Hi everyone -- I just had the VL-1 installed on my car (2004 Land Cruiser 120 -same infotainment and everything as the Lexus GX470- located overseas, so I haven't seen it yet...but will do so over the holidays). I also asked them to install a backup camera, but they could not find a way to automatically trigger the video input switch when the car is put in reverse. Instead, they said, I need to manually select the Video Input on the VLine interface to bring the camera up.

Are they missing something here? Has anyone been able to implement this?

Many thanks, and happy to be part of this community!

 

Has anybody had this happen to their VLine.
Mine was finally working ok since last update.
This would happen occasionally before but this morning it was like this since startup.

Thanks,
Johan

 

Does the screen always look like that? I use to have an intermittent black screen with white lines ( not quite the same as yours ), but only when the reverse camera should have shown. It was determined to be a faulty in the GROM video harness, right before the plug on the VLine side. It appears to be a pass through containing an input cable from the car, and the output to the screen, all off one plug. In my case it must have been a damaged wire on the input cable, so would only be an issue when shifting to reverse when the backup cam should have shown. Yours could still be a harness issue, just a different wire that is faulty. Pressure on the harness at that connection would clear the problem up temporarily for me.

GROM offered to replace it for free under the warranty, but wanted the defective cable back first. We settled on them selling me a replacement for a $15 deposit, since I was not in the mood to disassemble the dash twice.

See if wiggling the cable at the plug makes any difference. This is what mine use to look like:

 

No, at first it didn't do this at all (I bought my unit 2nd hand).
After a while it would do it after warm-up occasionally; say a few seconds per minute.
Per last week more often and this morning it would not go away.
I'll try wiggling the cables, but as the fault did not occur when for example driving over bumps, and also occurred when not driving at all, I suspect it is more likely to be a bad solderjoint which manifested itself after warmup and is now bad forever.

Grom already offered to repair it under warranty, but like you I don't like to go through the process of taking it and the cables out, shipping it to the US (I'm in the Netherlands) and installing it again after repair. Although that's probably what I'll end up doing.

The happiness with the VLine only lasted for about 2 weeks.

Cheers,
Johan

 

Yes, I have to agree that sounds more like a bad internal connection. Mine could be "fixed" by adding a bit of slack and bending the cable just right where it connected to the VLine unit. Sorry to hear you only got 2 weeks of use out of yours. I must say that once it is working, you will wonder how you ever got by without it. I'm hoping the version 2 VLine will get released soon for I suspect improving the responsiveness of CarPlay will require a bit more horsepower and memory. Good luck.

 

Yep, I really enjoyed it when it worked properly.
That's why I hesitate to give up on it.
On the other hand, it seems like a neverending story; once this is fixed (which will take several weeks considering time to uninstall, ship, install), what will happen next?
I mean kudos to Grom support for responsiveness and fixing issues, but I'm really asking myself if it's worth all the trouble.

Johan

 

I would open up the VLine and checked the video board. Make sure all solder points are good and sound.

 

Thanks,

If I open the VLine myself, would I not void the warranty?

Johan

 

Anything? Details please

 

In general VL2 will be pretty much the same unit. 3x faster CPU, 2GB RAM, HDMI in/out, 5G Wifi
We are running tests and all validations these days. Once everything is confirmed we will post official announcement along with prices. It will be Android 7.1 based.

 

This sounds great!! hopefully it will not be super expensive to upgrade.

On another hand I upgraded my unit to the latest version of the Vline firmware and it seems more stable, Bluetooth was not working for me before and now it is, but CarPlay continues to have redraw issues, i'm already used to going back to the android interface and return to carplay to clear the garble on the screen.
I still have to test the local music to see if the issues i had went away, and I'm still in iOS 10 because i continue to hear that iOS11 slows down devices too much.

I'll come back and report again when I test those things.

 

I upgraded my iPhone 6+ and can confirm iOS11 slowed down my phone SIGNIFICANTLY. I thought it was all in my head until I saw the news that Apple confirmed this.

 

I noticed a new OTA version 3.3.3 IIRC.
What has changed?

Thanks,
Johan

 

Same here.

One Question again: is there anywhere a changelog for the several updates?

 

****** Changelog for version '3.3.3.0' (release) ******
GMusic endless loop possibly fixed
Dashlinq NPE fixed