CX-5 AppRadio 3 Ep 5

It's been a busy gadgetry month for me. Few goods and bads. 

1 x Good - I have been enjoying the AppRadio in my everyday commute. :)

2 x Good - It came earlier than expected. Google just pushed the OTA Lollipop upgrade to my Nexus 5. :)

Oh wait! The good turned bad...

1 x Bad - The AppRadio Unchained ARU app stopped working after the upgrade!! This is really really a nightmare!

Let's see if I have any workaround after the break.

Certainly yes! :)

I assume you would have rooted your phone if you came about this post looking for answer. If you have your phone unlocked and rooted, you will need to re-root after the upgrade. For Nexus 5, I am using Wugfresh's Nexus Root Toolkit NRT to get the technical job done. I don't relock the boot loader as that may cause me to lose data when I need to re-root in the future.

Once upgraded and rooted, you will not be able to use ARU in Android 5.0 Lollipop if you plan to use any of the official apps supported by Pioneer, for instance, Waze, Mixtrax App etc. The screen mirror still works as normal but the touch control on AR3 will not be functional anymore. If you attempt to reinstall ARU, the app simply will not install, you will get error -505 if you attempt to download the official Pioneer's AppRadio app from Play Store. If you're technical, you will see similar message when you use adb to push install... 

D:\android-sdk-windows\platform-tools>adb install arunchained0.16.apk

3438 KB/s (9729688 bytes in 2.763s)

pkg: /data/local/tmp/arunchained0.16.apk

Failure [INSTALL_FAILED_DUPLICATE_PERMISSION perm=pioneer.permission.appradio.ADVANCED_APPMODE pkg=com.waze]

ARU will only be installed successfully when you have none of the official supported apps installed on your phone. But, what's the point of mirroring the screen to AR3 if they can't co-exist?

Here's what you need to do to restore the touch control:

• Uninstall ARU or Pioneer official AppRadio app.
• Install AppRadio Unchained Reloaded ARUR from Play Store. It's a paid app by the same developer who unlocked the ARU for AppRadio community.

Once installed, the touch control should be restored. Launch the app and let it start upon establishment of bluetooth connection with AR3. You can refer to photo gallery below for the settings. I also have SecondScreen working in tandem with ARUR and I re-attached the settings at below as well.

Things are not done, just yet. I experienced very frequent intermittent GPS signal disconnection on Waze and Google Maps...

From the screens everything seemed to be running fine (phone has GPS, AR3 has locked in the GPS fix) but Waze / Google Maps just couldn't lock the position and kept showing estimate location. After several emails with ARUR developer, we figured out some tweak to overcome this issue.

Go to Settings - Developer Options and enable "Allow mock locations".

This option allows the running apps like Waze to use the mock / fake location than the phone's GPS information. In AppRadio scenario, the GPS isn't really mocked, the GPS signals are acquired from the head unit "injected" into the phone for better accuracy. You can see the difference in ARUR after you enabled the option (a reboot on phone maybe required)...

The developer Area51 may ask you to do some folder/file movement i.e. move apk from data\app folder to data\priv-app, I did not do that though. Waze and Google Maps are able to quickly lock in the GPS position from my few rounds of tests with "allow mock locations" enabled. So file move might not be necessary.

Phew! Now I am back to enjoy AR3! Additional cost to purchase the ARUR, though. Not cheap in our currency but consider that's the gratitude to Area51 who has dedicated his time to unlock ARU and came out with a better ARUR. Do give your support to him ya.

Things get more exciting with AppRadio. Stay tuned. I will be revealing an alternative solution that should work with recent Android phones that have no MHL or slimport adapter to output HDMI.  ;)

UPDATE 20141207: developer Area51 just replied that the phone's GPS is not working when you are not connected to AR3 and with "Allow mock locations" enabled. He will be providing guide on some manual file movement (in Lollipop) of his ARUR app so that the "mock location" will be disabled/enabled according to the state of the AR3 connection. However, what I tested was otherwise. Waze was still running smoothly with "allow mock location" enabled and disconnected from AR3. I will update if there's other hiccup, I doubt though. So it may not be necessary to move the apk to private app folder in the end.

CX-5: AppRadio 3 Ep1
CX-5: AppRadio 3 Ep2
CX-5: AppRadio 3 Ep3
CX-5: AppRadio 3 Ep4