Well, good news from me regarding Dice, finally. I got the newest version from Dice today, and they finally have text working! I believe Dice and Neo are the same thing, so I am surprised Neo's are having problems. Anyways, the text does work well. It takes about a second or so for the text to catch up with whats playing. You can set it to scroll or not scroll, so if its longer than 16 characters, you can still see everything. Here is the way it works:

You press the XM button to get to the controls, not CD or CDC.

You press the Disc 1 button, and you can move up and down the songs, and the ff and rr buttons work. Though you push ff and it starts ff'ing and then you put ff again to start playing. Same with rr. The artist is displayed on the artist line and the song title is displayed on the song title line. Song title is displayed on song title line for disc buttons 1-4.

Press Disc 2 and you are in playlist mode. You push up and down and that moves you through the playlist. The playlist name is not displayed! It shows 'Playlist' as artist, and the song title in the song title spot. I made a bunch of 1 second blank songs with the playlist name, and put them at the begging of the playlist so that when I scroll through playlist, the 1 second song will play showing the playlist name. Of course, that will not work well in shuffle mode. Once you go to the right playlist, you would then press Disc 1 to have control over the songs. It takes a second or two to move between playlists.

Press Disc 3 to go to album mode. This will skip to the next album in the current playlist. Title says something like Album, and Song TItle is the song title.

Press Disc 4 for chapter mode. Don't know much about this. Again, Title says 'Chapter' and song title is song title.

Press Disc 5 to use 2nd audio input on Dice Unit and shows Dice firmware.

Press Disc 6 to select text scrolling and text length (10 or 16 chars).

I have noticed that it does not skip songs very quickly. If you press them too fast, it restarts the song you just skipped to. You can maybe skip 1 song a second, which seem fast, but really isn't if you want to jump 50 songs or so.

Also, it does not display how many seconds you are into the song, nor track number or anything like that, but since it is on the XM station button, there is nowhere for that info anyways.

You do NOT need nor want the Y adapter hooked up when you use this. It will play XM and your iPod at the same time, and will show text from XM as well as the iPod text when it boots.

That is all I can think of for now. I will get to know it better over time.

(edited for clarification and spelling and such.)

 

jknight: which car do you have? Is it a TL as well? I'm running an '06 TL w/ Navi.

Thanks for the update! I am disappointed with NEO because they won't cross-ship me a non-text unit. They want me to rip apart my car, return the old unit, put the car back together, wait for a non-text version, rip it apart again, install the new one, put it back together again...

If Dice has their act together, I'm thinking I'll buy a Dice, install it at the same time I rip out the Neo, and then get a refund from Neo. At least I only have to take the thing apart once.

 

jknight, screen shots please?

 

Sounds like Great news!! I just took my truck out for the weekend and moved my Ipod there (using Alpine head unit and 1st gen ipod adapter). It takes a second or so to skip songs as well so I don't think it's THAT much of an issue or a price to pay to get the text on the navi screen.

I have an 07, I will send them a note before I just order one to verify it's been tested with an 07 as this 'technology', for lack of a better term, seems fragile and sensitive and only want to pull my car apart once!

Thanks to everyone for the persistance, sorry about the neo and that they want everthing back, that bites!

Rick

 

Wow great progress!

Give it another year and I'm sure some really cool toys will be coming out. Maybe some company will follow trend from people like csmenace and make a touchscreen adapter for their unit

 

Hi. Yes, I have an 04 TL with Navi.

Also, I believe that the Dice and Neo even use the same cables, so I bet you could just swap the unit out, and not have to switch the wires. Just send back the dice wires with the Neo unit.

But... I may have found a bug. I seems like it replays each track once. I listened to an audiobook on the way to work today, and it played track 1, track 1, track 2, track 2, track 3, track 3, etc. Of course I could hit the Next song on my steering wheel, but that is annoying. Let me see if it is a fluke or a common thing.

 

I will try and post a few screenshots this evening.

 

Ok, it was my fault for the song playing twice. I had added them twice to my playlist. So it seems to run fine.

Here are a couple of pictures. The first one is on Disc 1, which is song mode. The song and artist/album scroll if it is long enough. You can see the album "Back in Black", but it is in the middle of scrolling "AC/DC * Black in Black". So it shows both Artist and Album. The second picture is on Disc two, which is the playlist mode.

Also, the top display shows the artist/album for a couple seconds, then shows the title and scrolls that.

 

wow, that is really nice....make me want to switch my USAspec for this.

 

I'm so glad they got the text working.

Where can I buy and how much is the DICE unit? Is it hard to install?

 

I got it at http://www.diceelectronics.com/. It is not very hard to install, and is the same as the USA Spec. There are instructions on this site on how to do it, but you need to pull off a few panels, plug it into the CD Controller plug in the back of the head unit. Then put your panels back on. If you have never done it before, it is probably a 1-2 hour job.

 

Ok, ok. Also one more thing. Does the text version display special characters?

Like: ë é

 

I will have to give that a try. How can I create those characters on from my keyboard?

 

Sucks so bad you have to physically disconnect XM for that to work...

Can't believe there's no way to install switch interrupt on the XM unit power cord...

Flip the switch, XM is shut off, neo works with text. Turn off ipod, flip switch, XM works with text.

Anyone wanna try it?

 

It would certainly be possible. You would have to figure out which wires in the Y cable carry the XM sound and text, and put a switch on those. Let power/ground and such continue to both all the time. Don't ask me what wires to do, though.

 

Go to Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > and open Character Map. You find the characters you want. Select them and then copy & paste.

 

nice review...im thinking about picking this up for my tsx...hopefully it will be successful also

 

It looks like if it sends the text to the top display this may work on non-navi too. I checked the Dice site, but it was inconclusive. Anyone have this hooked up in a non-navi? Does the text work?

I'm considering ditching my current set up (a simple FM transmitter and an RF remote) for better sound quality. This would be perfect - I'm going out of town, but if no one has tried it yet with non-navi, I'll just order it and post my results in a few weeks.

 

I wouldn't object to you being the guinea pig. Please remember to post your result.

 

Any word on the special characters?

 

Sorry, I was gone for an extended weekend.

They do not work. I tried both ë and é, and all that displayed was a regular e. Which, I guess, is better than nothing.

 

Did you get the DICE i-Honda-R3 or DICE i-Honda-R4?

 

Here is a response I got from Dice about a question I asked him earlier.

"The kit that you have is the I-Honda-R4 because it has the Y-harness. The I-Honda-R3 is exactly the same thing, except that the harness is not a "Y". The Y harness is needed for Navigation equipped Honda/Acura vehicles and/or if factory XM is to be kept in use (which would disable iPod text). And just to clear up the confusion, the I-Honda-R3_gen2 is the same thing as the I-Honda-R3 now."

Though, there is one error. You do not need the Y harness, even with Nav. If you use the Y-Harness, you hear sound from both XM and the Ipod. So the R3 is fine. If you do NOT want to use Text and keep XM, then you need the Y harness.

 

have you tested the fact that you dont need the Y harness to have text displayed. i called dice a while back and they said you needed it and also that the r4 would have it. i went to the site today and cant find the r4. how did you get it.

 

Yes, I first hooked it up with the Y harness, and I heard both XM and my ipod at the same time. It also showed text from both. So I unplugged the XM cable from the Y cable, and then it worked fine.

I originally ordered the R3, but when I got it, the text was not working. The R4 got the new firmware first, so they sent me that. Now R3 and R4 have the new firmware and are apparently identical, except for the cable. And, for piece of mind, if you get the R3 without the y cable, and you want to get the y cable later, you can buy it at a Honda dealer for less than $20.

 

That looks so nice with Navi, I have 2004 TSX w/ Navi no XM would I be able to use this Dice-R3? Any problems skipping or Cd-C not switching like Blitz and USA Spec-Hon2Y adapters?

 

So if I have Nav and ditch XM and want text the R3 sounds like the way to go. Did I read that right?

Sorry for the multiple ?s.

 

I have not had issues like that so far, but I have not used it for long. No skipping so far. Switching between playlists can take a couple seconds, but once the songs are playing, they play fine. And since you don't use the CDC/CD button, I don't see that issue. You are on the Xm button.


Yes, I believe so. They told me R3 and R4 are identical except the Y harness, which you would not want.

 

I missed the TSX part. I don't know if it will work with a TSX. I would think it would, but you might want to call and find out.

 

Thanks for the info

 

jknight,
any chance you could take a pic of how you dock the ipod while in use....did you run it through the center consol, or through the storage bins in the center.

 

I have it in the first compartment below the radio. I cut a hole in the back and ran the wires through that. I have a video ipod, and just put it in there, and close the lid to the compartment. I can take a picture, but there is not much to see.

 

hey jknight,

I'm currently using the USA SPEC to hook up my iPod and I just ordered the DICE unit today to replace it. It seems like a much better buy for my car. The USA SPEC has an Aux in input which I'm using to hook up the sound for my DVD player. From what I understand, the DICE unit also has one too. I had a few questions about it though. First, are you currently using the Aux In input? And secondly, do you know how the Aux In input works on it?

 

I don't have anything hooked up to the Aux, but I am pretty sure that you would hit the Disc 5 button when in XM mode to play sound from the Aux.

 

im guessing it probably wont work in a tsx without XM because on the tsx's, the only mode that supports text display is XM

 

Ok, I'm confused. I have read these thread numerous times, but am still not sure if you can have an active and working install of XM and use the text functionality of the DICE adapter . . . either with or without the Y adapter. Can someone confirm?

Sorry if I have missed the obvious.

 

Hi. You can NOT have text and XM at the same time, with or without a Y cable. Unless someone builds a switchable Y cable, as someone previously wished for.

 

Is there a way to hook up a dice adapter now to '04 w/o Nav, and keep XM at the same time. It would nice to keep the text option, but not very important.

 

It doesn't matter if you have NAV or not, if you want text, then the XM cable needs to be unplugged. So you can't have both. It would be nice, but for now, its not possible.

 

Wow, this looks like the best option yet. Gotta admit though, i am a wimp. Can anyone think of a bay area shop or person who'd do this work for me?