For current VL2 owners the group-buy was for the same unit we already own right?
This will be a bit long but after 4 years of owning this unit I have to say I am ultimately not pleased with my purchase. It has been useful and would be an absolute joy if it worked as intended. However since the moment I installed it, every now and then it would have episodes where it would completely freeze and the only resolution was to unplug the largest main harness on the bottom right of the unit (20 pin harness?) and plug it back in to reset it. Ilya referred to this once as the wires getting "jostled". Luckily this would only happen every once and awhile.
However fast forward to today, I can barely get this unit to stay on. Every bump in the road, every rattle of the glovebox, every time the WIND blows too hard. This unit will freeze. VLine is the middle-man for the car's entire multimedia system, so when the unit freezes - the audio IMMEDIATELY cuts out and the factory AC buttons and indicator lights will shut off and become completely non-functional (however the touchscreen will still work). If the car's controls stay in this frozen state for too long the HVAC blower turns on FULL BLAST by itself until the VLine becomes responsive again (This seems to be Infiniti's normal fail safe mode when it detects fault to the HVAC system and has happened on every Infiniti I've owned - not unique to this issue).
At this point I've come to realize to fix this freeze I don't necessarily have to unplug or replug anything, I simply have to apply upward or downward pressure to VLINE's main wire harness with my finger!
Doing this will IMMEDIATELY turn the audio and AC panel lights back on (and turn the blower off if it was running in this failsafe mode).
I've reached out to GROM support regarding this and spoke to Heath. After taking apart the actual GROM unit at his instruction and making sure multiple chips labelled CANTOY were fully seated, they suggested that I may have accidently plugged the unit into an HVAC module! (probably being unaware of Infiniti's normal behavior when it detects fault). A unit that I've used for 4 years, CAN work flawlessly if it's not touched or breathed on, and can be fixed immediately simply by jiggling where the wire harness plugs into the GROM unit - may actually be plugged into an HVAC unit and not my radio at all. It's worked by magic this whole time.
After that disheartening response I've let the issue go but it's gotten to the point where my car has become non-functional but I don't want to go through the process of removing the VLine. For any electrical experts, is there anyway I can test each individual pin of the wire harness to see where exactly it is losing continuity on the VLine socket? I'm not sure if the fault is on the plug side or the VLine side, but it would be easier to replace the VLine unit itself rather than having to pull apart the entire car to replace the faulty wire harness!
Any tips or otherwise helpful comments would be appreciated!