I've had the Asteroid Smart in my car for a few days now. I have to say, I'm very impressed and pleased with the whole package.

For offline music, I have an old 160GB iPod Classic hooked up in the glove box. The Asteroid Smart has no problems properly grouping artists, albums, tracks, etc. The album art doesn't have any issues showing either. If you're playing music from and iPod or other USB device, the notification shade has reverse, play/pause, and forward buttons for control without having to go back to the iPod app. This is the best offline music experience I've had in a car since the empeg.

For online music, most Android apps will work. However, without Google Play support, you will have to sideload the APKs. Natively, through the Asteroid Market, you can download TuneIn Radio and Spotify. I have Pandora installed through sideloading, and it seems to work perfectly.

I've also sideloaded Yelp and Foursquare so you can find places to go while driving. I haven't had a need to do that yet, but I imagine it will come in handy.

The Asteroid Smart comes with iGO Navigation and offline maps on an SD card for your region. To be perfectly honest, I ran that application once just to make sure I had the proper North American mapset. This device is all about Google Maps Navigation (sideloaded). It runs superbly on this thing. If Parrot were able to sell this with Google Maps installed and running, they would be flying off shelves.

As for mobile data, I'm tethering over bluetooth to my phone. So far, this has been working solidly. The Asteroid Smart also has Wifi built-in and can work with many 3G/4G USB dongles.

The only failures I've run into so far have been core Google apps. I can't get GMail, Talk, and Youtube to install. I know it's probably because I'm missing background Google framework packages, but I can't get them to install either. Until someone roots it, that's just the way it's going to be.

I also ran into an issue with the current version of Pandora hanging at the splash screen. I simply installed a version from late 2012 and it has been working great since.

Prior to preordering the Asteroid Smart, I was looking at some of the Chinese double-din units from Ca-Fi. Then I attempted fashioning a bracket to put a Nexus 7 in the dash. Now, I have no doubt that the Asteroid was the best way to go. It's less expensive than Ca-Fi, and it's a lot more finished looking than a Nexus 7.

Things I would change:

• Put a knob or volume rocker on the face. Having to press a speaker softkey, then use an on-screen slider sucks. I'm working on the steering wheel control interface, so that will help me with that issue. But, lots of people don't have an option to do that.
• Get Google's support so we can have the Play Store and core Google applications. It's not a big deal to work around this, but it would be a huge plus.

This is the only part of your review that I don't believe. That's hardly what's keeping these on the shelf

But I love the idea of this thing, and I'm glad it's working for you.


This is something I would have a hard time with too. I feel the same way about the Tesla S (though I'd love to have that problem ). We've seen in universal remotes that people don't like all-touchscreen devices. Hell, 99% of the smartphones on the market have hard volume buttons on them. To not have them in a car is WAY worse.


Rob, how well do you think this thing would integrate with existing car systems? I'm just thinking about all the parts of my car that are integrated with the center console touch screen. Audio is just the start, then there's the backup camera, the auxiliary-in jack, the built-in steering wheel controls, and of course the A/C. I guessing that I don't have the car for this thing...

Anyway, thanks for the review. It's great to hear your impressions of this very cool device! And goodness knows I'd love to have Google Maps as my GPS. I'm so tired of my outdated maps DVD, and I don't want to shell out $150 for a new one...

The Parrot does have input for a backup camera, 3.5mm aux input, and steering wheel controls. It has 4 USB ports and runs Android, so someone could probably write some software to control your A/C.

But, yes... the car audio aftermarket is dying.

I've read in a review it will not read NTFS formatted USB storage.
Does it grok ext3/ext4 ?

I know the firmware update procedure is done with a FAT32 drive (or wifi).

I can check on EXT3/4, and get back to you.

Thanks.
I have ordered a Parrot Smart and soon it is going to be installed into my Alfa by the same guy that did my empeg install eight years ago.

I was thinking of using an external USB drive in the glove compartment and use the Parrot like an Empeg.

But I suppose more important than the filesystem is whether the software can handle a huge music collection on a storage device.

Did you try anything like that?

Thanks,
Pim

I hope that that doesn't mean you will stop maintaining mp3tofid?

No. I have only been using a 160GB iPod Classic with the Asteroid Smart. Overall, the experience is positive, but it's not an empeg.

The factory radio in my new Impreza parses/plays tracks from USB sticks. The interface works, and will do for the short term. But it really punctuates the need for getting my empeg installed somewhere in there. I'll probably tackle that later this month.

No, actually it will be easier having my only working Empeg at home.

So far, my experience is positive too. Still need to work a lot out though.

The music player is really simple but shows exactly what I want to see, album art, artist, album, title, track number, and a progress bar with song length. I'm using an external USB SSD, currently 160 GB. To my surprise, all of its content was available immediately. First without ID3 tagged information, that came after making some room on the SSD. That made me believe the Parrot builds a library, bu I did not see one the SSD itself.

The Parrot boots quickly and the player continues where you left before. Which is more than I expected.

I do need to figure out how to make playlists, probably M3U, and I need to figure out whether automatic volume gain is a current feature. If that succeeds, then the Parrot will be a good successor for the Empeg for me, after all those years.

It still feels like treachery, though, to quit using a working Empeg when there is no excuse like a new car that does not fit aftermarket radios.

Pim