DNS series head unit (new generation dual core RNS-510 alternative)

[Goobz]

I feel your pain. I started off on a 4 day driving holiday today with my new 'production' replacement unit in the car which aside from a couple of random freezes (reset fine though), until now has been working perfectly. About 5 hours into todays drive while using the Nav plus listening to Pandora through my girlfriend's iPhone 4S (IOS7) plugged into the ipod port, the whole screen froze and started to fade out. I pressed both knobs to reset the unit like normal, but now all that happens when it turns on is I get a blank white screen. Nothing else. I tried resetting the power with the key to no avail. The only other thing I can think to try short of a reflash (which is not an option considering I'm 500kms from home) is pulling the radio fuse. If it does not come good I have to say I'm going to be seriously unimpressed spending the next 3 days in the car with no music... unless Sandy or anyone has something else I can try?

Ok so to update on this. Pulled the fuse. No dice...

In one last desperate attempt I managed to buy an SD card reader and a cheap flash drive and borrowed the hotels pc. The only SD card I have is the nav one so I backed up the iGo files to the thumb drive, formatted the card and loaded the latest firmware onto it. The coloured writing screen came up(hooray I thought), went through the first part where it wipes the flash and then froze before the write part could start and the whole screen faded out to a streaky grey colour and stayed there for ages leaving me no choice but to kill the power eventually. Now not even the coloured writing screen comes up. Just a blank white one. Im guessing that there's a dud flash chip or something in there somewhere causing the thing but either way I'm stuck with a house brick sitting in the dashboard of my silent, musicless car for the next 2 days of my holiday.

Thankfully I haven't had time to send the initial unit back yet. I'll have to swap them over (again) and send Sandy back this POS so he can get it back to AS. God knows when another one will get sent out. Truth be told the BT audio quality was pretty much the same as the 1st unit anyway (rubbish) which is the reason for the replacement in the first place.

I have to say I had hope for a while there with my last unit working well short of a few small things and the BT sound issue, but since this happening with one of the finalised 'production' units I dont have a much left any more. This thing is supposedly brand new and failed in 3 days. What does that say about the quality of these things? How will they be faring in 2 years when Sandys warranty expires? With the amount of trouble AS are having getting a working reliable unit to market what am I supposed to be left thinking? I hope Sandy can resolve this. Mainly for his sake (and his businesses) because I know it is not his fault and he will get left high and dry as much as we do in the end if it all falls over. I have to say I'm feeling pretty seriously disillusioned with the whole thing right now...

[/RANT]

[DkN]

I have posted the latest firmware in the first post, please check for the update.

There has been some UI changes to make things more consistent with the OEM look. SD / nav still has the song change issue but I can't get it to stutter when I was testing it. The final SD / nav fix should be released with the next version around the end of the month, I'll keep pushing the techs through the week.

This latest update is compatible with both the DNS 810 and 610. The MCU is from January 22 which is the latest barring the February DNS-810 specific update that fixed any key press issues. If you have that update you do not need to update the MCU in the April version.

Ok so to update on this. Pulled the fuse. No dice...

In one last desperate attempt I managed to buy an SD card reader and a cheap flash drive and borrowed the hotels pc. The only SD card I have is the nav one so I backed up the iGo files to the thumb drive, formatted the card and loaded the latest firmware onto it. The coloured writing screen came up(hooray I thought), went through the first part where it wipes the flash and then froze before the write part could start and the whole screen faded out to a streaky grey colour and stayed there for ages leaving me no choice but to kill the power eventually. Now not even the coloured writing screen comes up. Just a blank white one. Im guessing that there's a dud flash chip or something in there somewhere causing the thing but either way I'm stuck with a house brick sitting in the dashboard of my silent, musicless car for the next 2 days of my holiday.

Thankfully I haven't had time to send the initial unit back yet. I'll have to swap them over (again) and send Sandy back this POS so he can get it back to AS. God knows when another one will get sent out. Truth be told the BT audio quality was pretty much the same as the 1st unit anyway (rubbish) which is the reason for the replacement in the first place.

I have to say I had hope for a while there with my last unit working well short of a few small things and the BT sound issue, but since this happening with one of the finalised 'production' units I dont have a much left any more. This thing is supposedly brand new and failed in 3 days. What does that say about the quality of these things? How will they be faring in 2 years when Sandys warranty expires? With the amount of trouble AS are having getting a working reliable unit to market what am I supposed to be left thinking? I hope Sandy can resolve this. Mainly for his sake (and his businesses) because I know it is not his fault and he will get left high and dry as much as we do in the end if it all falls over. I have to say I'm feeling pretty seriously disillusioned with the whole thing right now...

[/RANT]

A replacement production 810 will be shipped out to you tomorrow.

Obviously issues like this are not normal and not common, and I'm happy to do a replacement to make sure you have a properly working unit. At the end of the day just let me know if your unit is not working as it should, both myself and AS will uphold warranties and you definitely won't be left high and dry.

Tried that and it wouldn't shut down(did it many times with the 810)
I had to pull the fuse.

Please update to the latest firmware that I have just posted in the first post of this thread. What you describe sounds like an issue that used to occur on older firmware.

[asa572]

Just installed the latest firmware and all I can say is WTF were they thinking?
They must have dropped some serious acid while developing that sh^t.
That new setup menu is totally f@#ked up.
And the RED HIGHLIGHTS, ahhhhhhh it hurts my eyes! < seriously it does
Don't worry about masturbating making you go blind.
Driving your Golf with an AS head unit will make you go blind faster.

And yes, I had the brightness on the lowest setting.

[chrislewis85]

Just installed, upgrade went smoothly.

iPod nano 4th gen still not recognised, will see on drive home later what else has changed/not changed.

Haven't got my iGo SD card with me so will test CPU performance tomorrow.

Are the red highlights that different? They've changed the layout from 2 columns to 1 column in setup menu, but doesn't look all that different otherwise.

Sandy - any official changelog from AS?

[matiasg85]

Can you guys show some pictures to decide wether to go or not to go with this new firmware?

[moda]

Updated this morning. SD playback/loading seems significantly faster (the SD Loading screen only shows up for ~3-5 seconds now, it used to take over 30 seconds, even with the march firmware). It also now properly remembers the song position, even in long tracks (ie 1-2 hour dj sets), which is nice, and even on FLAC. Haven't tried it with the Nav yet, though, so can't comment there.

SD tracks still pause when you go into reverse, but I imagine this may be the SD issue. It's really annoying though.

Other than that, the tweaks have been mostly aesthetic. A few new images here and there (aux screen/SD loading), and they've changed the layout of the setting screen. It may be closer to the OEM units style, but frankly it's a bit more inefficient than the previous 2 column setup. It takes 2-3 touches to get into the right menu now, that used to take 1-2 (because there are now menus nested within other menus, ie BT/Radio settings are under 'Functions', and you have to scroll down from the initial settings screen. When you back out of a menu it also returns you back to the top instead of back to the position you were in the initial screen (ie if you scroll down one page, then go into a menu, then go back out, it takes you back to the top instead of back to the 2nd page). Not a big deal, but just slightly annoying. @Sandy, can you pass on this feedback?

The red highlights asa is talking about is the track progress bar, it used to be a slightly darker red and have some grey space in it, now its solid red. I kinda preferred the old look, but whatever, its not a big deal.

Still some small spelling mistakes ('modle' and 'hightest'), but I think most of the rest of the bugs have really been touched on with the production hardware and latest firmware.

Only thing left is some missing features (obv the biggest being the music library/3 line MFD, but also some usability tweaks like steering wheel button behaviour/aux cycle selection/bt a2dp info/brightness behaviour etc).

Just installed the latest firmware and all I can say is WTF were they thinking?
They must have dropped some serious acid while developing that sh^t.
That new setup menu is totally f@#ked up.
And the RED HIGHLIGHTS, ahhhhhhh it hurts my eyes! < seriously it does
Don't worry about masturbating making you go blind.
Driving your Golf with an AS head unit will make you go blind faster.

And yes, I had the brightness on the lowest setting.

It's not that bad, to be honest.

Can you guys show some pictures to decide wether to go or not to go with this new firmware?

Some images here: Audiosources DNS810 April Firmware - Imgur

Not the biggest gallery, but gives you an idea of some of the things that have changed. It's really not that big of a change.

[matiasg85]

I have just flashed the lastest firmware, and the skip/fwd bug in usb/sd is still happening, and the Laggy gps is even worse than in the previous fw. I hope they fix this soon.

Edit: About the spelling mistakes, within the car info, thw word volatage instead of voltage.

Checking at your pictures, it seems that my MCU did not update properly, since it is showing DNS810.140114_01 under system info.

Is it safe to go back to the previous MPU??

[asa572]

It's not that bad, to be honest.

Wait till you try it at night!

[moda]

I have just flashed the lastest firmware, and the skip/fwd bug in usb/sd is still happening, and the Laggy gps is even worse than in the previous fw. I hope they fix this soon.

Edit: About the spelling mistakes, within the car info, thw word volatage instead of voltage.

Checking at your pictures, it seems that my MCU did not update properly, since it is showing DNS810.140114_01 under system info.

Is it safe to go back to the previous MPU??

I'll have to give the SD/Nav a go, but seemed fine to me *shrugs*

I flashed the april firmware plus the february DNS810 MCU. I don't know if that makes a difference, but I figured I may as well try and have the latest on there. AFAIK they included the jan MCU with the april firmware because its compatible with the 610.

You should be fine to go back and forth between any of the different firmware parts, but ymmv.

Wait till you try it at night!

True, but i've never had any issues with the brightness at night like others have, so it probably won't make any difference to me.

It's still one of the things I noted that was missing, and that was the ability to have granular control over backlight settings.

[cpkk]

Flashed the latest firmware earlier today and my screen went a bit haywire with fuzzy text - did any of you experience this? Once the initial part was complete I turned off the unit and all went back to normal before I proceeded with the second stage. Looks like the unit successfully updated however I have encountered several monsun errors since flashing...

Sent from my GT-I9305 using Tapatalk

[asa572]

Flashed the latest firmware earlier today and my screen went a bit haywire with fuzzy text - did any of you experience this? Once the initial part was complete I turned off the unit and all went back to normal before I proceeded with the second stage.

I experienced this.
Mine went a pink colour and the text saying do not shut down went from the right side on the screen to the left.
And when I restarted it to finish the update the radio screen was only just recognisable.
But it ended up coming good.

[polski_ogurek]

I personally liked the way the previous version looked, there's just too much red now, black and white always works, will see what its like at night, but not the best looking now, the brightness is still a PITA, [E.G. change song, turn screen off, go to change song again, turn on screen(get used to blindness) change song and turn screen off, its ok when im in the city, but I drive through some dark areas on the way home, and I would go as far as saying its dangerous how bright it is.]

on a side note, Sandy, when will the next batch of production units be coming, keen to swap mine as the Bluetooth playback with feedback is really annoying.

I experienced this.
Mine went a pink colour and the text saying do not shut down went from the right side on the screen to the left.
And when I restarted it to finish the update the radio screen was only just recognisable.
But it ended up coming good.

I too had this, then it came up ok, no issues since. This did happen when I flashed the Feb update too, but wouldn't go away at that stage. So I went back to the trusty December firmware.

[moda]

Flashed the latest firmware earlier today and my screen went a bit haywire with fuzzy text - did any of you experience this? Once the initial part was complete I turned off the unit and all went back to normal before I proceeded with the second stage. Looks like the unit successfully updated however I have encountered several monsun errors since flashing...

Sent from my GT-I9305 using Tapatalk

Yep, happened to me some times when flashing. Reboot and its fine. It happened more with my old unit, or when flashing between 16 and 32bit versions (ie going from the december firmware to a newer one). If you're getting monsun errors, i'd say reflash it again, just to make sure.

[asa572]

Ok, the red problem I had last night, I forgot that when you turn the lights on the screen reverts to the brightest setting automatically (which is a pain).
Realised this tonight and when put back to the lowest setting the red isn't as bright.
Other problems I found on the way home.
With Nav running (not navigating just running) SD will play a song till the end and not proceed to the next song unless I hit the NAV button
to bring up the SD Screen or hit the media button to bring up the SD screen. As soon as I do this the next song will start.
Driving along listening to SD and it just changed to RADIO.
The LOUD ON/OFF option in the Equalizer does not work.
None of the above problems happened with the firmware that my unit was delivered with.

[moda]

Ok, the red problem I had last night, I forgot that when you turn the lights on the screen reverts to the brightest setting automatically (which is a pain).
Realised this tonight and when put back to the lowest setting the red isn't as bright.
Other problems I found on the way home.
With Nav running (not navigating just running) SD will play a song till the end and not proceed to the next song unless I hit the NAV button
to bring up the SD Screen or hit the media button to bring up the SD screen. As soon as I do this the next song will start.
Driving along listening to SD and it just changed to RADIO.
The LOUD ON/OFF option in the Equalizer does not work.
None of the above problems happened with the firmware that my unit was delivered with.

Haha. Yea like I said, having granular control of the brightness settings is probably the most needed feature thats missing at the moment.

Yea, that's still the SD/CPU decoding issue. Hopefully they can get it fixed as per sandys post by the end of the month (yea, I wish).

Loud on/off on the EQ works for me, gave me a hell of a fright when I was playing with the EQ earlier today lol.