I suspect it wasn’t one of my finest moments. Let me explain what happened during the project to replace the head unit in the Isuzu.
There seemed to be a surplus of plugs and cables in the dash as I attempted to install the replacement head unit. Then I realised I wouldn’t be using the original GPS Antenna which meant one surplus plug. Moving on I identified further plugs which I wouldn’t be using. Those of the HDMI socket, audio jack and usb port. Next I needed to identify the ‘Trigger’ wire for the reversing camera. Power to this wire occurs when the vehicle is placed into reverse gear. This then displays the reversing camera image on the head unit. Doing this was only required because I had decided to retain the original reversing camera. It would be an involved and long task replacing the original camera which is why I wanted to connect the original camera to the new head unit. Events proved this to be a poor decision as I had incorrectly selected the ‘'Trigger’ wire.
This was the result when I powered up the new head unit.
The screen had a ‘flash over’ burn in the top right corner. After a few choice words I wrote to the Aliexpress seller describing the problem and asking if it was possible to just purchase the screen rather than the whole kit. They agreed to sell me one for half price. Meanwhile I disassembled the rear tailgate on the Isuzu to gain access to the reversing camera. After some modifications I was able to replace the camera with the one supplied in the kit. It was then a case of running cables to one of the reversing lights (power for the camera) and the video cable through the vehicle to the dash where it connects to the head unit.
Two weeks later and the replacement head unit has been fitted.
The Main Screen. It’s two inches larger than the original and configurable. I haven’t done that yet. The unit will connect to the mobile phone network but I opted not to purchase that part of the system. Instead I have it configured to connect to our home wifi.
I couldn’t decide whether to use Waze or OSMAnd as my satnav program and installed both. I experiment and make a final decision after several trip. Currently I’m using OSMAnd
Whilst the dash was apart I reinstalled a blue LED onto the aircon control panel. This is connect to the 4WD switch and illuminates when the vehicle is switched into 4WD mode. I’ve been caught out twice with the vehicle in 4WD instead of 2WD. Hopefully this LED will prevent that reoccurring.
Whilst working on the head unit project my Kobo eReader decided it would no longer recharge. The Reader works but the battery was steadily going flat. Trying a number of usb cables and chargers had no effect. Obviously the problem was somewhere inside the device. With nothing to lose I disassembled it.
My poor eyesight was unable to identify any issues so I took a photo and then enlarged the image.
The five socket connections are tiny. I think they are cracked. It’s going to be an interesting effort attempting to resolder the connections with my poor eyesight and shaky hands.
Meanwhile one of the two dual external USB caddies that hold the hard drives containing our video library has failed. Probably unsurprising as both caddies run 24/7. We made the decision to replace them with a proper Network Access Server (NAS). After some research I opted for a Terramaster F4-424 which is capable of holding four hard drives. Terramaster gives the user the option to configure it using their propriety TRAID system or conventional RAID. Whilst there are advantages to using TRAID I decided on the more conventional RAID 5 configuration.
Using the Terramaster as our home NAS meant we now had a surplus Raspberry Pi. I decided to configure the Raspberry Pi as a PiHole. Whilst PiHole has been around for at least four years I’ve never attempted to use it. This week I did the installation and configuration. Using PiHole does a number of things. The most important for us are the removal of the majority of website Ad’s and protection against potential Malware.
I’d only been running the PiHole for 15 minutes and you can see from the screen dump below it has already intercepted 192 queries. blocked 81 of them (42.2%) and had a database containing 109,615 potential sites to block
Three days later the results are much greater
44,208 queries intercepted. 7,528 queries blocked. A total of 17% of all queries blocked. Websites are loading faster and the number of displayed Ads has dropped significantly.
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