It's time for me to upgrade my iPod interface now that my cable is starting to wear out at the dock interface. My hack worked well enough with a Belkin adaptor and a HON-AUX, but I wanted tighter integration.

Well, there's the new PIE device, and there's something else: the iCruz.

I've read nothing but good stuff about it and it has one major advantage over the PIE device: Artist/Track info on a display. So the iCruz was chosen.

Nothing could be simpler to hook up, right? The iCruz needs a Honda adaptor cable for the 00-03 S2000 and lo and behold, if you use it, you don't need to wire a damn thing. That's right, no cutting, crimping, vampire-tapping or grounding. Very nice. It goes like this:

Car<--Wiring harness--->Radio<--Honda CD Changer Harness-->iCruz<--iPod Cable-->iPod.

The only tool you need for the whole job is a phillips head screwdriver for the radio screws.

Sounds like a piece of cake right? Hehehe... Wrong.

I take out the radio and all the PIE and Belkin stuff. This takes less than 10 minutes. I hook everything up to the radio while it's outside of the DIN cavity, this takes 3 minutes. Now I'm ready to power up and test it before putting everything back together.

The iPod displays the iCruze logo and starts to charge, I also get a blue LED on the iCruz, everything looks great so far. I put in the radio code and hit the CD changer button... nothing.

I try again and again and it does not seem to work at all. I fiddle with the connectors for what seems like an eternity, no go. I plug in the PIE and the radio sees the changer. Swap to the other cable - nothing.

Looks like I got a bad cable. I tighten the connections REAL good and the CD changer comes on line - but the slightest tug on the cable and it goes dead.

I tweak the connectors and get it to work well enough to try to fit the device. It's too damn big to go behind the radio. The next logical place: behind the panel for the non-glovebox where the passenger's knees are.

If you ever tried to take one of these off you are in for an unpleasant surprise. That bastage is in TIGHT. In fact, it was so damn tight, it finally came off after breaking a corner tab and cracking a middle one.



The good news is that there are some unused tabs and such on the underside. so I zip-tied the iCruze to the panel and popped the remains back into place.

Now to check it out:

You can change tracks easily via the dash controls, great! Discs change via the radio #5 and #6 buttons. Random, contrary to the docs, does NOT work. I also believe the iCruze has problems with certain names of songs because I have quite a few Japanese titles with Japanese text that MAY be messing with the unit. I'm making new playlists now to see if it changes for the better. I'll also probably swap out the able in a few days for another to see if the problem with the drop outs goes away. If it does, the display goes in next.

Theoretically, you can install this bad boy in less than 15 minutes. Really. You just hook up two wires, stuff the radio back in the dash, test it, button it up and go.

Is it worth $280+ or $380 (with display)? No. You can get them for $125-140 on eBay and the cables sell for $30. The display is $95-99 no matter where you go. My total cost was $170 (actually less than the PIE unit, a surprise) without the display. Provided I get the cable issue resolved and get a good set of playlists for it, I'll be quite happy with it - even more so with the display.

EDIT: FOLLOWUP #1

I redid the playlists on the iPod and learned a few things by this morning. Some of the stuff that didn't work does actually work - somewhat. Read below for more:

1. The 2003 radio supports a 6-disc CD-changer, so even though the iCruz supports up to 10 "discs" or playlists, you only get 6. No big deal, that's the radio's fault. When changing "discs" or playlists, it has the habit of starting to play the first song on the playlist, it then cuts off the song after 2 seconds or so, then starts the song over again. It doesn't do this all the time.


2. My iPod is a very early 3rd generation model. The docking port is well used and old. I need to futz with it to get it to connect most of the time. My wife has a relatively new iPod Mini, and that sucker works every time I plug it in.

3. Random, repeat and track skip. Guess what? They DO work. How they work (as implemented by Monster) and why they did it that way is a mystery. Here's how they did it:

Select your playlist, assume it's #4. The Radio displays 04-01 and starts playing the first song. Hit Scan (the >>| button) and you go up a track, hold it down until the radio says "CUE" and it skips 10 songs. Cool. Radio displays up to 99, but the iCruze will play however many songs are on the playlist.

So you got that? Now I get tired of listening to the same 100+ song playlist from the first damn song all the time, I want the RDM or Shuffle to work. iCruze supposedly supports it if the radio does. Well it does - and doesn't.

Hit RDM and the currently playing song will continue. When it ends, radio switches to "0X-01" with X being your disc or playlist number, and REPEATS the song you were just listening to. After that song ends, it displays "0X-02" and plays a random song from the playlist. What if you want to skip the song? The CH button on the dash works fine for changing the tracks in normal mode, but in shuffle - it's dead. Hit it and the radio just displays the current track. If you try the radio controls the Scan/>>| button does NOT skip tracks instead it skips through the currently playing song much like the FF does on a tape player. This is just freaking asinine and I cannot understand why the hell they did it this way.

Remember: if you are shuffling your songs and want to use the CH button on the dash to skip through your songs to find something you like, IT WILL NOT WORK!

Since I don't have a 6-disc changer to try out, this might actually be the fault of the radio. If anyone has a 6-disc changer and if on a certain disc with RDM set, please tell me if the CH button works and if the >>| buttons scan the songs or skips tracks.

So how does Repeat work? Just like you expect it to. But there's a problem:

Let's assume you are shuffling songs and find this cool song you like. You hit the RPT button on the radio and the song repeats. So far so good. Now you are sick of listening to "Hot Potato" by the Wiggles and want to go back to random songs so you hit RDM. Can you guess what happens?

When the song ends, it becomes 0X-01 much like I described above with the shuffle feature. When it ends, it keeps frigging repeating even though the radio says RDM! You have to futz with the controls to get the device to realize it's on RDM/Shuffle then it starts to work after "Hot Potato" is finished, of course.

You can tell if it's in this wacked out mode by hitting the >>| button, if it seeks through the song, it's now in RDM, if it skips the song (and repeats or plays the next song) it's still in RPT.

Overall, it's still a helluva lot more useful than the Belkin/HON-AUX in the fact that I have control over the playlists and once I get it going I like to leave it on shuffle. Howver, when using shuffle the older setup was better because I had the iPod doing the shuffle and the remote at hand to skip songs I didn't want to listen to. With the iCruze the iPod is in a special mode and cannot be controlled except through the radio.

4. One really good thing about it is that it sounds fantastic. My HON-AUX was always making some sort of noise. If the iPod was unattached, it buzzed quietly if the radio was on the CD-Changer/AUX. If the iPod was attached it sounded great but you could hear electronic noises when the iPod was spinning up the drive and loading songs into the buffer. The iCuze is silent. Sound is much better too. Monster may be obscenely overpriced, but their cables aren't crap.

5. Another advantage is that it keeps the iPod powered to charge the battery. It does this even when the car is off, so I always have an iPod with a topped-off battery when I remove it from the car.


I'll need to replace the Honda cable and the broken panel in a few days, when I do I'll do how-to to get this thing installed and up and running.

EDIT: FOLLOWUP #2

Monster Tech Support answered my email exchange and I am getting another unit sent to me overnight with the latest firmware as soon as they finish putting it together. I gotta hand it to them, they are really on the ball with this. From my exchange with the tech support person, they are not field upgradeable and need to be sent in to be updated.

EDIT: FOLLOWUP #3

I got ahold of the LCD display. While I didn't mount it permanently yet, it works and it is very visible even in direct light. And I found out there's a limitation to it. It's a 20 character x 2 line display. The problem? If the song title or artist is greater than 20 characters, it doesn't scroll.

A shame really, My old Rio 500 did, my old Aiwa MP3 deck (1st one on the market) did, but this doesn't. It's also a bit blingish, but not too bad.

 

the good news? that panel runs about $12 at the dealer with their full markup. i'm sure Hardtopguy probably sells it for less.

i'm on panel number 3. i get it to pull properly about 66% of the time, and have had that panel off at least 6 or 7 times now.


this looks to be an interesting solution. can you hit us up w/ some linkage on it? i'll add it to the FAQ as a solution for the IPOD.

 

[QUOTE=PJK3,Jun 9 2005, 08:41 AM] the good news?

 

I posted a followup on the top post for those who are following this thread.

 

thanks...

w/ your permission, i'd like to add this to the FAQ once you've gotten your writeup and pictures done...

 

No problem, does this mean I get a junkie tag?

 

it could.... but i'm not the one who decides that...

 

So you ever get the Random to work w/ Icruze?

 

Yes I did. Monster is still improving their firmware too. I'll know mor next month when i get their latest version. My current beef is that I'm on the 2nd LCD unit, which failed last week much in the same manner as the 1st.

They seem not to be able to take being in a hot environment. Bad weakness to have, especially if it's supposed to be in a car.

 

So how did they fix it? Do I have to send the actual unit into Monster for them to fix that?