I was shopping for Android Auto/Car Play head units to see how far the technology has gone, and I spotted an "Uh-oh":



A cooling fan on the unit? I see all kinds of problems here, given the harsh environment of our cabs. There is one cardinal rule on the computers we use in an industrial environment: Passive cooling where possible, along with a controlled environment.

As an example of how we arrived at this rule, we had a number of graphics cards with cooling fans fail on us - even though they were in an air conditioned NEMA 12 cabinet (closed system with no dust intrusion). The fans would seize up, then actually contribute to the heating of the graphics card. We then replaced all the cards with the passive cooling type (heat sinks), and we serviced all the non-optional cooling fans while we were in there. Cooling fans last us about five years in a clean environment, then we have to get in there and start replacing as necessary (large numbers of cooling fans in a single cabinet).

Now... take the not-so-clean environment of your home computer, and it needs a good blow-out between 6 months and a year. If you have a tower or desktop computer in your office or home, take the cover off and tell me I'm wrong. In the harsh environment of an industrial setting without a cabinet - the time between needed cleanings is measured in operational hours - about 2000 hours. That's the likely scenario for the cooling fan on the back of a head unit - remove and clean every 2000 hours of operation.

To be fair, this could be a very long time in your truck - you don't drive your vehicle 24 hours a day for three months straight. However... you'll have no idea how many hours you have on your head unit to know when to pull it for cleaning. The easier choice is to have a passive cooling system - like they've been using for many decades. Yet another detail overloading our brains when all we want are some tunes, backup camera, hands-free phone, and maps.

 

So what unit was that on?

 

That is a Pioneer NEX series. I don't know how many in the series or what other brands have it.

 

Thanks............

 

The Joying units back end are one big Heat sink. No fans, but then I think they are only 45 watts Stereo/20 watts CPU.I burned in mine on the bench for 48 hrs and it didn't even get all that warm.....The fan might be just for the Amp chips, who knows? What was the audio output on the one u looked at?

 

4 channels, 50 watts each. I don't recall if that was RMS or peak.

If I sound like I'm being petty consider this: That unit in the first post is $1200 - as much as for a high-performance PC. Now... imagine that fan going out. Moving parts are for VCRs - not for modern portable electronics in the era of SD cards and Solid State Hard Drives.

 

Rich, I have a unit that cost about $45 with zero moving parts, only thing on it that moves is the SD card when I transfer it to my computer to load more music on it...perhaps you should consider the option?

When I used my usb drive in the work car I admit I got spoiled fast...so now I am making CDs obsolete as fast as possible, only reason I have a CD player in my mustang is because the unit was bought by my parents as a gift but it does have a USB port in it...

 

I have a head unit that uses an 8G SD card - so I'm covered for now. It has a CD/DVD player - which will never see a disc. I want to make use of Android Auto when they get it dialed in, plus I want a head unit with better sound quality than the P.O.S. I have now. I'll be looking hard at Pioneer, unless something else jumps up before Android Auto comes of age.

 

ah ok, I agree I hope the Android auto comes of age, as for the Joying unit, I am assumeing your not going to consider that or are you? the one I have as far as I can see is all passive cooling, seems to work well, all I am getting road blocked by is really the adapter harness which I think I just may cut and splice (the adapter its self) to remove the two extra leads that really will have no function in my truck...other then that I just need to get it installed in the dash some way...

 

I used something like one of these [LINK] and I wired direct. Here are the rather cryptic notes I took:



I sometimes see a discrepancy in the wire count, so it might take a little homework to suss that out.

 

Just cut and splice.

 

here is what I used, unknowingly it came all together as one unit, where the picture depicts 4 seperate pieces (was going to select the two I needed, trim accordingly and then wire together as required...yea no....so I figure I might as well cut out what I dont need and splice what I can together (heat shrink and solder)