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Re: LT forum ART and Hobby Center

#107
Hey guys, sorry I was away for some time, crazy staff happening around. I will catch up with thread on holidays, have to update submission list.

@BFett Nice logo, can be used for sure.

Had little time to draw something, but managed to come up with this:

Sally the Szalamandara pilot.
Szalamandra is a robot from tabletop wargame Infinity. Image
I̲̩̳̺̩̫n̵̻̘͚͖̗͎ͅ ͢J̜̬̗̦o̩̘̦̪͕͉ͅs͞h̞͘ ̯̹͈͙w̯̙̥e̱͉ ̬̙̘̭̯̦͕t̹͖͔̖͘r͚̠̰͍͚̹ụ̸̭͍͕̯̹̙s̩͓̼̲̲͉̹t̰.̴͈̖͙̜̲

We will never forget the "Heavenly hundred"
Failures lead to success.
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Re: LT forum ART and Hobby Center

#109
I guess it's finally time for me to post in this topic!

Over the past year and a half, I've been working on this project off and on. I've been trying to mod a tablet into my car for multiple reasons.

Some background -- I drive a 2007 Subaru Outback wagon. It's a station wagon for those who aren't in the know. Bought it new, and have loved every mile of it.

Thing is, due to certain circumstances at the time of purchase, I ended up with a base model with very few extras. It had manual climate controls, simple radio, and single CD player. I was a bit of an idiot, so I didn't get before pictures, so I had to find something on the internet that approximates what I had.

The before (it's from a 2008 model, but looks identical)
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The after (and the camera in my phone sucks, so there's quite a bit of glare)
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I was even able to mount a subwoofer in the spare tire wheel-well WITHOUT removing the spare tire.

Here's what it looks like when you look at it from the outside (also a stock photo found on the net so I didn't have to use my crappy camera)
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And when you lift up the floor mat, you get this
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To get here, I had to do quite a bit--more than probably I should have, but you never know what happens until you dig in.

I wanted sound quality, mobility, navigation, and much more. I'd been mulling over putting a PC into a car, but there are quite a few logistics in trying to get it to work the correct way and be quick to boot and responsive. Using HORM (Hibernate Once Resume Many) seemed like it might work, but then power requirements would eventually cause to be an issue, and if I went with fanless designs and try to stealth the PC, I may even have to deal with heat.

So, I settled on a Nexus 7 2012 3G cell tablet.

First things first, I had to redesign the center dash. It had many revisions over the course of the project, but in the end, I went with simplicity because while other methods worked, it was just way too much effort to get it looking right that also wouldn't cause major hassle with maintenance.

The top vents, where the tablet sits, is not a stock part. The original cubby that was there only provided about 5.5" of room between the vents and with the clock there, it wouldn't allow for much room. Even if i went with a smaller tablet, there just wasn't enough room. Ordering an overpriced JDM part from Japan gave me a bigger opening and without the clock. It was meant to house more of a double-din radio (but lacked depth to actually put one there). This was actually one of the last pieces installed, but it's the best place to start with explanation.

Next, I needed to replace the main radio. There were aftermarket parts that I used for a double-din where my control panel would be. This was where I had gone through multiple revisions. Originally, I had 3 knobs for volume, subwoofer, and full-range along with quite a few other buttons to control the tablet. The clock was also relocated to this box since it provides more than just the clock. It actually provides gas mileage, weather, and a few other minor bits of information. Not a biggie if lost, but I didn't want to toss it.

The problem with this, was that fitting all the components (more on that in a moment) in the box made it tough to fit back into the dash, let alone close it up. Eventually, I settled on a half-din equilizer that did half the work of my original box but in a much smaller footprint. I used a small piece of metal screwed into the front (very tacky, I know) to keep everything in place because at some point after fiddling around with it for months, I just said "fuck it" and did whatever it took. I might revisit it eventually. The red button you see if the main power switch to everything.

Now that I had a center console designed (more-or-less), I wanted to take advantage of having a computer for my main piece. I wanted to be able to have good sound quality as I'm a bit of an audiophile, so I couldn't use the headphone jack in the tablet. I opted for an OTG cable so I could use the tablet as a host. I hooked the usb OTG cable up to a USB hub for multiple USB hosting and connected a USB sound card to one of the connections. The sound card is a really decent one and much better than what the tablet could have produced via it's headphone jack. The headphone jack uses the tablet's internal amplifier and DAC (which isn't the best since size is a big issue), while the external soundcard does a much better job. Both the hub and the soundcard are in the box.

Original design also had me use a keyboard for driving the front panel buttons on the box. I had arrow keys, power, mute, quick-access buttons, seeking, and all those fancy buttons you come to recognize in a standard radio as well, all soldered to a keyboard controller ripped out of a dirt cheap USB keyboard. Original design also used an SDR (software defined radio) so I could tap into the car's antenna. You can imagine at this point the box was just absolutely bursting.

However, the SDR turned out to act really poorly as the car's antenna was already amplified and provided an overamplified signal to the receiver--coupled with the fact the SDR wasn't meant for something on the move as much as my car was, so the signal was constantly fuzzy no matter what I did. I also discovered that with the touch screen, the keyboard button interface wasn't used at all. After tossing those two components, I found little reason to keep the radio knobs I made and just opted for the equalizer, as that provided the same functionality in a much smaller space. Inside the box now is just the electrical components, the sound card, the clock, and usb hub with the EQ mounted underneath.

Also inside the box is the electronic components. I have a simple 12v->5v DC/DC converter to handle converting the car power to USB level power. This is connected to a USB OTG Y charge cable. An OTG Y charge cable allows you to supply power from one connecter, host with one, and then plug the third into the phone/device. This is how the soundcard is being powered. I originally had it relayed, but due to the low power consumption, I opted for using the car's ignition line instead--removing the relay granted me more as well as removing a source of power line noise.

I specifically chose a nexus 7 2012 version, because there is a kernal out there that an author over at the XDA forums modded (Timur's kernel) to work specifically to make a nexus 7 into a car tablet. It adds the functionality of charging and hosting USB simultaneously (which is a tough one overall) and hot-plug to sound card devices and a few minor options that were beneficial. The tablet is configured to power on when power is applied, and I use an app called Tasker to turn the tablet off when power is removed. This basically means that when the car is turned on and the power button is depressed, the tablet automatically boots up (as I couldn't exactly reach the power button) and when the car is off and/or the power button is off, the tablet turns off. I added a custom boot animation of some scenes ripped from the Deus Ex Human Revolution opening surgery scene, ending with a looping of the beating heart to signify it was the heart of my car at this point (well, brain, but the heart had a cool animation).

Now, at this point I have the tablet being powered and charging, signal going to my box, and the soundcard outputting sound to the EQ. Since I went this route, I needed to have a way of turning that sound signal into something my speakers could use.

Thanks to a friend (and the real reason all this started), he gave me a couple of car amps there were 20+ years old but in great condition. They were small, but powerful. I mounted the subwoofer one under the driver's seat and the full-range amp under the front passenger seat. three pairs of RCA cables, remote-turn on wires for the amps, and a USB cable runs down under my center console. A usb cable (from the hub inside the main box) goes to my center console cubby for an external hard drive that holds music from my own collection. One of the three pairs of RCAs combine to a 3.5mm jack that was originally in my center console for auxillary input to the radio. That aux input now runs to the EQ as there are two inputs--one specifically for aux input. The other two RCA pairs run to each amp; one for sub, one for full-range. I also ran speaker wire from behind the radio down to the full range amp under the center console.

I ran the subwoofer wire along the driver's side under the carpet to the rear cargo area (you can see it peaking out from under everything in the sub picture) and to the sub. The sub is in a custom box that sits on top of my spare tire, and at a later time, I'm going to put some hydraulic struts to make it easier to lift if the spare tire is needed. The sub never needs to be removed, just lifted up. I already kept all my emergency gear for my car inside a duffle bag, so I just moved the jack from the spare tire area to my duffle bag. Keeps everything clean without being messy.

While I was at it, I even replaced my factory speakers with aftermarket ones. Everything sounds much better, and the amps are only about 200w each and gives me plenty of thump on the sub if I need it. Also, because of the acoustics of a vehicle with an open cargo space, even when I turn up my stereo, I get no rattle from the outside and you can't even hear it.

I ran power from my car's battery down the driver's side and under the driver's seat, split into a fuse box with one running under the seat to the passenger seat to power the full range amp. The engine compartment is clean, and I even performed what's known as the "Big Three" for power (add a new wire from battery to alternator, add a new wire from alternator to chassis, and another from chassis to engine block).

Now, for the *really* cool things.

I found an OBDII bluetooth adapter that plugs into my car's OBDII port. I run an app called 'Torque' on my nexus, so I can get real-time info about my car as well as engine codes. I also have the wireless turned on the device, and have an app that auto-syncs the harddrive's music folder to my home server whenever I'm within range (i.e. when I get home and pull into the garage) so I never need to actually remove the hard drive if I don't want. I'm thinking of adding in a blue-tooth garage door opener soon just because I can. I also keep a blue tooth keyboard in my glove box just in case I want to use something a bit more traditional for inputting text.

The biggest problem:

I actually had all this working about 7 months ago. What happened?

Well, I was using a relay at the time inside my box and I was using a different tablet. The previous tablet had the USB connector rewired to go out the back instead of one of the ends. You can see in this variant the tablet is scooted a bit to the left--that's because I had to find a near-flat OTG charge cable to have come out the side and it pushed up against the vent a bit too much, even after doing some cutting. The previous tablet one day just died, about a week after completing the project. I eventually discovered it was the tablet. But when I was putting everything back together in the main box, I stupidly combined bother the 12v and 5v lead together. So when I started up my car, I heard a pop, smelt burning, and saw blue smoke.

I had fried the relay, the DC/DC converter, the hub, and all but the soundcard. After spending over a month on troubleshooting, I got pissed, almost tossed everything away, and just let it sit for another month. Eventually I came back to it, bought a new tablet, new converter and hub, and went as simple as possible (hence the removal of the relay as well) and finally finished up this last weekend. So my stupidity caused issues, but the tablet I was using ended up dying in a way that not even paying to get it repaired fixed it.

Everything sounds great, no problems and it's nice to finally have sound in my car again after over a year of silence. And using things like Pandora, Digitally Imported, Spotify, and Google Music mean I don't have to deal with radio ads. Well worth it in my opinion.

Probably forgot some stuff, but you guys get the gist of it.
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Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
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Re: LT forum ART and Hobby Center

#110
BFett wrote: How long did it take for you to make it?
Thanks, it took like 8 hours to make from scratch.
DWMagus wrote: Probably forgot some stuff, but you guys get the gist of it.
That is really cool staff! I do hope that someday Ill be able to make something similar to my Skoda, but I just dont know how to :( Im far from any kind of electronics etc. You have my respect on this one.
I̲̩̳̺̩̫n̵̻̘͚͖̗͎ͅ ͢J̜̬̗̦o̩̘̦̪͕͉ͅs͞h̞͘ ̯̹͈͙w̯̙̥e̱͉ ̬̙̘̭̯̦͕t̹͖͔̖͘r͚̠̰͍͚̹ụ̸̭͍͕̯̹̙s̩͓̼̲̲͉̹t̰.̴͈̖͙̜̲

We will never forget the "Heavenly hundred"
Failures lead to success.
Post

Re: LT forum ART and Hobby Center

#111
DWMagus wrote:I guess it's finally time for me to post in this topic!
I don't own a car (I've got a TARDIS *chuckle* ) but I appreciate the time and effort you lavished on this project. I can't remember the last time I did something like this. Nowadays, I tend to go for custom solutions put together by talented others when I get this sort of idea. I admire anyone who goes the DIY path. :angel:

I'm impressed by your ingenuity, DW. :thumbup: :D
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Re: LT forum ART and Hobby Center

#115
Dinosawer wrote:So...
At long last, I finally found time today to do something I wanted to do quite a while ago (sorry Victor):
record music!
After a day's work, I present to you my guitar cover of Ed Sheeran's "I See Fire", best know from the second Hobbit movie.
Hope you enjoy it :mrgreen:
Bravo! Well done! :clap: :clap: :thumbup:

But now you've ruined the illusion for me that you really were a giant yellow sponge. :(

At least my entire life isn't a lie, you play a guitar. ;)
Image
Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
Post

Re: LT forum ART and Hobby Center

#116
Dinosawer wrote:So...
At long last, I finally found time today to do something I wanted to do quite a while ago (sorry Victor):
record music!
After a day's work, I present to you my guitar cover of Ed Sheeran's "I See Fire", best know from the second Hobbit movie.
Hope you enjoy it :mrgreen:
Thank you, Dinosawer, that was superb. :thumbup: :clap: My only wish is that you would treat us to your talented playing more often. How long am I likely to have to wait to hear more new recordings? :angel:

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