I think this has been previously posted somewhere but was recently finishing up the install on one of my other cars and remembered how I got the controls working on the Disco as well as my '02 Camaro. Both have very similar steering wheel controls which basically consist of a set of switches wired in series with resistors. On the Disco both ends are connected to the radio, on the Camaro one end of the factory setup goes to a fused powersource and the other end goes to the radio.

Disco:



Camaro




In any case, the cheap Android units we all see on Amazon or Aliexpress are looking for one end to be connected to ground and the other end to be connected to the radio. One the Disco you just pick one of the connection wires and wire it to the ground wire, on the Camaro I just pulled the fuse in the fusebox and stuck a spade terminal connected to a wire in the steering wheel side of the fuse holder and grounded it. Voila' - working steering wheel controls.

I suspect many other late 90's and early 00's used a simple resistor setup for the steering wheel controls before they started communicating via canbus, so this technique should work well for anything similar. Hopefully this helps someone out.

 

Very nice! Great info! I am going to save this! I have been researching what I am going to do with the radio and this was one thing that crossed my mind was including the steering buttons. Definitely doable. I thought about making my own board for it, but whatever I do, you made it a lot easier! Thanks!

 

Do you have pictures of what exactly you did in your Disco?

 

I thought I did but can't find it now. its pretty easy, I used this harness adapter https://a.co/d/hbTTnis but they don't have wires for the two steering wheel controls, so I just snapped on the scotchlok line t-taps on them like this https://a.co/d/9J4mm5e So one goes on the grey with black stripe and one goes on the grey with red strip in the grey connector that goes to the factory radio, wire 2 and 3 on the connector diagram. Plug one in to the black ground wire to the radio and the other goes to the steering wheel control wire on the android, does not matter which.

 

Which android radio did you go with with?

 

I have a Joying Android unit. The Rover wiring plugs directly into its supplied harness -- see some pics in this thread: https://landroverforums.com/forum/di...-screen-88717/
Once you have the steering wheel control wire hooked up, there's a config screen on the unit that lets you set the buttons to do any of a number of different functions.

 

I originally bought this : https://a.co/d/0L2l98S but I got this one https://a.co/d/6EcZYrF for the Camaro and I like it better. It has the reversing camera that switches to a front camera momentarily after shifting out of reverse, but the idiots that programmed it forgot to switch the front camera on when the screen switches to the front camera so I got this https://a.co/d/d2VupLL and wired it in so it switches the front camera on when coming out of reverse. I have a manual switch on the front camera on the Disco I use for a trail cam, so splicing the manual switch in with this timer switch will be perfect for the Disco. I will probably upgrade in a couple of weeks.

 

What cameras are you using? I plan on replacing my rear bumper with a steel bumper and centering the camera when I do.

 

Just using cheap Amazon cameras, mounted the rear on top of the tail door trim, front at the top of the grille. Here is how I wired the timer relay.

I

I use the backup lights in the back to turn on the camera and with a wireless kit trigger the unit and the relay.

 

Sorry to re-hash an old thread but are you basically saying id need to connect the steering control wire/key1 just to ground??