[mjumrani]

I will go for the 30K then and put the money to better use.
Maybe upgrade the rear speakers and add a sub setup or even get a 46" LED instead of a 40".

I will update as things progress.

Thanks you to all for the support and guidance

[mjumrani]

The CASKA unit has been returned.
One issue, the units wires were cut to get the various outputs (Image attached, 9 cables in total ). Honda was making a very big fuss about it, while my accessories guy was adamant that those wires had to be cut.
Will have to source a new set, which should set me back 2.5K (estimate).



But I have an official letter stating that when I give them the new wire set, the check will be given to me.

[mukeshgoel]

You didn't have the option to take the car to Honda showroom (Ring Road Honda), ask them to remove Caska and install Civic original HU ?

[mjumrani]

Originally Posted by mukeshgoel

You didn't have the option to take the car to Honda showroom (Ring Road Honda), ask them to remove Caska and install Civic original HU ?

That is what happened. The car went to the workshop. They removed the CASKA unit and put back the original civic HU.

Issue is while installing the amp and changing the speaker setup, the accessories guy cut 9 wires. He said they had to be cut.

So until I source the while set of wires, my money is stuck.

[Suresh Nair]

I guess I missed this thread before I made th plunge to "upgrade" the stock audio in my Civic. Haven't done my install yet, and keeping fingers crossed.

I guess I am a sucker for bargain deals, and could not resist risking it all when I saw CASKA like ICE unit (for Right hand drive Civic) on Amazon.com being sold by a chinese vendor (Summer Xiong) for $310 - That is about 1/3rd the price what Caska sells for in India. Backed by Amazon's confidence, I ordered the item, and the supplier in China was surprisingly very communicative, the item was shipped from China to US (Amazon does not ship to India yet). I timed my purchase to pick up the item during my visit to US last week. Here are my observations so far ( I will post an update once I get teh unt installed and using teh unit for couple of weeks.).

Pros:
1. Relatively cheap (about Rs.17,000 as against Rs.50,000 for CASKA)
2. Appears well made (I suspect could be the same OEM supplier supplying to CASKA)
3. All functions working, upon testing externally, reasonably fast response.
4. Surprisingly responsive touch screen (much better than the Garmin & Tom Tom touch screen GPS I have used, but not quite an Iphone / Ipad).
5. Good display quality at different viewing angles, even with sunlight falling on the screen.
6. Instantly connected to my Iphone over bluetooth, good audio streaming quality through A2DP.
7. Downloads phonebook from th phone, but I am yet to explore full functionality, including speech quality at the other end.

Cons:
1. Generic OEM brand - Not even mention of a brand name anywhere on the packaging / documentation, no after sales support if anything goes wrong.
2. The front panel color was dark grey and not matching to my Civic dash. ( Later realized RH drive Civics in some countries come in 3 different colors - Black, Dark Grey& Taupe Gunmetal, Indian ones being the Taupe). I got the panel painted locally to match the dash, and looks good now, except at one point where I did a lousy job of masking around the reset switch access hole. (my bad).
3. Boot up time after power on is about 7 seconds.
4. Cheeky & typical Chinese looking user interface - The custom skins can be applied to only the home and menu screens, but once a function is selected (eg. Radio or bluetooth), the built in GUI takes over.
5. Reverse camera hookup not tested yet.
6.DVD function is disabled by default unless the hand brake is engaged (safety regulation in many countries). However, playback is enabled to headrest monitors if connected. (This restriction can be be circumvented in wiring).
7. Though the product spec boasted of Analog TV functionality, the unit I received came without the TV option (not a deal breaker for me, as Analog TVis being phased out from all cities in India).
8. The GPS software that came with te unit was iGO with maps for US, Canada & Mexico (expected), have to buy one for India which is additional cost.

Iwill post updates once I do the install this weekend and try out allfunctions extensively.

[DerAlte]

Interesting.

Originally Posted by Suresh Nair

... Backed by Amazon's confidence, ...

And what is that? Do you realize Amazon only handles the logistics, and has nothing to do with the product, right?

Originally Posted by Suresh Nair

... (I suspect could be the same OEM supplier supplying to CASKA) ...

CASKA makes their own - they are a Chinese manufacturer. But like most products from China, once 1 manufacturer comes up with a successful product, there are 10 others who replicate that.

Do you have a link to the unit you bought? Would be nice to read the specs & manual.

[amohit]

My friend got Caska system installed in his new Vento. Costed him 55k. Its not bad at all. I have tested it with 64Gb pen drive, with mix of mp3 and avi videos. Even the GPS and MMI works well. And so does the reverse camera. UI usage is also descent. Not great UI, but neither bad.

However, at 55k, I feel its little too expensive. He had no other choice but to go for it as it was VW OEM fitting, without violating the warranty.

Regards,

[Suresh Nair]

Originally Posted by DerAlte

Interesting.

And what is that? Do you realize Amazon only handles the logistics, and has nothing to do with the product, right?

CASKA makes their own - they are a Chinese manufacturer. But like most products from China, once 1 manufacturer comes up with a successful product, there are 10 others who replicate that.

Do you have a link to the unit you bought? Would be nice to read the specs & manual.

Being a regular Amazon customer for over 7 years, I am aware that Amazon only handles logistics when buying on Amazon market place, but then you don't share your credit card info with all those unknown vendors.

The link to the product I bought is below.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ls_o00_s00_i00

Update: I got the unit installed today at EVO, Cambridge layout, Bangalore - Rs.400 installation charge for the ICE and the rear camera. First observations are as below.

1) The unit figment to the car was pretty seamless, no war page / mismatch. All internal components (like AC vent, temp sensor etc fitted alright).
2) I had the parking brake interlock shorted so that the unit will play DVDs even when the parking brake is not engaged.
3)DVD functionality and clarity is good, with the exception of some Chinese characters appearing on the OSD ( the language is selected as English on the system setup).
4) Overall audio quality seems at par or marginally inferior to the original audio system.
5) Music played from IPOD ( connected to the IPOD connector) and played from my IPhone over Bluetooth were of better quality than when played directly from an SD card.
6)Calls using Bluetooth are loud and clear inside the car. People at the other end reports that while the conversation is clear, it feels that my voice sounded a little "distant".
7) The unit failed downloading contacts from my iPhone ( which has about 300 contacts stored). It showed downloading contacts for a while but abruptly exited the download contacts screen and none of the contacts appear on the unit anymore. - not sure if there is a limit on the number of contacts it can store. Will try with a smaller contact list.
8) Reverse camera functionality works well, screen switches to reverse camera when reverse gear is engaged. Can also configure the reverse camera to be on all the time ( even when driving forward) by setting on the GUI.
9) Equalizer is only 3 band, with additional Loudness control.
10) iGO GPS interface is good, locks GPS signals fast. However, the system came preloaded with US maps. I need to get maps for India.

I will play with the system again tomorrow and provide updates.

[Suresh Nair]

Originally Posted by Suresh Nair

Being a regular Amazon customer for over 7 years, I am aware that Amazon only handles logistics when buying on Amazon market place, but then you don't share your credit card info with all those unknown vendors.

The link to the product I bought is below.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ls_o00_s00_i00

Update: I got the unit installed today at EVO, Cambridge layout, Bangalore - Rs.400 installation charge for the ICE and the rear camera. First observations are as below.

1) The unit figment to the car was pretty seamless, no war page / mismatch. All internal components (like AC vent, temp sensor etc fitted alright).
2) I had the parking brake interlock shorted so that the unit will play DVDs even when the parking brake is not engaged.
3)DVD functionality and clarity is good, with the exception of some Chinese characters appearing on the OSD ( the language is selected as English on the system setup).
4) Overall audio quality seems at par or marginally inferior to the original audio system.
5) Music played from IPOD ( connected to the IPOD connector) and played from my IPhone over Bluetooth were of better quality than when played directly from an SD card.
6)Calls using Bluetooth are loud and clear inside the car. People at the other end reports that while the conversation is clear, it feels that my voice sounded a little "distant".
7) The unit failed downloading contacts from my iPhone ( which has about 300 contacts stored). It showed downloading contacts for a while but abruptly exited the download contacts screen and none of the contacts appear on the unit anymore. - not sure if there is a limit on the number of contacts it can store. Will try with a smaller contact list.
8) Reverse camera functionality works well, screen switches to reverse camera when reverse gear is engaged. Can also configure the reverse camera to be on all the time ( even when driving forward) by setting on the GUI.
9) Equalizer is only 3 band, with additional Loudness control.
10) iGO GPS interface is good, locks GPS signals fast. However, the system came preloaded with US maps. I need to get maps for India.

I will play with the system again tomorrow and provide updates.

A bit of web research got me an identical product listed by. Chinese company called CUSP technologies. The manual provided in their website is identical to the one I received, except for the CUSP watermark. So I beleive the vendor selling on Amazon is sourcing from CUSP as OEM. The link to their product page and instruction manual ( with color images of GUi) are below.

http://www.cusptech.com/index.php?c=...iew&viewid=641

http://www.cusptech.com/index.php?c=...iew&viewid=735.

One lousy thing about the Bluetooth UI I found - They have modeled the dial pad after the old rotary phones, whereas everyone is now so used to the push button layout - so dialing numbers from the screen is a pain.

[DerAlte]

Good writeup, @Suresh_Nair.

LOL the BT UI you described reminds me of the Nokia 3650 I had used some years back. Wonder how I tolerated that interface - SMS writing was a right royal pain.

Anyhow, it is not a good policy to make calls while driving. If it is absolutely necessary, park somewhere and then make the call. I found it easier to do the dialing work from the phone itself, rather than the HU.

[sunilyk]

Sorry to jump in an old thread, but wanted to share my experience on similar subject line. I bought my Skoda Rapid in March 2012 and ordered Caska unit from the dealer accessories unit as it was OE fitment, so didn't really checked much on that. I paid an enormous amount of Rs.50K. Following are the cons:

1. Resistive touch screen. Very slow response.
2. Shoddy interface
3. To my surprise, there is NO RANDOM / SHUFFLE OPTION. Can you imagine any In Car Entertainment Unit without this option?
4. The SD card for maps gets corrupted at least once in a year and you have to pay at Rs1200 to 1800 for getting it repaired.
5. Maps are not correct (even though you have upgraded maps software)
6. Maps gets hung/stuck in hilly regions
7. The display is very basic while playing the songs. It just shows the list of songs and no graphics

Only Pro Is - Sound quality is good and nothing to complain about.

Now for this only Pro the product is not at all worth the price tag. There are better options available to get good sound and separate unit for GPS. In all very disappointed with this product.

[Jaeger]

Hi Guys,

Need some expert opinion regrading the caska HU in my car.

I recently purchased an used 2013 Honda City VMT, which come with a caska unit and pre-loaded MapMyIndia memory card. All the functionalities are working except USB and navigation.

Every time, I launch the navigation, it display an error "Application MapMyIndia_Aura.exe has encountered a serious error, must shut down"

Has anybody encountered this error before? any pointer will be really helpful in resolving the issue.
If possible, will try to resolve it on my own instead of visiting any technician (though kept it as a last option).

[Jaeger]

Mod note: Please use Search feature and continue in the relevant thread. Thanks.

Hi Guys,

Probably not the correct thread to ask this question, but still need some expert opinion regrading the caska HU in my car.

I recently purchased an used 2013 Honda City VMT, which come with a caska unit and pre-loaded MapMyIndia memory card. All the functionalities are working except USB and navigation.

Every time, I launch the navigation, it display an error "Application MapMyIndia_Aura.exe has encountered a serious error, must shut down"

Has anybody encountered this error before? any pointer will be really helpful in resolving the issue.
If possible, will try to resolve it on my own instead of visiting any technician (though kept it as a last option).