldering, etc. I broke two LCDs and blew three power supply in the process.

I can provide more details if anyone is interested.

Originally Posted by 360trev

I'll try again as my first post seems to have got lost...

Seems like you boys in the Bentley community are a bit behind the curve when it comes to upgrading the VW Infotainment unit! This kind of screen 'video source' hack/trick has been going on for many years in the Phaeton community (which uses essentially the same exact unit running slightly modified software).

A few points for people to understand / clarify about what's going on here, as its easy to get lost with all of the wiring gubbins you see .

All this hack/mod involves taking display cable to the screen, i.e. the 'final output signals' destined to hit the very old, low resolution LCD non-touchscreen panel and modifying them (conversion, upscaling, etc.) so they work on a higher resolution newer (previously incompatible) display panel which works with all modern hdmi sources and can be switched to use a different input source.

Said differently the biggest hassle in all of this was that the original unit wasn't designed to accept user integration multi-source input to the display ( a bit like your big screen tv can have multiple HDMI inputs) and ofcourse the old 7" display was ancient, a bit like the old arcade machines from yesteryear. So the whole hassle of this mod is replacing the screen with something modern and touch enabled then hacking the infotainments output so you can integrate the old signal to display on the new display properly, among other sources you may wish to display.

This does absolutely nothing for the original unit's output quality (actually if your not careful you can degrade the quality a bit depending on the approach taken) but... and this is the main point, once you have a proper later generation, higher resolution screen (greater number of dots per inch) of same as original physical size (7" inches) you can start to display other things and this is where things get rather interesting to add new technologies to the car. Just like pressing HDMI source on your TV remote does.

> Any device which has a HDMI input source can be connected;
. In car PC's
. Tablets running all number of things from Andriod to Windows 10
> giving you access to latest apps, bluetooth integration,
music streaming, and if you use a device with 4G sim integration
live internet connected services and apps too (so bang up to date).
. Set Top Boxes decoding digital Terrestrial TV with appropriate ariel's
. Gaming Consoles like Playstations or Xbox's.
. DVD/Blue Ray player (old tech now and most likely not appropriate)
. Raspberry Pi's with CAN Bus controller shields (*)

> Plus you can also look at other stuff out on the market like the latest multi-camera Reversing technologies where you can see a 360 degree view
. Most of these either plug in using anaolgue video sources but you can always use wifi cameras to an installed tablet for example.

So really being able to innovate just requires you to be able to co-exist with the old unit (For access to settings like aircon, tpms, suspension settings) etc. and then swap to an alternative source (touch screen enabled) for access to things like modern sat nav and the like.

I also mention raspberry pi here because of something called 'CAN BUS' this is highly relevant to our cars because all the different car systems talk on this automotive standard. Its like a poor mans ethernet cable standard but cheaper and not as flexible. If you start to play around with a custom app on Raspberry Pi you could indeed junk the entire Infotainment unit and connect its CAN-Bus inputs directly to the CAN-Bus of the Raspberry Pi, the result is you can send messages to control all the stuff the Infotainment system currently does like the Aircon, suspension, etc. You just need to use a CAN bus sniffer to capture all the old messages and replay them. This would allow you to completely re-develop and remove the old tired User Interface and usher in a whole new next generation system, you could either re-skin Andriod (quite time consuming) or develop something in OpenGL/WebGL or similar and get a better solution than the current 2016 Bentley Infotainment has...

Ofcourse all of this requires time and development skills, its not a 5 minute jobbie but your imagination (and programming skills) become your limit then! Hey get a local wizzkid teenager who's used to hacking Raspberry Pi's to teach you