How to bypass Avic-n2, works

Do not do the dropping solder trick, you could short out and ruin the display unit.

I was dumb enough to try this dropping solder advice and now after finally  fixing my unit so that it will work again I am sitting here banging my head against the wall for even trying it. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.

I am always looking for new tricks to try and the dropping solder trick sounded almost plausable. I uncovered the hole by removing the silver tape, sure enough the 197 pins were there. The only problem is that the pins are covered and surrounded with wax and the solder won't stick. I tried and tried, still no solder sticking to the pins. Finally I used an exacto knife and scraped away the wax, bango, the solder stuck, I did it. I then re-installed the display unit in the dash, the unit powered up, the screen opened, then, immediately  powered off and shut down in the open position. OH heck, did I just ruin an expensive unit? I removed the unit, carefully removed the solder drip, and re-installed the unit,  It still did not work. Now, I'm scared, angry, and feeling really stupid, why did I mess with this? Especially when I had the darn thing bypassed and working the old fashioned way. Anyhow, I removed the display unit again, got out a magnifine glass and used the exacto knife to carfully scrape off all solder and made sure that the pins were clean and isolated from the surrounding metal. If you scrape around the pins you will see that the pins are isolated from touching metal,  but they appear to be part of a metal board. The pins cannot touch the metal board under the wax. I was lucky, the second cleaning and scraping worked, the unit now works again.

Lesson to be learned, if you get information first hand from someone inside Pioneer, maybe you can half believe it. However, that person better be a Pioneer engineer or you take the chance of permanently screwing up a perfectly good unit.  I came close to frying my unit, and believe me, I have plenty of experience soldering and installing aircraft radios. This dripping solder trick may be a scam, it's not worth the chance. If you reason it out, the better way would be to take off the display unit cover and solder wires to points that you can clearly see. 

I did try this backup  camera bypass trick and it does work. The basics are as follows:

Ground the  wire coming from the display unit harness that goes to the emergency brake.

Hook the backup light wire from the hideaway unit to a two pole on/off toggle switch, the other end of the toggle switch goes to 12 volts, yellow. Same yellow wire that the hideaway gets it power from.

Run a RCA video wire from the hideaway "video out"  to  the hideaway unit "back up camera in".

Want to watch video while moving? switch the toggle to on, the backup wire will be connected to 12 volts and will fool the unit into thinking that you are backing up, it will turn on the camera port which is attached to video out. Video out usually goes to a rear video screen and it is always on. The RCA wire just redirects the output back to the backup camera in port.

Don't forget to change the unit setup screen, you need to tell the unit  that you have a camera attached or it won't work.  

Warning: In some states this is illegal, do it at your own risk. I am merely passing on what I read many months ago. If you screw things up, ruin your radio, get arrested, get into an accident, you are the one responsible.

Not to encourage anyone to try it because apparently there is some risk involved, but I had never even used a soldering tool and I just did exactly as the previous post stated.  Worked flawlessly for me and my N2.  Seems almost too easy

Follow up to the stupid dripping solder bypass:

Every time you remove the display unit you have to reset the stations and custom settings. What a pain in the butt.

Every time you remove the display unit you take the chance of loosing those four tiny screws that hold the unit in the dash sleeve.

Every time you remove the display unit you mess up the wire harness, you know, the one  that you so carefully tied up and installed to avoid dash noises and wire squeeks.

Every time you  remove the display unit you put wear on the plastic bezel that you have to remove to get at the small screws. If you remove it enough times the molding will not clip on right and will fall off every time the unit opens.

Dripping solder is not one of those technical tricks that is taught in electronic school. Dripping solder is just like asking your project to short out and fry itselt.

Did you ever think that this idea might have come from the Pioneer sabatage team?

Just food for thought

TO GET THIS CURRENT:

There probably isn't a Pioneer sabatage team, the thought was just a thought to be humerous, however, Direct TV does have such a team, they even brag about it.

To be creative, I propose an alternative to dripping solder in order to connect the 197 pins. If these pins are used as a real bypass,  then Pioneer must have a plug that goes into that slot in order to jump the pins together. In addition, the plug must fit flush with the case, or the radio will not slide back in the sleeve. I tried a  normal computer jumper to accomplish this,  however,  it will not fit, it is too wide. Lets think about safe alternatives.

Anyone want to try a spring? Yes a small spring, just wide enough to contact both pins, wrap the top of the spring in black electrical tape so it won't gound out to case by touching the edges of the access hole.. Keep the spring in place with a piece of tape, similar to the original silver tape that covered the access hole, that way there won't be a bulge and the radio will slide back in the sleeve. 

I just ordered a new radio for testing, and will try the spring deal before the end of the week. Anyone want to try this first, please report your progress.

NO, I'm not a member of the Pioneer sabatage team, just a circut testor.