Android integration fitted!... very nearly finished.

[danmiddle2]

Have you tried a vanilla build of Android?

Sadly that wouldn't help. Android only has AVRCP v1.0 natively. Some manufacturers (Samsung, for example) have upgraded this to AVRCP v1.3 in their tailored ROM. Sadly Huawei don't seem to have done this with their ROM... but from Android 4.3 AVRCP v1.3 is included natively.

I am also trying to avoid the need to "root" the device. This is to keep the modification as simple as possible for anyone wishing to give it a go... but also rooting your phone is a really bad idea from a security perspective, if you are concerned about such things

And I saw mention of steering wheel control which I would assume works for an ipod connected to the dice kit?

Yes - I have an iPod touch which works fine with the dice too.

Does the signal swap straight over too or are there any issues with that?

Do you mean in terms of the hand-off between the phone and the tablet when they're both connected to the Dice? Yes, that works fine. In terms of picking up the bluetooth and connecting on first power on, this too is pretty quick. The only issue I am trying to figure out at the moment is this:

If I connect the tablet first, and then the phone... everything works fine.
If I connect the phone first, then the Dice won't connect to the tablet as well.

Temporarily, I can solve this by simply powering on the Bluetooth of the phone after the tablet has already connected. I suspect this is simply down to the order in which I paired them with the Dice... but I would prefer a more elegant solution.

Ultimately I am going to have a separate SIM in the tablet / integrated device... so I plan to use tasker on my phone to trigger a divert to the integrated phone whenever I am in the car. That way I only need one device connected, and the phone can remain in my pocket instead of in the Brodit holder.

For outgoing calls, I will simply block my caller ID as there is no (legal) way of spoofing my other phone number. This way, people won't get confused by a different number. Besides, how often am I likely to need to make calls when driving the Z4, anyway?

thats amazing...

I had a carpc years ago... it was pants, but i thought it was cool showing off to my mates (when it worked) but this is simply outstanding :bow:

Looks oem and offers carpc potential - well impressed.

Thanks - probably not a surprise, but I too had a carPC which I built for my old Vauxhall Calibra too... I recall it spent more time being modified and upgraded than actually used. Hopefully this one won't turn into a project that nevers ends.

 

[spr_bimmer]

been trying to work things out on my end but i don't think i want to invest much more than i have in my system right now... I already have an after market head unit (alpine with its own separate Bluetooth) its a few model years old and it doesn't seem to want to connect with the tablet I'm using for testing but it does pair. i've looked into the new alpine units but you cant have more than one active device connected at one time (i need my phone and tablet connected since i dont want a second sim and plan etc...

back to the drawing board i guess

 

[danmiddle2]

been trying to work things out on my end but i don't think i want to invest much more than i have in my system right now... I already have an after market head unit (alpine with its own separate Bluetooth) its a few model years old and it doesn't seem to want to connect with the tablet I'm using for testing but it does pair. i've looked into the new alpine units but you cant have more than one active device connected at one time (i need my phone and tablet connected since i dont want a second sim and plan etc...

back to the drawing board i guess

Not the most elegant solution, but give you don't want to invest much more... you could use a Jabra Clipper and a 3.5mm audio jack lead. This would allow you to stream music to the Jabra and then connect it via the 3.5mm audio jack between the Jabra and the headunit. None of the headunit controls (aside from volume) would work, but the Jabra has controls and you could keep that accessible?

 

[benlumley]

Have you tried a vanilla build of Android?

Sadly that wouldn't help. Android only has AVRCP v1.0 natively. Some manufacturers (Samsung, for example) have upgraded this to AVRCP v1.3 in their tailored ROM. Sadly Huawei don't seem to have done this with their ROM... but from Android 4.3 AVRCP v1.3 is included natively.

I am also trying to avoid the need to "root" the device. This is to keep the modification as simple as possible for anyone wishing to give it a go... but also rooting your phone is a really bad idea from a security perspective, if you are concerned about such things

There are some threads on XDA developers about swapping some files around on nexus devices to improve bluetooth quality - I've tried it on my galaxy nexus, and it works. Others on the thread have commented that it is a newer AVRCP spec, so causes track data to show up...

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2184333
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=44140598

I believe some kind soul does a build of the source code with a patch/pull request applied and then extracts a couple of files from it. Obviously needs root - I root my phone for this alone though. Think custom roms (cyanogen for eg) include this fix too.

Need to root my phone again now - need to re-fix it since I upgraded to 4.3, as fuzzyness is back

 

[danmiddle2]

Have you tried a vanilla build of Android?

Sadly that wouldn't help. Android only has AVRCP v1.0 natively. Some manufacturers (Samsung, for example) have upgraded this to AVRCP v1.3 in their tailored ROM. Sadly Huawei don't seem to have done this with their ROM... but from Android 4.3 AVRCP v1.3 is included natively.

I am also trying to avoid the need to "root" the device. This is to keep the modification as simple as possible for anyone wishing to give it a go... but also rooting your phone is a really bad idea from a security perspective, if you are concerned about such things

There are some threads on XDA developers about swapping some files around on nexus devices to improve bluetooth quality - I've tried it on my galaxy nexus, and it works. Others on the thread have commented that it is a newer AVRCP spec, so causes track data to show up...

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2184333
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=44140598

I believe some kind soul does a build of the source code with a patch/pull request applied and then extracts a couple of files from it. Obviously needs root - I root my phone for this alone though. Think custom roms (cyanogen for eg) include this fix too.

Need to root my phone again now - need to re-fix it since I upgraded to 4.3, as fuzzyness is back

Sadly there is no way (I know of) to do this without rooting and I would never consider rooting a device that I use, because of the security issues it represents.

 

[-Tom-]

Wow this is a great project, brother and I used to tinker with car PCs years ago but ours too were shocking and never really worked when you needed them to. They also made you look a bit like inspector gadget seeing as things weren't exactly compact back then :dizzy:

With updates will you plan to sit within WiFi range of home? Just being the pessimist, do you think it would affect resale of the car at all by putting people off due to the tech that they know little about being stashed away in the dash? Or do you think rather you would glance over it and say it has an "improved" media pack instead :wink:

 

[spr_bimmer]

been trying to work things out on my end but i don't think i want to invest much more than i have in my system right now... I already have an after market head unit (alpine with its own separate Bluetooth) its a few model years old and it doesn't seem to want to connect with the tablet I'm using for testing but it does pair. i've looked into the new alpine units but you cant have more than one active device connected at one time (i need my phone and tablet connected since i dont want a second sim and plan etc...

back to the drawing board i guess

Not the most elegant solution, but give you don't want to invest much more... you could use a Jabra Clipper and a 3.5mm audio jack lead. This would allow you to stream music to the Jabra and then connect it via the 3.5mm audio jack between the Jabra and the headunit. None of the headunit controls (aside from volume) would work, but the Jabra has controls and you could keep that accessible?

thanks for the info but i dont think i would be doing that... the only thing i was really looking for in the tablet is google maps anyways and i use my phone for the few times i need it anyways. my head unit has full ipod integration already so the music side of things is good and the BT calls... the other stuff would been fun to play with though like the OBD2 stuff

 

[-Tom-]

thanks for the info but i dont think i would be doing that... the only thing i was really looking for in the tablet is google maps anyways and i use my phone for the few times i need it anyways. my head unit has full ipod integration already so the music side of things is good and the BT calls... the other stuff would been fun to play with though like the OBD2 stuff

You could just get a phone app and connect to the bluetooth OBD2 ... not brilliant but still a fun gadget for cheap and hassle free

 

[danmiddle2]

Wow this is a great project, brother and I used to tinker with car PCs years ago but ours too were shocking and never really worked when you needed them to. They also made you look a bit like inspector gadget seeing as things weren't exactly compact back then :dizzy:

With updates will you plan to sit within WiFi range of home? Just being the pessimist, do you think it would affect resale of the car at all by putting people off due to the tech that they know little about being stashed away in the dash? Or do you think rather you would glance over it and say it has an "improved" media pack instead :wink:

In terms of connectivity, I could sit within WiFi range at home, yes, or connect via USB (as I have a way for making this remain accessible)... or use the built in 3G. I'll probably use the latter for almost everything.

In terms of resale value, I tend to sell all of my cars to people I know. Not sure I have ever had to advertise a car to the general public or PX one... People know what they are getting when they buy a car from me - I am quite fastidious.

Besides - who, these days can't operate a tablet ffs?

 

[danmiddle2]

thanks for the info but i dont think i would be doing that... the only thing i was really looking for in the tablet is google maps anyways and i use my phone for the few times i need it anyways. my head unit has full ipod integration already so the music side of things is good and the BT calls... the other stuff would been fun to play with though like the OBD2 stuff

You could just get a phone app and connect to the bluetooth OBD2 ... not brilliant but still a fun gadget for cheap and hassle free

Indeed, what he said - and if you wait for my write up, I have a brief review of different Bluetooth OBD devices ranging from ~£10 to ~£150. The way I have structured the howto is completely modular... so you should be able to do the bits you want with an Android phone or tablet without necessarily having to integrate it or do everything.

 

[danmiddle2]

Quick update - Live Freeview TV reception now works too

 

[-Tom-]

thanks for the info but i dont think i would be doing that... the only thing i was really looking for in the tablet is google maps anyways and i use my phone for the few times i need it anyways. my head unit has full ipod integration already so the music side of things is good and the BT calls... the other stuff would been fun to play with though like the OBD2 stuff

You could just get a phone app and connect to the bluetooth OBD2 ... not brilliant but still a fun gadget for cheap and hassle free

Indeed, what he said - and if you wait for my write up, I have a brief review of different Bluetooth OBD devices ranging from ~£10 to ~£150. The way I have structured the howto is completely modular... so you should be able to do the bits you want with an Android phone or tablet without necessarily having to integrate it or do everything.

Again that's great, I'll be keeping a watch on this with everybody else. Cheers for sharing.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

[FAARN]

Any more news on the writeup? Looking into this myself. Do you also have the dimensions for the original screen? looked online and couldn't find anything. Have to say some great work there and android is the perfect platform for an onboard computer/nav.

 

[danmiddle2]

Any more news on the writeup? Looking into this myself. Do you also have the dimensions for the original screen? looked online and couldn't find anything. Have to say some great work there and android is the perfect platform for an onboard computer/nav.

No progress this week due to my day job.

I am off work next week and plan to finish the installation and the write-up then... as well as cut up my exhaust for noise :evil:

In terms of the original LCD panel, the dimensions of the LCD screen itself are:
148mm(Width)x89mm(Height)x169mm(Diag)
This includes a black surround a little over 1mm all the way around the edge of the LCD. Not sure if this is visible when fitted in the housing.

The LCD unit then has a metal casing that adds 2mm either side, 1mm bottom and 4mm on top.

Good luck with your project!

Dan

 

[danmiddle2]

OK - I have just submitted a first pass of the howto in the submission section. It is not complete, but should allow people to start to see the details of what is required.

I should warn you... it's 18 pages long in Word and that's WITHOUT any pics or videos.

I am going to do the power section this week as soon as I have wired everthing in.

All the best,

Dan

 

[pauls13]

where can I find your guide?

 

[danmiddle2]

in the howto section, filed under navigation.
http://www.z4-forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=56746