I bought a new car and wanted to upgrade the stereo as it had a standard ford 6000CD head unit. I always wanted one of the swishy sat nav head units so I started researching after-market ford car dvd players and decided for one of these after lots of forum posts.
I have included a video showing my fitting which I managed to complete within an hour, I am not a professional nor am I especially adept at doing these things. I just did plenty of prep work and watch a number of youtube videos for stereo replacements. Also make sure you have the right tools. You need a t20 torx screwdriver and a set of plastic prying tools which are a matter of a few quid but save you from trashing your dash. You CAN fit this yourself EASILY!
NOTE: my car is a 2011 Ford Mondeo – (2011-2015 model) Not listed in the compatible list but it fits and works although I had to buy an adaptor for the aerial
The Pumpkin stereo runs android 5.1 and gives you full access to the play store. You can connect to the internet via wifi which has a strong enough antenna to pick up the signal from my drive to the house so when get into the car I tend to check for updates etc before pulling off. You can tether it to your phone or buy an additional USB 3G Dongle at about £15 which plugs into one of the USB sockets which come from the back of the unit. Boot time is around 20 seconds which isn’t a major as the unit picks up where it was left off. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. By the time I have got buckled up and reversed off the drive to head off I am only about 2 houses up the road and it is up and running. You get about 2 gig of free space built in but this is expandable via microSD and USB
When you go into reverse the unit shows a yellow triangle warning which is where it would display you reverse camera image should you have one. I will be fitting one shortly to make use of this feature as I think it is great.
The standard ford 6000CD stereo has an amplified antenna. This android car dvd ford mondeo has a blue cable from the ISO block which is powered which can connect to your aerial to amplify the signal which sorts out any signal problems users might be having. as you can see from the video I had to buy a twin FAKRA to DIN adaptor which was amplified and connect that up, takes about 5 minutes and requires you to slice back the blue plastic coating on the antenna wire form the stereo which I did with some garden pruning sheers but a Stanley knife would do if you don’t have proper wire strippers.. This blue wire is marked up clearly. I then just crimped it to the adaptor. takes about a minute to do.
This works with my dash board and steering wheel controls as I used the CAN bus connector. This is the one with the RED block attached. the CAN is a little car computer which controls things and allows communication between things like your stereo and car. The only thing to say is that some of the features have the buttons on my steering wheel mapped the wrong way round. for example if you want to skip to the next music track left and right are the other way round. not a major but something to be aware of. Volume works fine and the M button in the middle changes between radio, video, dvd etc. The only thing that doesn’t work is the voice commands built into the car but the head unit has google voice control anyway so not a big deal, plus I hadn’t used the voice commands.
There are 2 microSD slots on the face of the ford android car dvd. One labelled GPS and another labelled SD. you can put an microSD in either but the idea is that your GPS card is where your maps etc are going to be stored whilst the other is for media. You can store your apps on your SD card as well to increase the storage space.
I can play tv shows and films from a USB memory stick through the stereo without any problem. DVDs are region free.
Bluetooth works really well with your phone book being able to be downloaded and names being displayed when a call comes in. A simple touch on the screen to answer or decline the call. this isn’t invasive if you are using sat nav at the time. In addition to this you can play music from your phone via the stereo and control the tracks from the steering wheel which means no more silly aux leads!
The default sat nav is google maps but this require data so consider using ‘HERE WeGO’ which is free and works offline once downloaded. You can keep with it being online as it then gives you traffic updates.
To update the ford in car dvd you would need to download the update on a memory card or stick as it doesn’t do over the air updates.
I am getting an error on boot up at the moment but this doesn’t effect in anyway the functionality of the stereo. I just click ‘ok’ and it goes away. This is a software bug with android rather than the stereo however I have contacted Pumpkin directly about this and they have been excellent in trying to solve it. There developers are looking into this now. Whilst I could knock a star off for this I am not going to. Whilst it is a minor irritation I am really impressed with the manufacturers response to trying to solve this.
I love this android car dvd ford mondeo and would definitely recommend this to other drivers!
–by James
Click here to check Android 5.1 Ford Car DVD.
Pumpkin official website:
Pumpkin US: www.autopumpkin.com
Pumpkin UK: http://ift.tt/29hvZcz
Pumpkin German: www.autopumpkin.de
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