Parrot Asteroid Smart

I was researching an iPad Mini installation as well as the latest Kenwood WiFi models when I ran across this. I haven't ordered one yet but I intend to. FYI I have a Pioneer AppRadio and don't like it. I don't want any unit that pulls apps from your phone. I want it to be independent. Parrot ASTEROID Smart - Navigation, Apps, multimedia and Bluetooth® hands-free Parrot ASTEROID Smart Digital media receiver with GPS navigation at Crutchfield.com Parrot Asteroid Smart navigation system with digital player and LCD monitor Review - Car GPS (Navigation) - CNET Reviews

I took a look at this unit as well. Was about to pull the trigger ( crutchfield had them in stock) but then realized that while waze is available on the single-din unit, it isn't available for this unit. All of the rear inputs are a good thing though (TWSS). Alpine's ICS-X7HD looks to be an interesting option as well.

If that Alpine ICS X7HD is just using your phone to do most everything, then shouldn't it be pretty cheap since all it is would be like an extra monitor to your computer? It doesn't have GPS guts, running apps, etc. in the headunit, it gets those from the phone. I suppose it means you could play Angry Birds on it right?

You're right that it isn't all that feature rich on it's own. I think it's a lot like Pioneer 's appRadio, which is at a lower price-point, only it uses Sony 's mirrorlink instead of Pioneer 's software.

In reading the one review of the parrot unit on Amazon , the reviewer mentions that the wiring harness doesn't have either a mute wire or an amp turn-on wire. Not knowing anything all that much about car audio installs, what does this mean for systems like the 987's SPP or Bose where there is external amp present?

Here are pics, look at the one of the back: Parrot ASTEROID Smart - Navigation, Apps, multimedia and Bluetooth® hands-free Click on the specifications tab for the specs: http://www.parrot.com/usa/products/asteroid-range/parrot-asteroid-smart

Amazon purchasers comments: Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Parrot Asteroid SMART - Digital Media Receiver with Navigation, Apps, Multimedia and Bluetooth hands-free

Okay, enough reviews have come in and by and large they are positive, so I pulled the trigger and ordered one. I ordered through Amazon for $467 ($599 retail) including shipping and it came with 2 year warranty extension. It should show up later on this week. New apps are showing up daily. They now have one for Facebook, email, and texting, all setup for car use (meaning voice to text conversion for driving). Also there is a large community of Android programmers. My son gets home from school the next week. I'm waiting for him as we like to do these projects together.

I pulled the trigger on one as well. Should be here tomorrow. Not sure how quickly I'll have it installed.

Good stuff here guys. In to see results as I consider options for my stillborn Nexus 7 project.

OK, I just pulled the trigger on one of these as well after reading over at xda forum and seeing more reviews. Should be fun!

I got mine in yesterday. Haven't installed it. As I said earlier I'm waiting for my son to get home. It's about 2/3 the thickness and weight of most HU. I'm tempted to get after it but my son would be very disappointed so I need a little patience. PS. Okay I couldn't wait, I'm installing now

Ronsno... any idea what car this unit is plug -n-play with? I find it odd that there is a harness on both ends of the wire loom. If the pins can be taken out of the non-headunit plug end of the harness, the wires can be transferred to the euromotorspeed harness, negating the need for any crimping/soldering. Thoughts?

Can't tell. I've got it all hooked up and everything working but my sound. The harness it came with does not match up with the euro Motorspeed. I've Loy's wiring diagram in front of me right now.

Okay it took me most of the day but I got the Asteroid Smart installed and fully operational. It works great and sounds great. Here some pics: PS, How do you setup the pictures to come up in the separate window that lets you scroll through them?

Nicely done! :cheers: What was the solution to the no sound/harness mismatch issue?

It took some sleuthing. From the Euro Motorspeed wiring kit there was one harness that simply has 3 wires attached, Yellow(ignition), black(ground) and then a blue wire (power antenna). What I couldn't figure out for awhile is which wire from the Most HUR (MH) wiring kit was for the power antenna. Actually I had the right wire from the get go (the yellow/black from the MH) but I attached it to the wrong wire coming from the Parrot. I originally attached it to the Orange which I thought was the power antenna. After going back over the Parrot diagram I finally figured out I had the wrong wire attached for the Antenna, it's the dark blue not the Orange. Once I connected these two wires, instant sound. The harness from the factory plugs into the left compartment of the harness from Parrot (the bigger double plug ). The right side of the harness plug from Parrot is mostly for speakers. Since this is the Bose setup, none of those wires are necessary, they are addressed in the wiring harness to the Most HUR. To make it work: Most HUR wiring: Red (MH) to Red from Parrot Yellow/black (MH) to blue from Parrot (This is the antennae wire and was the missing link). Took me awhile to figure this out, but on the old harness it was attached so I knew it was needed. Using the original instructions and on-line at NavTV, I finally figured out I needed the yellow/black from Most HUR connected to the power antenna (dark blue) from the Parrot. Black (MH) to black (Ground Parrot) and teal blue (parking brake, Parrot). Yellow (MH) to Yellow (Parrot) - this is ignition wire. Factory: Simply plugged into left side of Parrot harness. I did snip the Parrot red on the left side and attach to the red from the Most HUR. I'm getting internet from my iPhone using MyWi (Jailbroken). Works like a charm. I setup the microphone on the column of the steering wheel. It's easy to weave back to the HU compartment and its the closest directly in front of you placement. So far with only two calls made my side sounds good and the people on the other end said it sound good. This is one of Parrots specialties, bluetooth microphone calling. I weaved the GPS to the plastic compartment that houses the battery (same place I had the old one). With the Star up I get a perfect signal. With the parking brake connected to ground, no messages and the unit functions perfectly. Very easy to get around the working while driving issue, unlike many of the other brands. Initial impressions: It looks good in the car. I really like how easy it is to use the touch screen. The radio works well. I brought up the GPS but did not select a destination (only had it up while driving), seemed fine, I need to play around with it some more. It's easy to pair to my iPhone and instantly and quickly downloaded my contact database. I downloaded Spotify from the AppMarket. That was easy to do and it works perfectly pulling internet from my iPhone (I'll see this morning if I can get it setup to work offline). It's already miles ahead of the Pioneer AppRadio. The screen works better, no funky screens and messages popping up all over the place and it's tremendously faster. That's it for now, but I will update with honest feedback, pros and cons after I live with it for a while.:cheers:

@ronsno thanks for the detailed reply with your solution. I have non- Bose Sound Package Plus (or whatever it's called) so I would imagine the install is slightly less involved than yours was. My radio doesn't arrive until the 15th Hopefully the EuroMotorSpeed kit gets here by then...

Most likely plug and play:banana:

Quick update: The unit quit powering down on ignition off. In the end I called Loi and he sent me a new wiring harness diagram and I had one wire wrong but my fuse had blown (as pointed out by Loi). With the fuse replaced and the wiring correct it works like a charm. Thanks again Loi. (You should look into this Parrot HU) I went out of town today about 150 miles round trip. My impression: First the unit is solid and I'm quite happy at the moment (could be honeymoon). I listened to Spotify both directions and had the GPS up. The screen suffers from sun washout. I'm going to look into a reflective cover. It's really easy to play with all the features. I played the whole way. No glitches, nothing bad to report. Loi told me about a discovery on how to adjust the fader for the back speakers for those using the Most HUR. Plug your old CDR HU in and set the fader control with the old unit. This apparently will set the Most-HUR unit. I still have my old HU so I will try the next time I have a few hours. Even with out this adjustment the music sounded great

Keep us updated after a few weeks with it. Do you think you'll try to integrate a backup cam?

I received my radio on Friday, and the EuroMotorSpeed kit a day earlier (Great shipping!!) and started putting things together over the weekend such as the brackets, etc. I was busy wrapping up two projects on my FJ for some offroading this summer, so I didn't get to start in earnest on this one until tonight. Removal of the CDR-24 went easier than expected, following the guidelines in the articles section. For my radio, the little black discs turned without having to depress the little silver levers, so that went very quickly. The tricky part came to the wiring. I do have Sound Package Plus in my Cayman , so nothing to worry about with the Bose package. The harness that comes with the Parrot already closely matches the EMS harness, so I thought I'd stick with the Parrot rather than spending a lot of time cutting and splicing. As it turns out, it probably would have been faster doing the cutting and splicing, but I have figured out how to get things working with the Parrot harness for those with SPP: You do have to run the red Accessory lead from the fuse box as instructed in the EMS guide. In order to trigger the ASK amp, you'll need to add a pin to the Parrot harness and tap that into the red Accessory lead wire. I'll add some pics of my harness when I finish my install tomorrow evening, as a couple pics will make item 2 above very clear. As for the results of the install: :banana::dance::beer::banana::dance::beer: Compared to the setup with CDR-24 as the source, this thing is amazing. I only played with the Bluetooth Audio source using my Nexus 4, and BT audio isn't exactly the best in terms of musical fidelity. The setup now rocks really nicely using both streamed sources and audio stored on my phone. The unit boots up fairly quickly, and the screens are nearly instant in response. It's very intuitive to use. Extra bonus for the very thoughtful night mode, which not only dims the screen, but also changes the background from white with dark lettering, to dark with white lettering. You are also able to configure the brightness of day and night modes separately, so you can crank day mode all the way up, and night mode all the way down if you wish. Very important feature with a 6" panel glowing in the dash when driving at night. I haven't yet had a chance to mess with USB or iDevice inputs, but will do so tomorrow once the rest of the connections are completed. At this point, I am quite pleased with this HU.

Good job! I'm going to do a more extensive write up in a few days, but a sneak preview. So far I love this unit, it's really everything I've been looking for. The one negative I have found is screen washout in the sun. I contacted Parrot and they told me I could use any non-reflective screen. I did research and found one that if its true will truly transform this screen both in the day and night. It should be here tomorrow.

I've had the same thought about the screen glare. I was going to cut up one of the Tech Armor anti-glare protectors that I use for my Nexus 7. Have you found one that will fit the Asteroid without cutting?

My DayVue screen arrived today. I have a before and after picture. I couldn't find a good glare to really show this off, but here they are, before on left, after on right: I haven't driven around to give any good feedback. PS, Very easy to install.

Seems like this screen shield is less of an anti-reflective design, but focuses strictly on being anti-glare. The reflection in the before pic is still there in the after pic, but the display seems less washed out. Can't tell for sure if that's due to the exposure on the camera though. For $20 and not having to cut something up, I may just take a shot at this one to see for myself. Thanks again for blazing the trail on these units for the rest of us in the swamp. :cheers: The coating that BMW uses on their iDrive screens is fantastic. You can easily read that screen even when the sun is striking it directly. But if someone touches it (don't ask me how I know this) it picks up oil from the skin and leaves streaks like you wouldn't believe. I think the perfect screen would have the optical properties of that screen, with oleophobic properties so it can be touched without wrecking the display.

Yesterday when I took those pictures, it just wasn't a good example, because even without the screen the washout wasn't that bad and there didn't seem to be a big difference. This morning coming in I actually thought about reducing the brightness on the screen. The screen was more vibrant and even better, I forgot about the screen issues, meaning no news is good news. Every time I looked down on the screen, I found myself going oh hey the screen looks great. There was no sun coming in so still not enough info for a good review. However, as of this morning I'm very pleased. When I did my research I spoke with a rep from NuShield. I asked the question is there any downside. His response was with the screen off it shows fingerprints. Maybe this is the same coating as the BMW .

Can you slide the head unit further into the console? Let the bezel act as a shallow shade for the screen.

I'm sure that's possible. You would have to adapt the HU brackets.

Parrot Asteroid Smart - Wiring for SPP vehicles For those with Sound Package Plus, here's what I did to adapt the Parrot harness to integrate with the OEM harness. 1) Added pin for remote amp (ASK) turn on. The Parrot harness doesn't have the required pin to trigger the ASK amp. You won't get any sound from the SPP setup if this signal isn't sent to the amp. I happened to have a Scosche harness that I ordered for my other project, and it had two loose pin/wires in the package. I snagged one of those and added it in the appropriate spot to the Parrot harness, using the EMS harness as a guide. Since the Parrot head unit side of the harness doesn't have the trigger wire, I simply spliced onto the red Accessory turn-on signal wire and then connected that to the new pin on the other side of the harness. So the red accessory lead turns on both the head unit and the ASK amp once the key is turned to the run position. 2) Also depicted above is the receiving end on the Parrot harness for the lead from the fuse box for the Accessory turn-on signal. This setup is already documented in the manual that comes with the EMS kit, so I won't go into that here. With these two alterations made, the harness works perfectly. You'll just need to ground the parking brake and secondary black ground wire from the Parrot HU side harness to a ground point. I don't get any ground hum or amplifier "pop" when the unit powers on or off. Hope this helps others with SPP who decide to go with this unit.

Thought I'd post a few pics of the completed install. Fitment in the EMS bezel: I decided to take a crack at trimming down one of the anti-glare screen protectors for my Nexus 7. This shot shows the material is a very close match to the coating on the climate control display: Diffusing flash glare: Night display mode shot: Day display mode shot: Note that the track playing above is by the group Medeski, Martin & Wood. I used this group name to try out the music voice search function, and it worked like a champ. :dance:

One last install tip that I picked up from xda forum: This saves you from having to locate a ground point behind the dash.

whoosh, your interior looks fantastic. Cocoa is a great color that seems to wear better than the others. Thanks for the install tips. Especially for the ground/parking brake wires. Seems that Parrot made this intentionally easy for installers. Unfortunately, the wiring harnesses changed some from 987.1 to 987.2 cars. The biggest change is that Porsche moved the amp turn-on wire away from the 16 pin harness shown in your pic. Gen2 owners need to jump the 16 pin harness and tap into a red/white wire on the other side that is part of another harness that is separate from the 16 pin connector. I intend to use the parrot power antenna wire for this.

Hurry up rubber_ducky and post some pics:beer: Whoosh, looks good Hey guys I love this unit:banana:

Any new info as to whether Waze is going to be available for this unit?