The head unit arrived today. When it says free expedited shipping, they mean expedited. Looks like everything in package that supose to be (assuming the micro sd map car is already in the stereo, I haven't taken the plastic off yet.
Wouldn't you know its freezing cold and snowing right now. Unit looks kinda small picturing the stock stereo. I'll go out and compare, but looks like din and half instead of 2 din.

Edit: The micro SD card was already in the GPS card slot in the stereo and it is 2 din. Though it doesn't quite fill the stock opening in the waterfall. If the adapter I pictured in the first post of this thread turns out to be as advertised, then I think it will fill the gaps.

The GPS forum recommended to copy the Micro SD card containing the GPS information to your computer asap, because they suspect most of the problems people were having with system hang ups was the poor quality Micro SD card. I just copied the files over to my laptop and plan to copy them to a San disc micro SD card I have.

The file on the card list the GPS program as:
Sygic Drive 10 - North America (+premium POI).mlm

I'm dying to go out and start install, but its freezing cold and I'm at the height of a cold now. Been fighting it off for over a week and finally woke up with it yesterday morning.

I believe it was a seven day return for DOA warranty, so I've got to check it at asap.

It comes with no wire connection information in the owners manual. There is a crud wire diagram sticker on top the stereo, but it shows all +12v wires connect to positive battery terminal, lol. I'm going from memory from other installs, that yellow is constant 12v, red is switched 12v, etc. There is an orange wire labeled ILLUMINATION, i'm hoping this dims the screen at night and if so this connects to the dash lights, I.E. when +12v is applied to his wire the screen dims slightly???

Got to figure out what to do about wire harness interface. I don't want to hook it up without one, but price jump was unexpected. May have to miss a few meals and live off my bag of Shakeology

Edit: Best Buy has the Scosche instock for $109. I couldnt bring myself to pay that. Did a google search and found out I was about to buy more than I needed. To retain OnStar is a higher price part. My LS didn't come with OnStar or XM. Found Pac C2RGM11 on Amazon for $68 and ordered it. With next day shipping its still cheaper than the Scosche. So I should be able to install tomorrow evening or Saturday IF the mounting adaptor trim arrives and I find a warm garage.

Pac C2RGM11 REPL Rdio CHM 06-07 GM LAN No Onstar
Data-controlled RAP accessory output. Antenna or amplifier turn on output wire. Dimmer or illumination output wire. Steering wheel control output ...
Amazon.com - $67.99

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...oL._SS500_.jpg

What forum are you reading all of this info on these units???

http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/t...71&whichpage=6

This one is discussing Windows CE
http://www.hpcfactor.com/forums/foru...rt=31&posts=38

Couldn't wait till the harness came tomorrow, so I got the 12v power supply out and hooked it up. The HD screen is awesome. I played a DVD in it and it just blew me away. I set my cell phone to search for new bluetooth device and then pressed PAIR on the BT screen of the stereo and it found it right away. It connects automatically every time I turn the stereo on. Keeps a call list in the menu so frequently dialed calls can be placed with just one press. I plugged the ipod in and works the ipod just like the touch wheel on the ipod. Scrolls through songs, artist, albums, genre, playlist, and displays it on the screen. I couldn't imagine a better ipod controller. Thats with a 2g Nano.

When I first turned it on, it came up RADIO screen. I scrolled down to a strong local FM station I knew it might pick up without an antenna. At the bottom of the RADIO screen it scrolled the station slogan "todays hottest music, electric 96.9". Awesome, the RDS works. The ad says the RDS is for Europe. Later when in the setting menu for some dumb reason I changed the tuner from Europe to America. Now it doesn't display the RDS info anymore and changing it back to Euro still doesnt display station/song info. O'well. Maybe when I disconnect from constant pwr and hook it up to car it will go back. I hooked up the back up camera. the screen image had some lines across it like a broken up signal. Maybe the ground wire temporary hooked to pwr supply wasn't a good signal. The camera does have what looks like LEDs around it, which I'm guessing is infared? When the display is in camera mode is has a grid pattern to help judge the distance to objects. I have it hooked to an old pair of computer speakers and swear I could detect the surround sound playing a DVD. It's 45wattsx4, so that should power factory car speakers nicely. I have to find my digital camera and start taking pictures of install for this thread. Oh, the illumination wire does hook to +12v dash lights (or the output on the PAC wire harness interface) and it does dim the screen nicely for night driving. Has a star symbol in the upper right corner and pressing it blacks out the screen totally for night driving also.

lol, I did this also as my harness came in about 3 days after the head unit. Glad you like it, and thanks for the links!

Did you have any trouble getting GPS to work? When I select GPS, it switches to a mostly white screen with arrows that imply that I'm supose to touch the center and then all four corners of the screen. When i do this, the cross hairs follow my touch, but then nothing happens, the screen doesn't change. Owners manual says nothing about this, just that when touching GPS, a GPS menu screen will come up.

I would think that with the GPS antenna indoors, the GPS program would come up, but at some point it would state no signal from sat or something. It looks like its in some kind of touch screen setup but won't let me get past it.

EDIT:
OK, just fiqured it out by accident. You have to hold your finger on each cross hair and wait for the symbol to catch up before moving onto the next one. At the last one, the screen switches to OK and I pressed the OK and it switched to Loading Sygic Drive. I have a map screen on my display now.
At least I know it works, won't know more until the GPS antenna is outside.

The dash trim mounting adaptor just arrived US mail. It looks nice and fits the HHR dash perfect. Would make the head unit look almost factory IF the opening in the adaptor was big enough for the head unit to fit in. Need to mill out the lip all the way around the inside edge of the opening. I use to be able to do stuff like this free hand with dremmel, but no anymore. Any ideas for smooth straight cuts on this trim?

Edit: gotta get me sum new rotozip bits. Thought I had one left, but all gone. Thinking about mounting it under router table and making stops and fences. Hopefully can trim inside opening like cutting mdf speaker rings.

Depending on how think the plastic is, I would use a straight edge of some type and use an exacto knife and make a series of small cuts until you get through it, then lightly wetsand it smooth. However if it as thick as my Metra kit (That I also couldn't use, still used the side pieces though) is, then I don't know what way to go with that..

I just spent the last, oh 5-6 hours trying to change the navigation software on my unit to iGO 8.3. I finally got it working great, and I think the user interface is much better than the Sygic software that comes with it.

I did try to hack it a little with MioPocket, and I've screwed up some registry keys inside of it, and Sygic won't work on it now anyway.... Oh well. I'm sure if I dig hard enough I can get it back working, but personally I think the iGO software is much better. It's a lot easier to see in the Sunlight, and I will say that is the biggest downfall to my unit. The glare is killer in the mid-morning sun coming to work, but other than those 2 hours, not too bad.

Anyway if you want to get creative and switch your GPS software to iGO, here's the link I used:
http://www.navitotal.com/forums/show...install-thread

Finding the maps was the hardest thing because the links on the above site are dead, you can find the maps here:
http://www.igo-maps.info/nac.php

I used the NAVTEQ Q4.2009 North America + Canada maps and for the couple of test trips I took, they were spot on on a couple of roads that the Sygic went a little crazy on. I'm currently downloading the Teleatlas maps, but they were a 6 part series, and is taking forever to download, so I'm going to let them download overnight tonight and try them out hopefully tomorrow or Sunday to see if I see a huge difference.

I'll try to get a video tomorrow during the daylight, and tonight so you can see the difference and post it up tomorrow night.

**Edit - Video**
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWA8sbxWEKw

Good work with the IGO conversion. I may want to do that too.

Well, when I ordered my wiring harness interface, Amazon said if order was placed before 4pm, it could be shipped next day, Friday. I watched the tracking and UPS didn't get it from Amazon until 11:40pm Thursday night. So it didn't come yesterday and looks like it won't come today either. Its in Lousiville now. Don't expect a delivery on Sun, so I'm getting equal to 4 day ground after paying for next day. Got to email Amazon and ask for shipping refund.