Android Head Units

Before you change anything

This site is written by owners of these units, from reading firmware images and comparing them. It is not from KSW, ZXW, Witstek, or any car manufacturer, and nobody here can repair a unit that stops working.

What actually goes wrong

  • An OTA built for a different platform, or installed out of the documented upgrade path, can leave the unit stuck before it finishes booting. There is no user-accessible recovery from that state: the unit comes out of the dash and goes back to the seller, or to someone with the hardware to reflash it. See the KSW upgrade path for the sequences we know about, and platforms to confirm which unit you have.
  • The factory config file persists through a factory reset. Applying one taken from a different unit can change the screen resolution, the CAN protocol, and what the unit assumes about the amplifier, the camera and the steering wheel buttons. A unit left with a blank or wrongly sized screen still has to be given a correct config file over USB before it is usable again.
  • Changing CAN protocol or vehicle settings will not damage the car, but it can quietly stop steering-wheel buttons, parking sensors or the reversing camera from working, and the connection between the setting and the symptom is not obvious weeks later.
  • An MCU update that is interrupted is harder to recover from than an interrupted OTA. Don't start one with the ignition about to time out.

What reduces the risk

  • Pull your factory_config.xml and keep a copy before you change anything. Keep it on a FAT32 USB stick in the car, not only on a laptop at home — see how to pull it.
  • Write down your current firmware version and MCU version, from Settings and System information, before you update. You need both to work out which update is next and to describe the problem if one appears.
  • Check the upgrade path for your platform. Several updates are only installable from a specific earlier build.
  • Compare the md5 or sha256 of your download against the values on the update page. Where we have them, they are the only link between a file circulating on Discord and the file we looked at.
  • Update with the engine running or on a charger, and stay with the car. Most failed OTAs are units that lost power mid-write.

What this site does and does not have

We describe firmware; we do not host it. Downloads circulate on Discord and on forums, and we have no control over what is in them. Where an update page shows no checksum, it means nobody has published one — not that the file is known to be good.