Looks like I might be mistaken on the aerial thing then :)
It's weird, I could have sworn there was a page in the handbook mentioning it too.
Is there an easy way to test my aerial? I'm getting literally nothing from the FM radio now, regardless of where I am.
Have you made sure the turn on signal to the aerial amplifiers is connected? If it isn't you've got two aerials feeding into RF attenuators so naff all signal arriving at the radio.
The USB DAB adapters are cheapo software defined radios so not brilliant at the best of times as there is no tuned front end (as they can be made to work from medium wave up to a couple of Ghz with the right software). Very different to an actual DAB radio that has tuned inputs and will only work on DAB frequencies.
I've no idea if they're connected but if they're already amplified I guess there's no point in adding any kind of signal booster.
I'll have to dismantle the boot again to check the aerial. Is the little blue box by the window the FM aerial?
They should be getting woken up if the wake up wire is connected at the head unit to turn the amps on... the wake up wire is all spliced off the greu/black wire to all the devices that need it.
The aerials themselves are on the rear side windows, the amps for them are either side underneath the trim panels. The additional little black box on the offside is the remote receiver.
Aerial amp looks like this:
Personally I think the aerials are poop, I’m looking at putting a shark fin on the roof, can’t be any worse than what we have.
no10chris wrote:
I’m looking at putting a shark fin on the roof, can’t be any worse than what we have.
Ethically, I'm not so sure :)
I'm wondering if a previous owner might have disconnected the amps by mistake thinking he was disconnecting the fob receiver to stop the battery drain.
I've thought about putting a different aerial on the roof but i don't like the idea of cutting holes in the car and I'm equally against the idea of a visible cable running through a door shut :(
Might have to give and do one or the other though
Read up about diy DAB aerials last night as I'd found a few links with people reporting success. Have a read through the links and see what you think. I might give it a go at the weekend. Maplins sell an mcx to coax converter so it'll be easier to wire up than fiddling about with a little mcx connector as that's what the usb dongles have.
If indeed it does work, the perfect place for it will be up the side of the windscreen behind the plaggy trim.
The DIY DAB antenna in your third link should work very well indeed.
Did some Googling to try and find some intelligent commentary. My grasp of antenna theory was pretty weak back in night school days 40 years ago and it certainly hasn't improved. This quote sounds right
"Apparently performance is mainly down to the coil at the bottom which acts as a choke impedance matching device. What you have is an end fed balanced 5/8 wave. Dunno who came up with the design but the use of the coil, the 75 ohm coax and the fold back is very very clever indeed !"
Dunno what effect running it close to a scree pillar will have. I'd test it hanging in the middle of the screen first.
Clive
DIY DAB antenna sounds interesting. Certainly something I'll look into if/when I get a DAB tuner.
I was playing around with my FM radio last night and found out how to manually tune it in 0.05 increments instead of letting it scan and find its own stations. Managed to find Radio 1 - not my first choice but better than nothing :P
So now I'm thinking my aerials are fine but for some reason the radio can't identify the stations on an auto scan - again, this is something I found with the factory radio too. Not sure why, the Radio 1 signal I found sounds perfect so I don't think it's a signal strength issue.
As for the idea of having my mobile hotspot activate automatically when I'm in the car, I've gone off the NFC tag idea and think I've found a free way to do it. I've installed an app on my phone called "Automate" and I've set up a rule to activate the hotspot when connected to the bluetooth in the radio. I've not been out to check if it works yet though.
For the reverse camera I think I'm going to wire the power connections at the camera end to the number plate lights. It means I'll have to have my lights on for the camera to work and the camera will be powered up permanently but I think that will be easier than trying to run power and earth from the reverse lights in the lower tailgate, up a rear pillar, across the roof, through the rubber cable conduit in the upper tailgate and then down to the camera, I'll then connect the reverse trigger on the headunit to the BECM reverse wire as initially planned, this should then kick the headunit in to reverse mode as needed.
I think the way this particular camera is supposed to work is to connect the camera end to the reverse lights and then it sends a 12v signal back along the video cable to a spur that I should connect to the headunit. This would make the camera power up with the reverse lights and use that same connection to activate reverse mode in the headunit.
RutlandRover wrote:
For the reverse camera I think I'm going to wire the power connections at the camera end to the number plate lights. It means I'll have to have my lights on for the camera to work and the camera will be powered up permanently but I think that will be easier than trying to run power and earth from the reverse lights in the lower tailgate, up a rear pillar, across the roof, through the rubber cable conduit in the upper tailgate and then down to the camera, I'll then connect the reverse trigger on the headunit to the BECM reverse wire as initially planned, this should then kick the headunit in to reverse mode as needed.
No need to pick up power from the reversing lights themselves, you can pick it up from a connector near the RH rear light cluster where the different coloured wires all change to white wires to go to the upper and lower tailgates. Feed to the LH reverse light is on a Light Green/Black wire and to the RH reverse light on a Green/Black.
Or, if you do it how you suggest, power the camera permanently from the ignition switched supply available from the connector behind the LH tail light cluster put there in case you want dual trailer sockets (White/Orange wire in a 4 way connector, with a ground on a Black wire). I've used that supply to put a couple of 12V power sockets in the boot.
You may find that the head unit switches to the reverse camera if it sees a video signal on it, in which case you will need to power it from the reversing lights if you don't want to have to manually select and deselect it.
For FM in our area, it's 90.1 for Radio 2, 92.3 for Radio 3, 94.5 for Radio 4, 99.7 for Radio 1, then there is another on 95.8 and one on 107.2 (I think, as I don't use FM these days).
You're overthinking it way too much...
If you have a trigger wire in the video cable from camera...
Connect wire from BECM output to one of the reverse lights, up to head unit. Connect this to reverse trigger on head unit, and the wire in the A/V cable.
At camera end, use the trigger wire in the A/V cable to power the camera. If you need another ground, you can connect it to the likes of the loadspace lamp, though I'm pretty sure my camera shares the power ground with video ground on the video RCA.
No need to go digging around for more wiring or anything like that.. it's then all done up front where it's more accessible and easier to trace.
blueplasticsoulman wrote:
If indeed it does work, the perfect place for it will be up the side of the windscreen behind the plaggy trim.
Where it won't work...... Putting it next to grounded metal would be the same as not bothering to strip the screen off the inner. It needs to be in free space so would work reasonably well on a household system surrounded by nothing that is grounded but in a car might work better than a stick on the glass one (which are pretty pathetic at the best of times) but not by much. What that design is doing is creating an end fed quarter wave dipole. The unscreened end is one pole of the dipole, the stripped screen is the other end and the coil is creating a choke to create an end to the earthy end of the dipole. As anyone that uses radio will tell you, the only place for an aerial is out in the open.
Not sure if it is standard or something that plod added but I've got a grommet near where the rubber tube goes to feed power to the upper tailgate that allowed me to run the cable from my magnetic aerial into the car above the headlining.
Not sure if it is standard or something that plod added but I've got a grommet near where the rubber tube goes to feed power to the upper tailgate that allowed me to run the cable from my magnetic aerial into the car above the headlining.
I'll have a look on mine once the car park drains below ankle depth.
This one here
The roads are a bit mucky out here too....
Gordonjcp-adm wrote:
> Not sure if it is standard or something that plod added but I've got a grommet near where the rubber tube goes to feed power to the upper tailgate that allowed me to run the cable from my magnetic aerial into the car above the headlining.> I'll have a look on mine once the car park drains below ankle depth.
No extra grommet on my 95 but can you squeeze an extra cable through the top tailgate wiring tube?
Mine doesn't have the extra grommet. I struggled to get the wire (with a plug on it!) through the rubber tube. I'm hoping I haven't damaged it as I had to pull on it quite hard to get it through.
I'll try your idea Marty, connecting the spur at the headunit end to the BECM and grounding the camera at the camera end. It will leave a loose power spur at the camera end but I can cover that off with something to stop it shorting.
Gilbertd, I figured I could tap in to the reverse light wiring somewhere before the lights themselves but I really don't want to have to force more wires through the rubber tube for the upper tailgate wiring. It's a pain in the arse and I already had to cut a slit in it at the top to let the camera wire out. I think if I try to get more wires through it I'll risk tearing that slit more and introducing a higher risk of water getting in there.
Thanks for the frequencies, I'll give them a go. I know the Radio 1 signal I found was a different frequency to the one you gave, hopefully the others give me something. I've found Heart FM Peterborough on 102.7.
For the hotspot automation, I've got it switching it on but not off again when the bluetooth network goes away. I need to tweak my rule in the app.
The frequencies I gave are for the Morborne transmitter which is the main one for our area, so runs 66kW on each station. You've got Heart right, and I just remembered it from programming the radio in Dina's car. If the system can cope with rds it should return to the strongest signal for each station.