Alpine iLX-W650

Yeah I plan on wiring it up on mine too!

 

Took my unit to a stereo shop to get it installed. I requested they wire up the back up camera to be on at all time since I wanted to select the rear view while towing just to keep an eye on towing. They advised me against it since the oem camera is a 6v and the power to it would be a 12v. Anyone has any input on it? Any truth to it?

 

Did they end up using the factory camera or aftermarket?

 

Factory back up camera.

 

If what you said they told you is accurate then there is zero truth to it. The camera ALWAYS has power. it’s all about when and how it’s triggered and that is when it comes on visually. Yes, the camera is 6v power but many factory cameras are. Power has nothing to do with it as the reason.You can’t hook up 12v to a 6v camera because you have a a chance of damaging the camera. There should be a voltage step down adapter ( or better be one ). If they didn’t use any step down then if by chance it did work it’s temporary. It’s all about how the trigger. There is no difference between using the reverse signal to trigger the camera vs the view camera on the screen ( if that radio has the capability....99% can so I assume this can too ). It’s a switch.... 1 is instant when you put it in reverse and the other is when you hit the camera button on the stereo. Take it back and tell them to retire their connections to do it the way you want. They “advise” but they are not correct and you can assume responsibility since it’s yours. There will no issues doing it IF they wire it correct with the correct part. Something like

$24 ax-cam6v 12-volt to 6-volt camera stepdown

ax-cam6v or a volt-39.
Good luck

 

Thank you so much for your advice/input. I made an appointment this morning for this week. I hope to have this corrected to my liking.

 

Any updates? my main concern with this unit is integrating the stock backup camera.

 

If done correctly with the right parts, there is zero issues

 

I just installed this in my 2019 Taco. My Entune head unit stopped working about a few days after I got the truck and I don't want to schedule an appointment to fix it. I got everything from Crutchfield and have been doing audio for years. The deck is good if you want to add Android auto or Carplay, but other than that it's pretty featureless and bare bones. The rear camera works fine on my 2019. The Crutchfield kit comes with the American International kit, which is all plastic but a decent kit for the dash. The reason I got the deck is because I knew there would be a mess of wires and the shallow form factor would provide plenty of space. I soldered all my wires and tried to keep them neat. Just ran into a few hiccups along the way. First, AM radio didn't work and that had to do with me forgetting to plug in the antenna plug adapter. Second, the unit wasn't taking voice commands but it would work to wake up saying OK GOOGLE and that was because the microphone wire had slipped out.

A few notes, the rear view camera does appear to have a power issue because I tried to switch the unit to view rear camera on the Alpine and nothing comes up. But if you put the car into reverse it works fine. The Crutchfield kit comes with the new SWRTY-61N interface. The manual can be found here. The dip switches are set everything off except for 6 and 8 are ON. There is a loose wire in the kit meant to be plugged into one of the pin holes on the 28 pin harness (see one of my pictures for which hole the wire goes in, you don't want to mess this up as it's hard to fix if you put it in the wrong hole). The original USB port is retained with the kit. I'm used to matching orange to orange for the illumination wire but the orange wire on the Alpine is for the reverse wire. The unit has good enough power for the stock speakers and it came with very thick power and ground cables because there is a piggy back amplifier that bolts onto the back of the unit. So anyone looking for a budget speaker upgrade might not need to buy an amp. You will lose your stock Sirius XM tuner. Buying it all from Crutchfield will save you some money on the iDatalink Maestro, dash kit, and harnesses that you might otherwise have to purchase. Total price with 2 day shipping is about $396.83. It's nice to have Android Auto in the truck finally but if the 2020's come with it I wouldn't upgrade with the ILX-W650 because this deck is pretty boring otherwise and wouldn't be much of an upgrade. The display is tablet like, completely flat with no buttons or knobs which makes adjusting volume annoying. I just read about the 2 finger swipe to do volume up and down and it's still annoying.

 

Thank you so much for doing the write up. One of my biggest peeves about my 2018 is that there is no Carplay, and the dull and ugly LCD screen. I was looking into new head units to get Carplay, and this was the best "bang for the buck" unit I found on Crutchfield, so I came here to see if anyone had used it...Few questions...

1. How feasible is this for someone to install who has never done it before? I have removed and installed all new speakers, tweeters, in my truck already with no issues
2. Is there any soldering required or is everything plug and play with the adapters / kit supplied from Crutchfield?
3. Does the amplifier you are talking about "bolts onto the back of the unit" come stock with it, or is that an extra to purchase?

 

1. It's totally feasible. It's probably a matter of matching around 8 wires together on the harness. Remove old stereo, install new.
2. Soldering not required. But I used to install competitively and prefer to solder because that's the best connection you can get. It is not plug and play. It's connect several wires, then plug and play. Crutchfield offers a service for this, I forgot how much but if you just bought a few connectors and have a crimper and stripper handy it's easy enough to do yourself. This deck makes it a bit easier because you have a lot of space in the back.
3. The amplifier can be purchased with the head unit or you can add it on later. Since the deck has power that's good enough for stock speakers, I imagine the add on amp puts out enough power for some components with passive crossovers.

The stock deck is very easy to remove. You can pry off the trim panel with your hands. Then there are 4 10mm bolts that hold the stereo in place. You just undo a few harnesses (several of the harnesses go from the deck to the deck so you don't have to undo those).

You would then take your mounting kit and connect it to the Alpine ahead of time. You can set the Crutchfield adapter pin switches and make your wire connection. then everything after that is pretty much plug and play with the exception of running the microphone. You can easily clip the mic to your visor, then run the wire down the A pillar and under the dash to behind the stereo. There is plenty of room and you don't have to remove any panels.

 

It is $25 for them to wire the harnesses and then send it to you. I'm considering since I don't really feel like messing with splicing wires... And I'm sure it would take me more than $25 worth of time to figure out. Where did you put your microphone? Up on the visor? I saw some other post where the person seemed to drill out a small hole next to the head unit where they pushed the microphone through until it snapped in place through the plastic trim piece. It looked pretty clean... Although I might consider putting it up near the rear view mirror if there is enough wire to hide the cable in the A pillar and headliner.

I think I'm definitely going to purchase this unit, whether it be now or a little later. I want carplay too badly. Did you run into any problems that other people described with the emergency brake? How about being able to mess with navigation while the car is in motion?

 

The factory location is near the sun visor and that's a place that lots of manufacturers place the microphone. Other places can be prone to noise from vents or other sources. No drilling, no panels to pull you can simply tuck the wire away. I didn't bypass my unit yet, I don't think it's necessary since most of the commands I issue are voice and you can do those with the car in motion. Playing with the unit and the car in motion is a recipe for an accident. But even as it is with the parking brake, you can still touch the screen and use a lot of the features. Like I was able to share my journey through Google maps while the car was in motion. The bypass would be a simple install if I ever wanted it. Try to install the unit without it, then if you need it then you can pull off the deck and install it pretty easily. I can take out the radio in about a minute.

 

Thanks so much for all of the info. For clarification, I ride around a lot for camping and other stuff with my wife, and I was more or less concerned about her being able to use the head unit to change the music source, use spotify, pandora, google maps, etc. while I am driving. I plan on installing the unit and then tweaking it with any bypass add-ons I may need down the road, just as you suggested.

My concern with the parking brake is that I don't use it much... So getting in the habit of engaging it is going to be a problem for me.

 

You won't need to use the parking brake to do most of the stuff you need I think. You can control almost everything without bypassing it. Where you need to engage the parking brake is when you need to type. If I need to go to Costco I can just say "Take me to costco" and it will do that without having to even touch the screen. You can change music sources without having to stop or engage the brake, too.

 

Pulled the trigger on the order today from Crutchfield... They had an open box unit for a $35 discount so I jumped on it. Pretty excited to get it wired up, hopefully before our camping trip this weekend.

One last question if you don't mind... How do you route the microphone cable in the area behind the dash? I'm mostly asking about how to route it in the area between the A-pillar and head unit... behind all of that dash area.

 

You can tuck the microphone cable up into the headliner until you get to the A pillar. Then you just go along the rubber door seal, then go down to the kick panel, you can pull on the panels and seals enough to tuck the cable in. Then just go under the dash and run the cable near the steering column you will route it above the trim, one of the mounting points for the trim will help hold the cable up. Then you can go up into the radio space. My car is a lease so I didn't zip tie or secure the cable, if I was going to leave the stereo in the car I would secure it nicely with zip ties. I was able to tuck along the seals with my fingers. If it's difficult for you to do that you need to find some kind of a blunt tool like an upholstery tool to help you shove it in there.

 

sub'd

 

I did the same thing with the mic, it worked great

 

Got it installed this weekend, no problems. Only thing that confused me was that I couldn't get the rear camera working when I hit the "camera" button on the unit. I thought I had it wired up wrong...Turns out the only way to get it to come on is to put the truck into reverse. Kind of weird, but thats how it works with the OEM unit so I guess it makes sense?

Totally worth it. We went camping this weekend and on the drive out it was so nice to be able to have the navigation up on the screen. And yeah I know you can do it with entune, but its always such a pain in the A$$ that I didn't bother doing it.