[Android Head-Units] ScorpionSX:
Hi, I went through your post, and tbh, I'm not sure if you're now looking for an advice, discussion, or you just needed to went it out :D ... but anyway, my two cents here, since you mentioned me ;)

Choosing the "correct" canbus box (I'm using quotes, because imho there is no correct box for any car, maybe some of the newer cars, or some more popular cars - VW group, etc. - have more and more information relayed through the boxes to and from the android radio, but 99% would be only a basic substitute) - what I went through with my car (2005 Ford Focus mk2):

1. No canbus at all, not needed, I wired reverse cam manually and SWC is not controlled by canbus in my case.

2. "Some" canbus box, which now turned out to be most probably LZ (LXH) brand, which was included for years with Ford stereos - this can provide rear camera, even SWC is possible to control via canbus in this case, button backlight works as well most of the time.

3. Did some research and I found that it's possible (although on Mondeos and S-Maxes/Galaxys with Convers+ clusters) to get almost OEM functionality in terms of seeing what the stereo is playing - radio, USB, aux - but again, not navigation instructions, not complete information, not even a bluetooth call info. Radio and USB music - take it or leave it. I figured, since it's also possible to have some of this stuff even displayed in Focus on the cluster screen with OEM radio, I will give it a chance - and it worked. This was thanks to what was reffered as "Dasaita canbus" on the forums, which I then found out to be a SimpleSoft (XP) canbus box.

4. For some time I took the SimpleSoft canbus as the king of the hill for my car, but later I discovered that the Raise boxes actually provide the same if not better information. This was around the time when I got the S5 stereo (K706) which originally came with Hiworld box - I never heard of this brand before. That box provided only the basics, so I changed the main wiring loom with the one which I got with my Raise box that I bought separately and boom, lots and lots of new functionality all the sudden - I saw things in the instrument cluster, I saw a notification about opened doors, climate controls would also display some information if I would have automatic A/C,...I even got the time in the instrument cluster to sync with my stereo clock. There were some bugs as well, but the Raise box is so far the one that seems to communicate the most with my car.

5. I now went back to Hiworld box, after discovering that the original wiring had two pins in reverse order. I ordered a newer version of the Hiworld box and so far, so good. It doesn't show the opened door notification, but that's not a big deal for me, I have it in my cluster screen anyway. But it still can show the radio frequency (still not station name) in the cluster, it correctly show USB playback as "MP3 track no.x" (instead of "CD track no.x" - like the Raise box did) but also does not show the track ID3 information (but I think also OEM stereo doesn't do this), and still the bluetooth calls and navi instructions are not displayed at all, like with all the boxes.

With S5 stereo I had a problem with all the canbus boxes with the button backlight, so I wired it directly via the main harness to the unit, bypassing the canbus box, and also I'm using the SWC wires that were on the main harness instead of the canbus box. It's possible to use it this way in my car and it works well, so I don't have any reason to change it. Reverse cam is controlled by canbus.

What I think is possible to get:

I'm taking Dynavin as an example, because they offer this for the VW cars.

1. Radio names on the instrument cluster screen - my thoughts are, that the radio app needs to be modified in the way that it will not send the frequency on which the radio chip is tuned, but rather the information that is displaying on the screen - either name, or with worse signal, frequency. I don't think that Dynavin is doing it any other way than this.

2. Based on 1. point - more of the other information on the cluster. ID3 tags from mp3 files on the USB stick, BT music app, BT call app, etc...mostly from the stock apps because of the app programming, but still better than nothing.

3. Navigation instructions on the cluster screen - this is also touching the previous point, but again, obviously the Dynavin navi app (Dynaway) can do this, it can somehow send the instruction out from the app to the car, and maybe other navi apps can do this as well, it should be again only a way of reading and forwarding these instructions to the cluster screen.

4. Work with sensors throughout the car - some cars can show outside temperature on the android stereo, my car can't even though the temperature is shown in the cluster...but through some better communication I believe it would be possible to get stuff like engine temp., oil pressure, etc. ... all of this is possible with a basic OBD scanner, so why not with direct canbus interface?

5. ...and definitely something more which just doesn't come to my mind at this time...

How to check which canbus box may be available for my car:

I think this is pretty easy nowadays, with most of the Android stereos, there is a factory option to set the canbus model. It usually offers a list of canbus box manufacturers and car models. So you basically have to scroll through all of them to see if you can find your car model in the list. Or maybe a model from the same period that uses similar technology. For example, in my case, I would look for 05 Ford Focus, but I would also take 07 Ford Mondeo, as that uses lot of the same stuff internally as my Focus. You have to know this information about your car manufacturer, but I think usually cars from the same era have mostly the same internals along the line. I was able to find Raise, Hiworld, SimpleSoft and I think one more manufacturer using this way. And then you have to choose which works the best for you. This, however, needs to be done by trial and error, buying all the boxes if they are available and testing them in your car - correctly wired of course. Or, if you're lucky enough, someone else might have gone through the same stuff and already posted some information online, so you may start there.

Wiring:

Yes, different canbus manufacturers use different wiring for their boxes, nothing unexpected, I found these links which may be helpful to some of you to find some correct wirings if you are unsure (be prepared for a lot of chinese though):

Hiworld

SimpleSoft (XP, XinPu)

Raise (RZS)

Xinbas (XBS)

Don't be afraid to again explore maybe even a related car model to yours, I didn't find my exact Hiworld box model, but I found one to a similar generation Ford car and I used that for confirming the wiring.

Regarding the updates to the boxes:

Yes, there are some updates going on, you can see them on the stickers on the boxes, so it's possible to get a "2023" update for your 2005 car, like I have. That however doesn't mean that they are actually improving the communication with your specific 20 year old car! The box can support more models which use the same canbus network, so the update is there more for the newer models, than for old one. But, my Raise box from 2019 won't show me door open on radio screen or radio freq. on the cluster, but my 2023 Raise box will do it. So it improves as the can network becomes more and more clear for the box manufacturers. Hope this makes some sense. I also saw, that you can update the firmware for some of the boxes, but personally I never did it, it didn't apply for any of my boxes, so I'm not sure how it actually works. But that way you probably wouldn't have to change the box physically, you just update the firmware in it.

"CarAPP" controls:

This ties into the previous point a little bit, you have more ways for the stereo to communicate using the box with the car and you - nowadays, with these Android stereos, there is usually some "CarAPP" somewhere in the list of apps, which will allow you to control certain things in your car using the canbus box. This is mostly needed if your OEM stereo was also used to control stuff like board computer, some driveability settings and so on. Each stereo has it implemented differently, and it doesn't really matter how, but in the end it's a way to relay information from the car to you through the canbus box and back, so you don't lose control over the car equipment.

Ok, so I guess that's it from me at this point, again, I hope it makes some sense, there is definitely more to discuss here, more to improve and develop here, and I'm looking forward to see if there is some development, either for our specific stereos, or cars, or apps, or whatever...10 years ago, this was a lost cause, you got a WinCE stereo with some functions put to it at some factory, never knowing who was the real developer of the unit/software, and you had little to no hopes of ever getting some firmware update for it. It either worked for you or didn't, that's it! :D ... so lets be glad that we have OTA updates now for a no-name chinese stereos ;)