A question I hear surprisingly frequently is how to hook up one or more accessories to the V1. The V1 is actually designed to connect to accessories and there’s a simple trick you can use to let you connect additional accessories (like a bluetooth module and a concealed display) and here’s how to do it:
The video should explain things pretty simply, but the V1’s power adapters are unlike most radar detector power cables. Rather than a cigarette lighter plug that just has a cable to plug into your detector, the V1’s power cables all have two ports, one labeled Main and another labeled ACC.
The V1 plugs into the “Main” port and your accessory (bluetooth module or concealed display) plugs into the ACC port. Super simple.
Now what if you want to plug two accessories into the accessory port? I don’t necessarily recommend this as I go over in the video since the concealed display no longer adds all that much above and beyond what a phone can offer, but if you want to do this, you’ll need a splitter to convert that single ACC port into two ports.
Once you do this, you can plug two devices into the ACC port, like a bluetooth module and a concealed display.
A quick but important note. If you want to use a splitter like this, make sure you get a splitter that has 4 pins inside, not just 2. The V1’s accessories all use 4-pin connectors so your splitter has to match. An easy way to tell is to look for an RJ-11 splitter like this one that is designed for two phone lines. (Each phone line needs 2 pins, so 2 lines means you have 4 pins total.)
With the appropriate splitter in place, you can now run both a concealed display and a bluetooth module with your Valentine One.
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What mounting system do you use for your Android phone?
Author
I use the RAM X-Grip mount. https://youtu.be/fXeYWZtiuoc
Hi Vortex,
By any chance – do you have any information about what is inside the V1 BT for Android module ?
I mean – are they using a sort of proprietary BT or UART protocol.
For example I would like to know if any kind of UART2BT converter might do the job?
Best regards,
Daniel
Author
Good question. No idea. You’d have to check with Valentine to find out.
Thank you! I’ll try to contact their technical support – but i guess the answer is going to be NO.
Most likely they are not going to disclose such information.
I got their response. Technically is possible but practically not feasible. I’m going to buy one from Ebay.
In case someone else is interested here is the reply.
“The V1connection is not a simple UART to Bluetooth converter. It requires a microprocessor or some other device to control the timing of the data according to the ESP specification. If you are interested, we have the resources available on our website for you to build the device. Everything you need can be downloaded from this page: http://www.valentine1.com/V1Info/ESP/
The first thing you should do is download the “ESP Hardware Specification”, which will tell you how to design the hardware to interface with our ESP bus. The next step is to download the “ESP Technical Specification”, which will describe the timing requirements and other details of the ESP protocol. You will need to write code to handle the ESP timing on the hardware side and to add the correct packet wrappers on the Bluetooth side. There is a Bluetooth addendum to the ESP specification in the download for the ‘Android Development Library.”