Crazy Goat

Anyone who removed their navi-screen like I did want to sell me the button bar assembly that is attached to the main LCD unit? Looking to set my car back to stock. http://legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php/2005-2008-navigation-buttons-legacy-outback-245412.html?p=5236710#post5236710

Anyone who removed their navi-screen like I did want to sell me the button bar assembly that is attached to the main LCD unit? http://legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php/2005-2008-navigation-buttons-legacy-outback-245412.html?p=5236710#post5236710

A quick update - the Nexus 7 has been amazing in my car for the last year or so, totally flawless performance and I've only had to charge it up in the garage once or twice in the entire year. However, my interest has been piqued by having a more homegrown solution once my nexus begins to show signs of aging (whether from heat, or general lack of performance) It's exciting to see Nvidia offering their new Kepler-based Tegra K1 on a dedicated motherboard. I'm starting to brainstorm and budget how much I'd have to drop for a decent LCD panel and some enclosures to run this puppy as a carputer: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813190005

Bluetooth cameras (of which I know of one model in existence) may not possess the necessary range or driver support necessary to work with an android tablet. Wifi cameras have the following downsides: The camera would take 30 seconds to a minute to fully boot, most home security cameras are slow to power on and initialize. Once booted, it would presumably join the wireless network - but if the WIFI router hasn't yet powered on, it may have a retry period to wait for before it attempts to connect However, if you managed to use a 'dumb' camera (like USB) you'd probably have better results - and eliminate much of the complexity in the process. You'll want to create a custom (or purchase) USB terminal to split the power and data lines - sending the data connection to the tablet, and terminating the power to a USB charger in the trunk. The impedance on such a long USB cable may not be enough to reliably power the device.

I am about 60% sure it can be done - the touch panel on the Subaru Kenwood systems is a 4-wire resistive touch panel, I have read that can one can rewire the leads off the touch film to a simple USB controller - my only concern would be driver support. http://www.ebay.com/itm/4-wire-Resistive-LCD-touch-screen-panel-USB-port-controller-touch-panel-driver-/180836520468 Also - the OEM kenwood screen has a composite input. If you find that yours does not - I have the OEM Kenwood screen assembly from my 08 Legacy that I'd sell on the cheap.

Completely understandable - but my solution was more long-term than anything else. I may have been able to suffer through the atrocious navigation system a while longer, but it was simply too dated to be of use to me. I wanted an integrated system which aggregates my podcasts, navigation with voice directions AND voice input, along with other fun like spotify or other services. I'm about eight months into my permanent install and it's working like a charm. I wouldn't have it any other way at this point!

Just do a fair bit of testing for audio interference when you unscrew the usb and headphone jacks from the chassis. I don't know if my interference was from damage to the cable (I did tons of monkeying around with it at first, and I might have burned or weakened the shielding with hot glue) or because it was no longer grounded against the chassis. The chassis is magnesium alloy - and the screws that hold those pieces in place most definitely ground them as well. If you find that you get line interference on your audio while power is connected, you may want to just leave it as-is. For reference, I heard line interference both with the car charger and with the wall charger - but the car charger produced more line interference as it was dirtier power being generated (cars have tons of power fluctuations and EMF). Even with my brand new Nexus replacement, without any mods, I hear line interference (new charger, cable, and tested both 20AWG 'fat' audio cables and normal 24awg) but it's so low that I cannot hear it unless the car's stereo is raised to twice the comfortable listening level. Unplugging the power removes all such interference. I'm personally using Settings Profiles but I think the thing you're looking for is in the developer menu. If you haven't already enabled the dev menu, go to Settings -> About Tablet -> Scroll down and tap the build number until the message pops up on screen that you've enabled the developer menu. Under Settings -> Developer Menu -> Select 'Stay Awake' - "Screen will never sleep while charging" I will however mention that I've got my subaru's map-key hard wired to the power button on the tablet which allows me to put it to disable the screen/put it to sleep. This is useful on the rare occasion that an app drains my battery faster than normal while the tablet is sleeping (6-7 percent as opposed to 1) - and I can disable the screen while driving (listening to podcasts) to recover the battery faster. Apart from that, I never have or need to disable the LCD as my [ame=http://www.amazon.com/PowerGen-Dual-3-1A-Output-Charger/dp/B0088U4YAG]PowerGen Charger[/ame] charges the tablet at about 1% per minute with the display on.

I indeed bought the ASUS dock - but it didn't work out to install it in the car for two reasons. 1. I already had the tablet installed when it arrived, meaning I'd have to tear it apart again. and 2. It's quite large, and apart from tearing it apart for the pins (which at that rate, I might as well make my own pin array and wire it myself for $5-10 in parts) it wasn't going to really fit/work with the navigation buttons in place. So I'm actually in the process of putting it on eBay The N7 is installed with cables on the side - having removed the inner most fin on the AC vent to accommodate the size. I had to use right-angle USB and audio cables to minimize the amount it protrudes. In the videos I posted earlier in the thread - I show the areas that needed dremelling to fit the N7 flush against the bezel. Lastly, I just tether my N7 to my iPhone 5 w/LTE. When I get in the car, I open the personal hotspot menu, and when the N7 wakes up it automatically connects.

I found that (throughout my testing/poking around) that I couldn't take advantage of all of the buttons because they shared a common ground. The design of the mylar buttons on the N7 ribbon cable specs a ground for each button. I found that when I wired them all up to the hardware keys - the hardware buttons would trigger multiple actions on the N7 because the hardware button's common ground was shorting the power/volume buttons simultaneously. Because of that - I just settled for the map key to be the power button (I just leave the volume maxed and use the stereo to control volume anyway). To do so, you must solder to two points on the reverse of the board. I cannot remember the exact ones - and I'll look for any pictures I might have stored (it's late). I have highlighted them in the picture below. Just be careful soldering to these points, since printed circuit boards are easy to mess up. If you solder and torque it too much - you'll peel the leads/connecting layer off the PCB. My best recommendation is to use a low gauge wire (thin, flexible wire) that will allow it the flexibility to navigate the corners and not put all the tension on the board/solder joint. Like you probably saw in the videos - I just soldered the leads from the hardware buttons to a female molex, and the leads from the nexus to a male molex connector. Just test the + and - leads on the rear contacts till you find the right combo. All the necessary leads are in that cluster on the back of the board. Note: I also had to cut the ribbon cable connector off the hardware button pcb (seen on the right) - as it protrudes about 2-3mm from the enclosure and messed with the N7 positioning. Second image: http://i.imgur.com/PZE1Dgd.png As a quasi-update, the N7 has been in my car for a few months now. I'm using a pretty standard 24AWG USB cable and the PowerGen 3.1a charger and I rarely ever get below 98% battery unless an application runs crazy over the weekend or something. I have found that pairing it to my iPhone with Wifi is more successful/faster when I have the phone in hotspot mode before turning the car/tablet on. Can't wait till I have an android phone and can have that mapped to a widget button. My killer app lately has been BeyondPod - awesome podcast manager and very very touchfriendly.

Check out the tablet carputer thread, I installed a Nexus 7 and it looks and works great in the nav bezel. Total cost 250 bucks for a 720p, 7" BRIGHT display, quad core tegra, and capacitive touch screen. Tethers to my 4G phone, and OBDII sensor too.

Surprisingly, yes. For instance, there's two different brightness levels for the map lights when you open the door (dimmer) versus manually turning them on (brighter). When you close the doors and lock the car with the fob, the lights slowly fade out. Works really well!

Crappy iPhone shots. http://imgur.com/a/sIZcq White balance makes them look slightly yellow - when in reality they look slightly blue.

Pogo pins indeed - one could build the pin assembly themselves, but its kind of a pain to source those pins in single digit quantities. 8 of these (2 x four pack) (Two map lights, the dome light, and all four doors) [ame=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009W09HG2]Cutequeen White 31mm(1.25") 12-SMD 12V Festoon Dome Light LED Bulbs DE3175 DE3021 DE3022 3175(pack of 4) : Amazon.com : Automotive[/ame] 2 of these (1 x two pack) (One for the trunk and one for the license plate) [ame=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006R34PB4]2pcs 20-SMD T10 12V Light LED Replacement Bulbs 168 194 2825 W5W - White : Amazon.com : Automotive[/ame] They're both of similar quality - very bright, white light. Airs in the side of blue-tinted, ever so slightly. Looks like 10000k-12000k HID lights - looks super classy compared to the yellow lights it replaced. It's a direct fit - just pop the plastic covers off, remove the bulb and put these in. Took 10 minutes to replace all the bulbs in my car.

Yeah - the GMD Gesture Control app requires root, but it's AMAZING. I have gestures to kill applications, play or pause music, open common menus. It's the best app for my carputer. Great job! I ended up backtracking my project a little and put the USB and headphone back in their original location. The line interference was due to the PCB of the USB/Headphone not being grounded properly (the screws that affix it to the chassis ground it against the MagAlloy structure). Ordered the new Asus Nexus 7 dock and might tear it apart and install it in the car for better cable management. But as of yesterday it's all put back to normal - but the cables mess with my right vent's fins. Last week I replaced all of the lights in the cabin/trunk with LEDs. Total cost was about $20 from amazon - so much brighter, cleaner, and much lower power draw. Last night I also installed some RAAMat (dynamat competitor) and my Polk DB6501 in my passenger door. Found that it was filled with a few pounds of broken glass. (The factory weather seal is really hard to remove and reinstall without completely replacing the seal. The previous owner/shop must have thought it wasn't worth the effort.) I suspect the car was broken into at some point (I bought it used). Working up the energy to do the driver door next.

I'm considering mounting high strength magnets on the roof of the cubby behind the nexus - then making a custom cover with magnets which can couple on the top of the dash and cover the nexus. I am very certain that it will work with large enough magnets and will be invisible when not in use. I'll detail the project if I decide to take it on. Remember, if you've done a good job installing the tablet, no one will know you've done anything at all. If you try covering it up - it will increase the temptation and curiosity of thieves, wondering what's worth hiding. As for battery life - I found that pandora is the worst written app ever. I had to uninstall Pandora permanently because I cannot prevent it from draining my battery 15% overnight. It'll just be sitting idle in standby with all of the radios disabled and drain my battery like mad. The moment I switched to streaming podcasts in chrome - my battery drains like 1% every 8 hours in idle, which now recharges in a minute or two while driving. In summary - Pandora made it impossible to keep the battery charged - but now that its uninstalled it it never goes below 90% range and daily recharges to 100% in under 10 minutes driving.

The provided USB cable is 3 feet - which obviously doesn't work too well in a car install (at least my version - I want the power supply in my center armrest). Most people won't have issues with a crappy charger or thin cable because the tablet doesn't live in their cars. When it's a carputer - you need to be considering that the charger/cabling must not only power the nexus 7 while it runs - but charge fast enough to make up for the drain occurring while the car is off. Like I said earlier - the tablet will report that its charging - but it could be anywhere from 200mA to 1.6A - all depending on the wiring, etc. Additionally - most people wouldn't notice the difference between a 4 hour and 8 hour charging time because they let it charge overnight in their house. But in a car installation, every minute your car is running is precious time to get the battery back to 100% - making it crucial you have the optimal wiring and charger. If you don't, the battery will inevitably drain out and you have to charge it up from an outlet. You don't need anything terribly fancy - but it still is something to consider when doing the install.

It's not a matter of compatibility - if you read my post you'd see that there are several factors to getting a high output from any charger. You could have a 300W power inverter and the OEM charger and still not charge the tablet if you use a 10-15 foot USB cable. The voltage drop will be too severe, and the amperage inadequate for charging the nexus. The point I was making was to be aware of all the different factors - the charger is only one piece of the puzzle, mate.

I think you're right. I lost track of versions long time ago - I'm on the latest (which I guess is 4.2.1). The setting to keep the screen on indefinitely while powered is definitely in the developer options. Also - along with your timeout issue - have your automation app trigger the Standby Touch Advanced application. I couldn't get any of my apps to reliably put the screen to sleep - so I just have this app triggered when the device loses power. Conversely - the screen wakes up when power is established (as is the behavior of android, no settings needed) and stays on because of the indefinite screen timeout in the developer options I have flagged. Also - I use this app for my settings. Does everything I need and more. Charging the Nexus 7 - The Android Drama Queen I've been learning a lot about how the Nexus 7 charges - what requirements it needs to get better results. When we're talking about chargers we're talking about volts and amps. Think of the number of volts as the type of current - and amps as the amount of that current it can supply. If you were to put it into automotive terms, think of volts as the type of gasoline - and the amperage as the reservoir you're pumping out of. The gas stations reservoir (amps) needs to be big enough to accommodate your car - but it needs to be the right type of fuel (volts). The device will never draw more than it needs to - so having a higher amperage charger (within reason) is fine - it will ensure that the charger can provide the hungry device with as much power as it needs to draw. But you need to make sure you're feeding the device the proper voltage for it to operate properly. Back to the story. As it stands my monoprice car charger is awful, and only charges slightly faster than the tablet drains in regular use... which is easily 5-6x slower than the charger it comes with. This is because of a few things. 1. The quality of charger makes a huge difference. Just because it advertises 2.1A doesn't mean that's what you're going to get. Even if you do get that amperage, the filtering of the power is very important for a car. The voltage within a car's electrical system will spike and dip wildly as you engage and disengage high draw electronics. Turning on/off headlights with cause spikes and dips - and having a car charger that can protect your device from these harmful fluctuations is important. I was getting all sorts of audio interference when my device was plugged into a cheap charger. The moment I disconnected the tablet from my Monoprice car charger, the interference immediately disappears. 2. The impedence of the cable (Ohms law) will determine the rate at which you charge. Your average usb cable is 28AWG, which is to say that it uses 28 gauge wire through the length of the cable. The higher (thicker) the gauge (lower the number) of wire, the less impedance on the line - a better connection is made. USB cables are best when kept under 6 feet for impedance reasons. The tablet can detect the impedance on the cable and will severely throttle the amperage it's drawing to preserve the voltage it's receiving. In this case, I'm using a 9ft 28AWG cable, and I'm willing to bet that I'm charging less than 500mA because of it's length and gauge. My charger says it can do 2.1A - but the cable is the bottleneck. Ever wonder why the Nexus 7 only comes with a 3ft cable? Now you know why. I just ordered a 6ft 24AWG (I didn't need 9ft anyway, six should do the trick) - and my dad says he has some 16AWG cable laying around that we could fab a custom cable together. 3. The tablet will display that it's charging on AC power regardless of the amperage it's receiving. Many people (myself included) have been trained to look at the charging status in the Battery Settings for the "(AC)" after the charging indicator. This use to indicate to the user that it was charging at the full speed of the charger, and not the slow USB 500mA spec. With the new Jelly Bean update, the tablet will now show "Charging (AC)" regardless if the data pins are shorted. But more to that fact - it will show this even if the charger is a piece of crap, or you're running it off a 20ft cable and only getting 300mA out of the charger. The speed of charging can only be seen by the rate at which your battery recharges (unless you have the hacked android kernel which exposes the charging rate). "Charging (AC)" could indicate that it's charging at 400mA, 800mA, or even 1600mA - it's not indicative of how fast the device is really charging, or whether you're really taking advantage of your charger. There has been lots of study on the Nexus 7 recharging, and the general consensus is that you need to provide it with a [ame=http://www.amazon.com/PowerGen-Dual-3-1A-Output-Charger/dp/B0088U4YAG]quality charger[/ame] and a cable with low impedance (short as possible, high gauge wire). The fastest I've seen a Nexus 7 actually charge was 1.6A - with 20AWG (super fat) cable on the OEM charger. Many tests show the Nexus 7 charging as low as 300-400mA when using USB extension cables and low quality charger. Newegg sells a 6ft 22AWG USB cable but it's been out of stock recently. I simply cannot find it anywhere else. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812189234 Simply put: Quality charger + Fatter/Shorter Cables = better connection and faster charging.

Sweet!! You'll probably want to get some right-angle cables for clearance. I also had to angle my connectors up a bit so the cables didnt get snagged when I was pushing the assembly into place. As for keeping the screen on indefinitely on power - it's located in the developer settings. If you're on 4.2.2 you have to actually enable the developer settings as they hid it from the average user. As I recall you have to go to 'about device' and click on the build number 7 times and it unlocks it.

I have it triggering an app called Standby Pro or something like that - which immediately puts it to sleep. I mentioned it in a previous post. Hah! I got it for free with their Secret-Santa promo code. super nifty!

Finished the last of the wiring through the center stack. Made sure to zip tie and secure the cords to prevent noise and rattling. Ran it to the center console for power and audio. (I've got a new power supply from my dad I need to configure, he helps design the power supplies for the device displays in big-box retailers). The new power supply will ensure that the tablet gets a full 2.1A with filtered power output as well. Power fluctuations in a car are inevitable, but this will eliminate any issue. But since it's a universal/configurable power supply, I need to do install the proper resistor to force the right voltage. Anywho - here's two shots of the final product. http://i.imgur.com/mzo80h.jpg http://i.imgur.com/kJ8iRh.jpg

Oops - hit the wrong button!

Look at the app 'Tablet Talk' - doesn't actually route audio yet, but shows caller ID and allows you to answer the call on behalf of the phone. Since it works over wifi - you can still have the phone paired with a Bluetooth speakerphone or receiver. Nuh-uh!!! You can buy a multitude of Bluetooth remote controls (some even steering wheel mounted) which pair with android. Here's just one example! (There are plenty of reviews from android owners) [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Satechi-MediaRemote-Bluetooth-Multi-Media-Control/dp/B00824948U/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1356287446&sr=1-1&keywords=Bluetooth+remote+control]Amazon.com: Satechi BT MediaRemote Bluetooth Multi-Media Remote Control for iPhone, iPad & iMac, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, MacBook, and Mac Mini: Electronics[/ame]

I do indeed have it! I haven't detailed it in a view because I haven't installed it on my latest reimaging of the tablet. I've got the OBDII bluetooth dongle rolling around my glove box. Last night I fabricated the mounting system and put it all together. It's currently installed in my car and behaving as expected. The wiring is unfinished - and is running out my passenger vent to the aux jack and charger. I'll run the cabling on the interior once I get the chance. I need a new multimeter (and think my wife got me one for Christmas) so I can verify the output on my charger is up to snuff. http://i.imgur.com/bAN4ql.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/U3xe5l.jpg Final video showing the installation of the brackets - drilling holes, and copious amounts of hot glue. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZY4DfLs94s]HOW TO: Nexus 7 Carputer Complete - Mounting and Installation - YouTube[/ame]

New video is up. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpoX2GU3PRA&sns=em]HOW TO: Nexus 7 Carputer Update - Multitouch Navigation - YouTube[/ame]