DIY on installing an inexpensive Android radio/headunit to replace the standard CD30 radio.. (and probably the PCM3)

BTW - highly recommended music player - Muzio Player - reasonably priced ($10/life subscription, also lesser subscriptions are available.)

It does the best finding and sorting of music that I've seen, ID'ing the genre of the music and automatically putting the albums/tracks into categories (classical, jazz, rock, etc..)

It enables playlists (and I think even suggests content for them based on your playing history..) VERY nice.

My only complaint (as with many apps when using 1280x720 resolution) is the inability to change the font size used. It's a bit small, but happily, buttons are labeled. and look pretty intuitive (important in auto use).

It did take about 10 minutes to categorize and index 4,000 tracks (on 2 USB thumb drives - it won't find the thumb drives at first scan - but if you tell it to look on SD memory cards - it finds and catalogs them very nicely.

It also allows saving the indexing, playlists, settings and such to the Google cloud - easily, I think 2 clicks.

It's 4.5 stars for me - - if the text and a few icons size was adjustable it would be a very solid 5.



A few quick screen captures:

Songs mode


Artists mode:


Album Mode:


Genre Mode:


Equalizer (interesting spacial settings):


Queue Display - it makes this up if you tell it to do random play. If you don't like one of the songs - use X to remove it from the queue. VERY cool feature!


I've written the developer of the app with a few suggestions RE - fonts and icon sizes.. and pointed him to this review, so I hope to hear back from him soon.

I did suggest I could talk to the people who make the unit (and lots of other units) and perhaps ditch the miserable excuse for a player (compared to this..) that comes on the unit and replace it with this under license. I think with a few tweeks it's really THAT good!

Now if we could convince him to write a radio app...

Update - 05/20/23 - I've been working on sorting out how this player catalogs music it finds, and I think I've found an issue - that I might be able to fix finally.

I have about 4,300 tracks in about 500 albums as my primary music hoard. These are all rips of CD's I own to my computer, and eventually to USB sticks I can use in the cars.

Being a tidy sort of person, I try to organize the music in what seems to me to be a logical way, making it easier to find what I want. The problem is - in so doing that I created an issue when this app goes to scan and catalog the music. The app - as shown above - has several ways to look at the music files - you can search/view by title, by album, by folder (containing the music), and by genre.

In my tidying up of things - when I have a number of CDs that are related, I try to group them together so they're obviously related. What I've typically done is create a high-level empty directory (named for what I'm putting in it, ie - "Enya Albums") - then I drag the albums (or cut/paste) them into the group directory. That works fine as long as I remember to make sure the original source directory (album) at the high level is deleted. If it isn't - duplicates show up in the listings. The software does have a switch that avoids playing duplicate files, but I'd rather they simply don't appear that way. So - I went through my source files, cutting/pasting/deleting things until all the albums I wanted to group were in the higher-level directory and NOWHERE else on the USB stick.

That worked - except for one group. In that group, instead of moving the entire album into the higher-level folder, I copied the songs from each album into the higher-level folder, without any album containers. There were 3 albums I wanted to be grouped together, and I found the flaw in doing it this way..

Besides information on the author, song title, performers, etc.. it turns out that the song listings also keep track of the track number (track-1, track-2, etc) for each album.

By copying the three album contents without the albums to the common directory, I had 3 songs battling for track-1, and all the other tracks. This software logically decided that it should create three copies of the album tracks, all the album tracks, in separate duplicate named directories. That causes confusion.

I believe (and will be trying) the fix for this is to create 3 new albums/folders in the high-level group folder and sort out the tracks into the different folders. I'll report back if this works...

Having fun in NJ on a rainy day, playing with the Android headunit..

RSchwerer said:

Have you tried the VLC media player (free and open-source). No surprises like Russian spyware. I've used it on my PC for decades and only recently learned there was an Android version. It even runs from my phone over Android Auto. I just installed it on my new ATOTO head unit. Yeah, the font is slightly small but I can read while driving. Being open-source, it has its own support community. You could probably find someone to change the font and take better advantage of the larger screen in landscape mode. BTW, it also plays video in many formats. VLC for Android

Click to expand...

I've had VLC on my PC's for years also - sort of bundled in with Irfanview for photo editing, but I tried it on the Android headunit and didn't find it particularly attractive (interface, visual design) or that it has quite as many capabilities as the Muzio player. I've been chatting with the programmers of Muzio (Muzio Team) about some of my issues with font sizes and icon sizes that are used, and requesting a button that will appear on every page to take the user back to the home page (something I've found on all the more advanced players - it's not always obvious is how to get from one place in the app to another - or to home.) I'm hoping to hear they've addressed some of the issues.

I do suggest another player that is similar in design (and possibly also from Russia) Pi Music Player. I haven't done it on the headunit yet - I've just played with it on my Android emulator on my PC - but it seems competent and very useable. Pi Music Player | 100Pi Labs - and available on Google Play Pi Music Player - MP3 Player - Apps on Google Play

I'd really suggest adding LDMultiPlayer to your Windows PC if you want to explore different apps without the bother of installing them on your headunit until you know you want them there. It's easy to run, install apk files, and size the window to the same size as the one on the headunit (both resolution and size on your screen.) It will give you a real look/feel for what the different apps are about.

What am I up to with it? Still sorting out interfaces, how to do things, that sort of thing. It works fine, but I can't resist fiddling with it..

So - current "Launcher":

That's day mode..

Night mode:


The camera hides the difference in brightness.. I have day mode displayed at 100% brightness and night mode at 30% brightness. The switchover is automatic.. it can be triggered by the GPS (which apparently knows sunset and sunrise everywhere), or via a CanBus signal that tells it the headlights have been turned on. It also can be switched manually. It's very nice since it can be set dim enough to not be distracting at night, something my old Rosen unit was incapable of (it had two brightness levels, not much different.. and fiddly to use and had to use it manually.) In addition to different front end displays and automatic brightness, pressing the "CAR" button cycles through 3 brightness levels.

This is the AGAMA Launcher - very similar to the CarWebGuru one.. I believe they may have common origins. Once they're setup if I decide I want a change, I can just go to APPS and pick the one I want to run for a while. One has to be set as a default (that starts when the unit is powered up), but it's trivial to swap them.

Some folks over on FaceBook are getting pretty excited by this unit - thanks to Dave Barthorpe who started a thread there about his experiences installing and using it. Good thread - Porsche 987 Owners Club | Facebook - in the Porsche 97 Owners Club - unusual for FB, it's been continuing to grow and hasn't been disappeared by the FB automatic content hiding robot.. I believe Dave is also here...

Dave is using his unit in CarPlay mode, which undoubtedly is smarter than me - since it just works in that mode, fiddling around, and learning things isn't required. It's an Apple mode - so it works without fuss. I can't quite say the Android Auto mode is as simple as CarPlay. I've run it a bit that way, and it works great with Google GO and Google Maps for navigation, there are still lots of options to choose and set. I'll be exploring that a bit more and report back here on how it works (or doesn't.)

Thanks Don, now installed the Agama Launcher and customised, but just one thing I can’t get to work - I want to replace the rather large Porsche logo with my own design, and when I click on the Plus icon to navigate to images on my USB drive, it just says ‘Error’. Have you tried this?

Dave - I tried this with my PC based Android emulator (it's lots easier with a mouse and keyboard, and easier to fix mistakes like setting Agama to vertical format - which required reinstalling it from ground zero on the car unit..)

This is what I found:



After clicking the + symbol - this appeared:


So I clicked OK, and next:


I clicked ALLOW - and the directory containing pictures opened up (I didn't have any smaller logo files handy.. so that's as far as I got.)



This was on the PC emulator - that uses one PC based directory for transfers between the Android OS and the Windows OS. You can drag/drop/copy to that directory.

How this will work on the actual unit in the car - I'll take a look shortly. If you have a smaller logo file you'd like to pass along, I can try using it if I can get to it.

I've found a few more cool things this Launcher can do..

Cool Thing #1 - Documentation.

If you open the settings window, and scroll way down to the bottom of the screen, you'll find:




Clicking that - opens a browser window, and if you have WiFi access - opens this webpage:



Cool Thing #2:

And that's where some very cool stuff is revealed - like:



Pressing and holding one of the 6 buttons, then dragging it to the center - gives you 3 more spots to assign apps for quick access. After assigning them, the screen looks like:



The first assigned app is the default app, opened by a quick click on the button. If you press and hold the button sliding it to the center again - the center selections open for a total of 4 apps for each of the 6 buttons, 24 pre-assigned quick access buttons. VERY cool!

And I'll just add - playing with this on my PC using an Android emulator makes figuring out all this stuff much easier, and much easier to undo mistakes. One mistake not to make.. under Expert Theme Edit Mode - a WARNING!

In the section for screen settings:





This screen opens:


Just don't touch it. It does bad things when the Launcher decides it's running on a vertical (cell phone) screen. VERY BAD THINGS.

And that's it for tonight's fun...

daveb99 said:

Thanks Don, I was expecting to get a pop up window requesting access to storage, but there’s nothing. Just the small ‘Error’ pop up at the bottom, as per my screenshot.

I’ve checked the app settings and there are no Permissions denied at all. And I know the unit can see my USB thumb drive because I can change the boot logo.

Any more thoughts on what it could be? Very keen to see what your head unit does when you click on the + sign to add a new custom logo in AGAMA..

Click to expand...

You might want to make sure the USB stick is formatted FAT32, and not some other method. Windows loves to make it exFAT, which isn't always compatible.

In windows, you can right-click the drive and see Properties. FAT32 should be apparent as "File System":

schwinn said:

Hmm, ok... then I'd just try a few other USB sticks. If NONE work, then I'd contact the manufacturer and let them know you may have a defective radio.

Click to expand...

The USB sticks work - just can't seem to write to them with this one particular function. The audio files on mine read just fine. And in my case - I have two different USB sticks in the two USB drives, and I still get the same error. I'll have to open up the FILER app and see what I can do with the USB sticks.. like writing a file to them.. it will be an interesting experiment.

BTW - a FaceBook RANT. FB people have become addicted to instant gratification. In Dave's thread on FB about these units, I posted a link to this thread when people asked questions that I didn't want to type out on FB (only to have them disappear a few hours later) - so I've posted that link about 6 times, leads them right to the beginning of this thread.

I thought that might satisfy some of the people there.. but one chap asked something about the capabilities of the unit that I'd covered here, so I suggested he read this thread. I didn't list the link to the entire thread, I just pointed out that it was on planet-9.com .

THAT wasn't good enough. I was asked why I didn't "just post the link.." I tried to be polite in my answer. The guy is a programmer.. he should be able to handle finding a thread on a forum..

SIGH... I fear for people today - it seems that encouraging a short-attention-span mindset is an active goal of Facebook programming.

If you look at comments made (and the thread in question is rather long so it's obvious) - things just disappear off the screen. The reason is - FB defaults to showing "Top comments" - it's not at all clear how that criteria is applied, since much of what's shown is simply nonsense of no value at all, or posts that obviously show the person posting hadn't actually reviewed ALL the posts (which is a manual selection you have to make EACH time you open a thread if you truly want to see what's been discussed.)

I'm sure there is some marketing reason for this BS.. but it makes me want to simply leave FB and never to darken its environment again, but I have some family that only communicates that way, so... there I am. Pissed off at FB, and somewhat at people too lazy to figure out they should be looking at "All Comments in chronological order".. or at least "Newest Comments".

FB sucks eggs. So there..

Thanks Don, I’ll try the Filer app too and see what happens. It’s clearly a software thing - a bug in the AGAMA launcher at a guess, since my head unit also reads audio files fine via USB.

Re Facebook - completely agree. I post a fair number of threads on there to help others (as forums seem to be slowly dying) after I’ve done something significant to my cars. I have a Lotus too and there’s always something needs doing to improve it etc.

Some people just don’t read things properly and as you say they don’t read all the comments. I’ve given up repeating myself. I often post the same thread on 2 or 3 groups to help as many people as possible and have to answer the same questions. I think I’ll post on one and simply link to it on the other groups - stating that I won’t be answering questions anywhere other than on the original thread.

This is where forums are SO much better. Nothing disappears….

Keep up the good work Don - it’s very much appreciated by me.

REVIEW CONTINUED - TORQUE APP...

As you may have read above, I had no luck getting Torque to connect to the OBD-II dongle that generally lives in my OBD-II port (it draws 45ma so I'm not really concerned with it running down the battery overnight..)

Something I read on Amazon, in the Questions section on the dongle that I bought from Amazon: https://a.co/d/1pacUo2 - the answer made it clear what I was doing wrong, and how to get it to work...

Amazon Question said:

I got it to show up in available devices. It paired with my phone with code "1234". But, it would not let me connect to it after pairing. I opened Torque on my phone and it would not connect. I tried a number of times, rebooting phone, unpairing, pairing, etc.... Finally, I looked at the directions and find that you have to actually choose that adapter in Torque. Just open the "Choose Bluetooth Device" section and your OBDII device should be listed if you paired it. Then close Torque, reopen it and it should connect to the OBDII dongle just fine.

Click to expand...

The tricky bit was getting it attached to the headunit. To do that, first I made sure the headunit wasn't attached to my phone by turning the Bluetooth off on my phone. Then I went looking for where one might make Bluetooth connections...

TADA! In the "Bluetooth" app which is also the phone app, going there to connect up an OBD dongle isn't the most obvious thing, but there it was.

I picked the "Link" icon in the BT/Phone app, and it went looking and found the OBD-II dongle immediately. I clicked on it to link, it did, no code input (1234) was needed, it just connected.

I then went and installed Torque again - and I set up a profile for the Boxster. When I opened Torque it told me it was attaching itself to the OBD dongle, no action was required on my part. Torque immediately started talking to the car, and gauges and displays started working.

Tomorrow I'll do some photos of live displays and post them here.

As promised:


This video has the output from the MAF in the large display, and one of the other displays shows the Air/Fuel ratio.. I couldn't find a monitor for the O2 sensor outputs, but I'm sure it's there somewhere since I know these are reported on the OBD-II protocol.. but that might make quite an interesting screen, especially if logging were to be turned on.





Revs, speed, coolant temp, acceleration (Gs?), throttle position, engine load. Since it was raining I didn't get to see these out on the road, but I suspect they'd also be a bit interesting to watch (as a passenger..)