I have a 2016.5 CX-5 Touring and I love the car but the MZD infotainment system is just so slow and buggy. I was trying to upgrade my firmware from V55 to V59.00.441a and due to an apparently bad thumb drive I was unable to install the reinstall package after installing the failsafe package. While I was recopying the reinstall package to a different thumb drive the power was turned off in the car resulting in a bricked unit (my fault, I was warned). The screen won't turn on and all I have is the last radio station it was tuned to along with volume and mute control, but that's it. My options are: take it to the dealership and face a bill of around $1000 to have them install a new unit, buy a new unit and do self install for around $500, buy a used unit from a salvage yard or ebay for around $300, OR try to un-brick the one I have which is what I'm going to try to do first. I paid $20 for a USB chip programmer and clip and think I have a good grasp on what needs to be done, so fingers crossed I'm successful.

HOWEVER, while researching my options I came across a number of very nice looking aftermarket head units that would be a major upgrade. They have units with a 10.2" touchscreen running Android 9.0 with quad core processors that will undoubtedly blow this stupid MZD out of the water. The screen size upgrade alone would be a major improvement. Not to mention with full android functionality I can add whatever apps I want, watch Netflix, browse the web etc... and they claim to support factory sensors, backup camera, gps, as well as all the OBDII info for fuel consumption and other vehicle info. What's not as clear is how much of the factory settings are still accessible/changeable, like lights, locks, maintenance reminders and such. They also will work with the steering wheel controls, BUT not with the center console command cluster/****.

To add to the confusion, there was apparently a change in the wire harnesses between 2015 and 2016. Most of the units I looked at only say they are compatible with 2012-2015 because of this. I'm not sure why they don't offer a version specifically for 2016 models. I did find one unit that claims to be compatible with 2015-2017 models and comes with it's own replacement center console control cluster/****, but with the wire harness change from 2015 to 2016, and the totally new design that completely changed the dash design for 2017, I don't see how that's possible to be compatible with all three. All these units are made in China so specific details and compatiblility information is sketchy for most of them. The main brand that I'm looking at that seems to be better than the others is Dasaita, but they don't offer one specific for 2016 and I'm waiting to hear back from them on whether their "universal" unit would work. Dasaita Max6 Universal Android 9.0 Head Unit

I'm really curious how many people in the forum have gone with an aftermarket head unit and any feedback you might have about the upgrade. Even if I get my MZD un-bricked, I am honestly not very happy with it. I bought my wife a 2019 Hyundai Kona and her infotainment system is so much faster and nicer than mine that it really has me hoping for a better alternative to upgrade my CX5 rather than just waiting until I buy a newer car which is probably at least 5 years away. I really wish Mazda would offer an upgraded system for older models. No excuse for such a slow and buggy infotainment system in such a nice vehicle.

 

So far no luck on a harness adapter. Dasaita got back to me and confirmed, they only have the wire harness adapter for 2012-2015. 2016 is just an odd ball year for the head unit which really sucks because it's far less likely to get compatible aftermarket parts for single year designs. I'm not even going to think about cutting and splicing wires like I used to do installing regular stereos in my younger years, not with these newer systems that are way more complex with the cameras and parking sensors and all that. Chip programmer should be here tomorrow, hopefully I can just fix my crappy MZD. Sad to say this might be a big factor in how long I decide to keep this car. It's like I'm stuck with an old buggy computer in a relatively new $20k car. It's so slow and crashes at least a couple times a month. Maybe the firmware upgrade will help, but I'm not optimistic. A new 10 inch quad core android 9.0 tablet was sounding pretty good. =(

 

Well, if its any consolation, I bought one of the units similar to what you're talking about, and the results were less than acceptable. They provided a control ****/joystick but it wasn't even close to the one pictured or one that would fit any of the model years in question. You are correct in the wiring harness issues. I tried to test the unit out on the bench before going to the trouble of adapting the wiring in the vehicle. The damned thing is so buggy and locks up with such regularity it is now in the trash can out in the shop. I could never even get through the sign-up for google playstore to download anything - including the gps program that was supposed to be already installed.

You'd be better off getting a used unit from Car-part.com or LKQ auto.

 

Thanks for the input Arkie! You wouldn't happen to remember the brand name of the unit you bought do you? I have been looking over all the different listings for each brand I've found, but there is very little feedback on Amazon for any of them. What you described is exactly what I'm afraid of. $400 or so is a lot to gamble on something like that and since a lot of them appear to be shipping direct from China, the return process would be a major pain.

I'm still trying to unbrick my original unit. I got the programmer, wired up the clip, double checked everything with a multimeter and it all should be good, but I can't seem to get the software to detect the bios chip. Not giving up yet, have found several threads with at least a dozen people claiming they successfully un-bricked their unit this way, some did actually desolder the chip from the board for reprogramming, but I'm not comfortable working solder on this tiny of electronic components. It takes a good iron, eagle vision, and a steady hand to do it without damaging anything and I'm a little short on all three of those.... lol

I have already visited car-part.com to see what's available. Some don't list part numbers though, and aren't clear if they are just selling a component (CD player, CMU, or Display) or the whole assembly. Looking at my own assembly I see several different part numbers on the different components, so I gotta make sure I know what I'm ordering before I end up with a $300 CD player and no CMU.

It really is a shame there isn't a good aftermarket solution. I used to really take pride in upgrading my car with a nice Pioneer stereo and speakers. I'm afraid those days are gone.

 

With all the new stuff, you even have to worry about Pioneer. I tried to buy a real time traffic service for the Pioneer in my MX5. Pioneer said it would work and the AVIC-Sync app had it listed for my system. Pioneer took the money, but the service didn't install. I futzed around with Pioneer Customer Service for a week and all that succeed in doing was getting me charged for the service a second time (I was able to cancel that charge through PayPal, but the first one was already past the time limit and PayPal told me to contact Pioneer). I got the email address through Pioneer Customer Service to accomplish that and sent them an email with attachments of the dual charges, the single refund and all of the emails to and from Customer Service. No reply. After four months of trying, I finally decided that if I ever install another aftermarket unit, it won't be a Pioneer.

 

That's a shame to hear that. Pioneer has always been great for me, but I've also never tried to install anything more complicated than a bluetooth CD player with an iPod controller. Never had to contact customer service because I have never had problems with them. Of course it's been probably 10 years since I bought the one in my previous car as well. First Pioneer deck I installed was back in 96 when I got my drivers license and my first car, had one in every car I've owned, usually with Pioneer speakers to match, until I bought this CX5 about a year and a half ago.

Navigation is cool and I like the backup camera, but it is just so slow to boot up and does crash occasionally. I've also had issues with my phone disconnecting and reconnecting. Also the stupid warning messages that pop up every time you start your car or put it in reverse helped push me to find the MZD AIO tweaker app that even let me change the system color from red to blue, change the background image, disable the stupid warning messages, and a few other nice improvements. Newer firmware has blocked this ability, so either I keep my tweeks and an older firmware version or I take the leap to the latest and greatest in hopes it makes the system run better, but then have to deal with the red color scheme and annoying warnings all the time... IDK. Maybe I'm just being to picky... ? At this point I just want a working stereo back in my car. I'm driving around with a hole in my dash and a wireless bluetooth speaker in the passenger seat! LOL...

 

The shop where I bought my Pioneer has stopped carrying them because of their poor support over the last couple of years. All good things come to an end.

Most of the new complex infotainment (I hate that word) systems take a while to boot up. Mazda made it worse on the older ones; I don't know how they are on the newer ones. On the older ones, after the radio and nave boot, then the phone starts to load. If my wife and I are both in the car, we always want the driver's phone on the hands free and, if we have to switch, we must wait until the previous setting loads completely and then wait again while it goes through the connection and downloading. I have a similar complaint with playing music from USB. The system doesn't remember anything, so each time you go to it, you have to wait while it reads and catalogs the USB stick before it will start. If you want to make any special settings on the music play, that's even longer. You can run out of gas if you do all of this before you start going somewhere.

On the other hand, my Jeep Grand Cherokee remembers the phone, the downloaded contents and what's on the USB and/or SD card in the media center. It still takes a while to boot up, but it's only about 1/4 of the time for the CX5. On the other hand, when both were new, the Jeep cost twice as much.

 

I got one from AliExpress, but if you look on there, they all are the same (or nearly so) - pictures/descriptions/specs, etc. I've been tempted to try one of the US sellers on ebay for just the multiplayer for $50-75 to see if I got a dud but I slap myself instead.
Didn't they have a solution on the hacking website for unbricking? Been so long since I did that I've forgotten.

 

I FIXED IT!!! Took me five days, a $20 chip programmer and lots of studying and troubleshooting. First problem I got stuck on for over a day was that I could not get it to detect the chip with the clip. I determined the CMU board was pulling too much power away from the chip, hot USB programmer chip confirmed that for me. I had to unsolder the chip from the board (with a heat gun) and resolder onto the programmer's adapter board. Then finally I was able to detect and read the chip (and programmer stayed cool) but for some reason I couldn't erase or write to the chip which had me stuck thinking there was some sort of write protection I had to turn off... finally tonight I figured out one of the little legs didn't quite get soldered down. Once I fixed that I was finally able to erase and write back to the chip. First I tried just changing a single bit mentioned in the live journal forum post and also another similar thread, changing FF to 00 which was supposed to let the system boot back to where it was after installing the failsafe where it asks for the reinstall package. This did not work for me though, I had to again remove the chip and put it back on the programmer. This time all I did was pull the e0000000002.dat bootstrap portion from the v55 reinstall package and overwrite that portion on the chip and that did the trick! Booted right up like nothing had happened! The guy in the "How I unbricked CMU in my Mazda" thread said he also overwrote a couple other sections of the code, but I discovered all I needed was the original bootstrap portion.

I immediately restarted the upgrade to v59.00441a, making sure this time that both the failsafe and reinstall packages were showing up on the MZD installer list when I did the search of the USB. Took a little over a half hour and now I'm where I was trying to get to last Friday night when I bricked it. LOL. What a pain, but also a cool learning experience! HUGE relief I was able to fix it, was getting close to admitting defeat and purchasing a used unit from a salvage yard for around $300 and no guarantees it would work.

Hopefully the newer firmware performs better. If I still have too many issues with it I might pull the trigger and update to v70. I'll lose my AIO tweeks if I do that though.

 

There's a serial connection option that you can apply to the later versions: https://mazdatweaks.com/serial/
I'm IMPRESSED with your solution, tho. WAY over my head.