stealiesubee Posted April 18, 2006 Share Posted April 18, 2006 Subscribe, This looks awsome! I'm def interested Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zennoodle Posted April 18, 2006 Share Posted April 18, 2006 This is interesting...subscribing too... I'd like to even see the screen shots from the CAD drawing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerboa113 Posted April 23, 2006 Author Share Posted April 23, 2006 Updating hey yall, I just wanted to update ya to re-assure you we're still plugging away at this. Most of the parts for the first pc board have come in, the first one is going to be a through hole design that will be manually assembled to verify that everything is in place, then after that for the production model we're going to have them made to save time. Once all the parts are mocked up in the program we can get all the calculations together for the traces, get the traces laid out and then send the design to I think pcbexpress? I dont recall the company name exactly.. either way, I'm still trying to hold onto that late may deadline, I'm going to talk to the other guy whos taken up the project (friend of a friend that likes a challenge like we do wanted to take a look at it too hehe) and see what hes come up with, he has a very pratical sense and years of experience in manufacturing testing so I trust his eye on this. Infact he continues to suprise me on what he knows.. I'm beginning to wonder what he DOESNT know. I'm anxiously awaiting some more things that are photographable to show you what we're doing. Given the mock up wont be pretty on the backside I imagine, but so long as its something we can manufacture and make look good, I'm not terriblly worried. Essentially, the problem we ran into with the CAD design was not enough real world information, the CAD design couldn't be continued until we had a physical mock up to measure some angles. It turns out this dash peice is totally asymmetrical. From the distance between the vents to the screw hole placements, everything.. you'd be suprised when you get down to it with a caliper just how off this thing is. I guess it was designed around the dash instead of the other way around. more to come! "The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." - Plato Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerboa113 Posted May 21, 2006 Author Share Posted May 21, 2006 post has been dead for a while, and I am about dead tired as I write this after working all day on the screen. We've gotten very close, we had a very good day test fitting and powering on/off the system to try multiple things, but we have found a design flaw in the current system that did not allow us to meet our late may deadline. As such at this point we're doing a slight re-design and are shooting for mid summer, most likley some time in july. I am not without pictures however of the work we've been doing. The PCB has been designed created and has been tested in its current form. It fits in the dash in the button opening and looks great. Heres some images: http://www.darkfox1.com/pcb/toppcb.jpg http://www.darkfox1.com/pcb/frontpcb.jpg http://www.darkfox1.com/pcb/backpcb.jpg For the technical notes.... The issue we ran into was rather a compilation of problems. On thursday night we had a working in dash concept that had just the very basic components hooked to it. On friday we attached all the components but did not have a chance to test. Today however we had ample time to test in and out of the car and have found that the flaw is originating from the touchscreen, and the size of the opening in the factory subaru bezel. The current designed required putting pressure on the system with a hinge-in assembly, and it is this pressure that is required to hold the assembly together in its current design that caused the problem. We have also damaged many parts from removing/installing the xenarc 700tsv and its various components (2 touchscreen overlays cracked, 1 700TSV controller board damaged due to a burnt trace, another 700TSV controller board damaged due to burned solderpoints and broken ribbon cable retainer clip) As you may or may not know these screens are approximatley $400 a peice, one of them was used but the other one was purchased new from xenarc. As such we have considered taking donations. And of course we always welcome donations regardless, but I beleive that its only fair that anyone who would like to donate any value you wish to the project, we will give you that $ amount off the kit when its ready. If you could mention your screen name when donating that is. We'd keep it all in our records. Obviously, if you donate more than the kit costs we cant pay you to take ownership of one, but I can pretty much guarnatee you this item is going to run more than $100 because of the PCB and other material costs. Any donations can go thorugh paypal at darkfox118@hotmail.com I'm not trying to be a begger with the above statement or anything, its simply that these screens have proven to be pretty expensive to have around such volitile materials, R&D means dropping things, scratching things etc. I still have high hopes for the project and am still very excited about it. Although we missed our deadline I am even more excited about it now tht I have seen the concept in my dash about 2 dozen times in the last 2 days. Its just amazing to see your own carputer skin and your own software behind the frame of a factory fit navigation bezel, it really has an appeal that you just cant get with anything else in my opinion. "The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." - Plato Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GTurabus Posted May 22, 2006 Share Posted May 22, 2006 Subscribe (officially). No worries about the deadline for me, more than willing to wait for a quality product. Given the lack of competition on the market, you should clean up when this goes into production. PM me with a mailing address and an estimated price, and I will "donate", or pre-purchase, as the case may be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CasopoliS Posted May 22, 2006 Share Posted May 22, 2006 Let me know if you need any design or CAD help. I can also 3-D print ABS plastic parts with just an IGES, .x_t, .stp, etc file. It looks like you have all that work done, but let me know if you think I can help. It looks like this is something everyone can benefit from and I am willing to aid in R&D for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noam Posted May 22, 2006 Share Posted May 22, 2006 Glad to hear things are progressing, even if they are delayed... I have my own hacked-up screen in place right now as I don't want to finish it only to switch to your kit. BTW... Any pictures of the unit in the car from your trials? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerboa113 Posted May 22, 2006 Author Share Posted May 22, 2006 I wish we did, I left my camera at home like an idiot. we were pretty much goin at it all day, we were about ready to put it in the dash w/o the touchscreen as this was the major problem in the design and go w/o it for some in dash testing of the current design, but as we made this desicion a slight movement of the hand must have grounded something out as the controller board on the back giving us our picture suddenly made the screen fade to white. testing afterwards resulted in the same white picture. I suppose any time you're trying printed circuits in an environment like that you're bound to have some accidents. Everyone involved in the project has had their fair share of breaking.. like me. I've broken 2 touchscreens! Replacements are about $80 a peice We can work with the split ones for depth testing but we will need working ones to actually make sure no more problems arise. Thanks for the offers of help guys, we had originally considered making the bracket out of bendable metal, but after working with a polyfiber plastic like material for the mockup, I think this will be a much better idea as it will not conduct. The problem obviously in that is that we cannot bend it like metal, but thats not a problem. I will definatleyt contact you if you if we need some additional help, I really think however that we have a clear shot of the mockup and plenty of measurements have been taken. Once we get the mockup done I imagine we'l put it together and of course test it for a while (I'm hoping we can make 2 honestly of the same kind) and if no major problems arise, take the mockup in and alter our original CAD design into that, and then take that design to someone who can cut the plastic out for us. From there we'd have to make a good set of instructions (trying to make this as installer friendly as possible) and then they'd be ready for sale. Anyone who donates or pre-orders would get the 1st batch and would most likley get them at a slight discount (as close as we can to cover our costs and R&D factors) and then we'd adjust the price from there. As some of you know the more PCBs you make per order the cheaper the PCBs are, I imagine it will be the same for the brackets so we may try to work out a group buy or something to get a mass of them produced at one time. Trickle in orders may wind up costing more. "The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." - Plato Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CasopoliS Posted May 22, 2006 Share Posted May 22, 2006 PM sent. I would be more than happy to fabricate a test piece. Turnaround might be a couple of days + shipping time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brhays Posted May 22, 2006 Share Posted May 22, 2006 As for asking for donations, I think there should be a buy-in to reserve one of the first to roll off the line. Some sort of organized pre-group buy with a $50 down payment would have me interested, rather than the current call for donations. If that sounds good, I'd be delighted to replace my current hacked TomTom system with a great carputer setup that looks OEM. I want access to my iTunes, GPS, and to use my stereo & microphone as a bluetooth in-car handsfree device as the fundamentals, and right now the TomTom is the closest thing out there. Kudos for your hard work! Never start modding, kids. It's too late for me, save yourselves! Hooray for 07+ AccessPORT! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerboa113 Posted May 22, 2006 Author Share Posted May 22, 2006 now to clarify, what we are designing here is just the dash kit with usb ports and hub in the front. You'd still have to buy the carputer and screen and set it all up (although I'd be glad to help anyone interested in doing so) "The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." - Plato Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerboa113 Posted June 26, 2006 Author Share Posted June 26, 2006 Not much of an update but there are a few things news wise that I guess I'd like to let all of you know who have been so very patient with us. I've been discussing the design with everyone involved in the project and have worked up (since I had no pictures from our test fit day) a roughed in CAD design of what the inside of the bezel should look like. Obviously the measyrements on this are not based on the actual as the mockup is going to re-define everything, this is also too thick, but it addresses the problem of touching and also hides the non-viewable area to keep problems from coming up from that. It also gives yall some idea of progress, I know it frustrates me when I'm waiting on something and I hear nothing and see nothing so this is the best I can give you right now. As far as progress updates, We should be seeing something within the next couple of weeks as far as another test fit session. Hopefully during that time I'll have pictures of the days events. Also, Thanks to some research by Sebbery there has been some updates in the whole backlighting and visibility problems that many people have been complaining about with their own projects or fiberglass'd bezels. Apparently theres a screen overlay called a "Transreflective" overlay that fixes the whole visibility issue. mp3car is selling a pre-fixed lilliput 7" LCD that already has this done for about $650-700. I have taken down the measurements they gave of the phyiscal screen on their website and compared it to what we have hever with the Xenarc and I'm pretty confident that one should be able to fit the lilliput in what we're designing with perhaps some minor work. I cannot guarantee that it will be a 100% bolt in as we are going to continue to work with the Xenarc 700 series. For those of you who already have a screen, or who dont want to fool with the liliput, I have inquired about a thread I spotted on the mp3car website about being able essentially to make any LCD screen a transreflective as my understanding. The link to the thread is here: http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=75398 Again, we are going to continue to work on the bezel with a Xenarc 700 series. If anyone has a liliput 629 working or not and want us to take a look at its fitment let me know. "The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." - Plato Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerboa113 Posted June 26, 2006 Author Share Posted June 26, 2006 hrmm.. no We looked at using the inside of the dash to hold some of the items, mosstly the PCBs and things like that, but because I drive my car for work, and the guy doing most of the mockup fabrication does not have a subaru, theres no real way to get the measurements to do that. Getting the proper angle and measurements and also coming up with a way that you can actually hold it in place are all challenges that I dont think need to be taken on. If you look at the factory screen, the way it mountrs is similar to what we are doing. Basically they built a housing for the screen that "swings" in from the top and latches at the bottom (from drawings, I have not been inside a navi dash. If anyone takes apart a navi dash PLEASE POST PICS OF THE FACTORY NAV SCREEN MOUNTING) and thats what we are using. The screen will be held in by the bezel itself and will be totally self contained. It will be a "drop in" screen, people who buy this will be able to buy their own screen and bezel (so that they dont have to pay us the overhead of shipping and time etc. to get them) and buy the mounting bracket and PCB from us. Then they will be able to simply drop in their screen into the bracket (the view of the picture I posted earlier in CAD is looking at the bezel if you were above it looking at it from behind, like if you were the passenger airbag or the a/c equiptment in the engine bay) and then put down the retainers. This is how most of the factory xenarc and lilliput assemblies work from what I've seen in pictures and from working with the 2 Xenarcs that we have. As you probablly know, the touchscreen in this case is not attached in any way to the LCD, it simply floats, as such a "sandwich" method seems to work best to hold everything in w/o using messy glues. Thats the kind of thing we're trying to avoid. "The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." - Plato Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 23, 2006 Share Posted July 23, 2006 I am very interested, anxiously waiting for updates! Very nice. i like the idea of the legacy plate covering the buttons more than usb ports so i dont have wires hanging there. another good idea would be to have a set of user pprogramable buttons that would plug in to a usb interface on the carputer so we could assign what they would do. Second that. It would be actually cool to have the factory buttons (if they come as separate part, do they?). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 23, 2006 Share Posted July 23, 2006 I dunno how the factory buttons come or if they are only part of the screen itself, but on mp3car.com there is someone who has made a keyboard input thing so you could connect the factory buttons to it and map them to perform various functions, ie pressing the navi button would launch your navi application... Just an idea. Have link to the thread on mp3car? I don't quite get, so someone did it on Legacy with factory Nav? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 23, 2006 Share Posted July 23, 2006 USB Keyboard encoder - Interested ? - MP3Car.com Forums Nobody did it with the factory nav, but in theory if you can order the buttons on their own (if they are not part of the screen electronics) then you might be able to connect them to this device and then map the keys to certain computer functions or have them launch a program... Aha! Got it. Very cool! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerboa113 Posted July 24, 2006 Author Share Posted July 24, 2006 sorry, I spoke with the parts department for subarupartsforyou.com before starting this project. The screen unit itself, where it is seperate from the bezel, is still 1 peice and is $960 from memory. It has the buttons integrated into it. After some thought also we've pretty much decided that since its a touchscreen, the buttons aren't very important. We've had to make some changes to the PCB and have found what I beleive will be the solution. Currently we're waiting on some physical measurements of the mockup before we can make the modified PCB. I'm alittle concerned that it wil be tight since the connector is so large, but the others involved in the project dont seem to think so. I'm very impatiently waiting on the mockup as well, I really appreciate all of you not getting steamed at me for not having more results, I REALLY just want to get this step done as we do have a long road ahead even after this part. "The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." - Plato Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 24, 2006 Share Posted July 24, 2006 Thanks for the update. So the PCB you are talking about is the board with USB ports? You want to put these ports in the opening in the bezels where normally keys are? Perhaps that's nice but I don't see much use for USB ports, especially in the middle of the dash. Will it have a cover door or something? What I am really waiting for is whatever bracket thingy that would allow to mount the screen to factory bezel. Also you would be my heros if you could come up with an interface that would allow one to read the values (on the carputer via USB) from the mpg/clock panel so it could be dumped like on SpecB avoiding the cost of JDM relocation bezel (and saving the ashtray as well). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerboa113 Posted July 24, 2006 Author Share Posted July 24, 2006 Thanks for the update. So the PCB you are talking about is the board with USB ports? You want to put these ports in the opening in the bezels where normally keys are? Perhaps that's nice but I don't see much use for USB ports, especially in the middle of the dash. Will it have a cover door or something? What I am really waiting for is whatever bracket thingy that would allow to mount the screen to factory bezel. Also you would be my heros if you could come up with an interface that would allow one to read the values (on the carputer via USB) from the mpg/clock panel so it could be dumped like on SpecB avoiding the cost of JDM relocation bezel (and saving the ashtray as well). heh, well the interfacing with the factory mpg and temp clock etc. thing we've considered, especially after I got to play with a factory nav system at the dealer. I really liked that idea, but that may be something we can save for later, like a phase II.5 or even phase III heh. I would imagine we'd probablly make it serial tho off the top of my head, but we haven't looked very far into that. I like having my clock where it is but I would like to have my cig. lighter down there for extra accesories. the usb port thing came about when I realized that I only had 2 usb ports on the pc, and I couldn't really add 2 more high power usb devices w/o running out of power. it was also a pain if you had a removable HD removable CDrom, or memory key, you'd have to go back to the trunk, or go under the seat and fiddle with it for way too long. Basically the usb ports up front allow you to quickly connect/disconnect temporary items. For example, this summer I was planning a 5 hour trip to the mountains (5 hours of driving) and I wanted to take a path that would take a good bit of time with the whole "Avoid area" "use this area" pinpoints in mappoint. So I did this on my home computer, then put it on my memory key and loaded the file into my carputer through my memory key. it would have been real nice to do it right there at the drivers seat. It would also be very handy to connect a low power wireless keyboard or wired keyboard/mouse that you dont want in the car all the time (clutter) or gamepad. Theres any number of uses. There wouldn't be a door, but rather a trim plate to trim around the usb ports. They will also be lighted around the perimeter with red LEDs that turn on with the headlights. "The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." - Plato Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noam Posted August 6, 2006 Share Posted August 6, 2006 Any updates? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 +1 We are all waiting... I'll be the first to order the kit :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IanKen Posted August 11, 2006 Share Posted August 11, 2006 This looks like a cool project. Something to think about: I cannot imagine needing four USB ports up front. Maybe two at most. Have you considered putting actual buttons up there? Maybe a rotory/push knob surrounded by some gneeral function buttons to either side? Folks rolling their own car software could render labels for the buttons on the display. The knob would be used for wahtever (volume I think would be popular). Touch screens are nice, but for some things real physical buttons are the better choice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 21, 2006 Share Posted August 21, 2006 Weekly bump... +1 for 4 USB ports being an overkill... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 21, 2006 Share Posted August 21, 2006 Someone on the MP3 car forum found a device that you could connect standard buttons to and map them as commands on the computer. If you could make the bezel with buttons in the hole (and maybe 1 USB connector in the middle with two buttons either side) then you could map those buttons to certain functions on the computer such as bringing up a Navi screen or notepad or whatever... Just a thought. I think that board went for $30 or something. :whore: Yeah. Give us a board with single USB port and few buttons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerboa113 Posted August 21, 2006 Author Share Posted August 21, 2006 I dont understand the whole button thing. I've been trying to think of what they could do, and when you have a fully customizable touch screen sitting less than an inch away, it just didn't seem like good use of space. What I'd like to do however, if we did incorporate buttons, is to somehow make a mold of the factory nav. buttons and modify them from there. I'm not sure how well this would work, but since the nav. screen itself is $930, I couldn't possiblly buy one for this project. I don't suppose anyone with a factory navigation would be willing to help with that would they? :icon_mrgr I'm also concerned since the screen is behind the usb ports there may not be enough height/depth for buttons, but since theres been so much support for the idea, I'll look into it. We were supposed to have a test fit this last weekend, but some things came up and we were all much too busy, next weekend theres a car show everyones going to, but we may be able to look at it friday or sunday, its all kind of up in the air with when that will be but I'm hoping soon. "The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." - Plato Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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