Attempting a Nexus 7 permanent install while keeping factory stereo

did you also have to flash the kernel ?

 

Jesus. So much HATE in one post.



Nice job guys. I'm looking to do something similar to my car, but am concerned about sun washing out the screen because that's what's currently happening with my Pioneer double din.

 

^^^^
It's not hate, it's just a warning about the practical implications.

You're obviously free to do whatever you want. I'm just telling you what consumer tablets not designed for automotive applications will likely encounter.

How hot do you think the interior of a cabin gets w/the sun beating down on it? How cold do you think it gets at night? Parts will expand and contract depending on the temperature. Different materials have different expansion coefficients (Thermal expansion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). I found Children and Cars A Potentially Lethal Combination DOT HS 810 636.

Please see How to Store Batteries – Battery University for what happens to li-ion batteries held at high SoC at high temps.

I am very curious to see if any folks who have done this have their tablets continue working after 2 years.

Contrast this w/devices that are intended are designed for automotive interior applications from reputable manufacturers.

 

mp3 forum, guys have tablets installed since 2009, still working flawlessly

 

Assuming that's really the case, I bet their batteries hold almost no charge now, esp. if they're being constantly charged to 100% SoC.

The Nexus 7 hasn't been out for a year yet...

[Q] Nexus 7 car install - heat issues - xda-developers is an example of a guy having problems likely due to heat.

 

The Nexus 7 may be new, but like ucs said, there are tablets that have been in cars for years.

But really, what's the big issue if it does die after a couple years? No one keeps their phone/tablet that long anyway, lol.

 

Totally right...the complaint that they are "consumer tablets" is actually the plus cheap and easy to replace but likely to last. As if the electronics in the Prius aren't "consumer electronics".

Those with solar roofs will have extra advantage keeping things cool.

Great install. I'm not handy enough to do it myself. If "Car Toys" or other local installer offered it, I'd do it in a New York minute. I'd want an iPad install but I'd bet that is as doable.

If the GPS signal is weak, a small Bluetooth GPS could easily boost the signal. I use an GNS 5870 to boost my iPhone's GPS.

 

Now that I think about it more, I doubt those claims even more and whether they're actually still using those tablet and whether it was flawless the whole time.

Not that the iPad was the 1st tablet, but the 1st gen iPad shipped in April 2010 (Apple - Press Info - iPad Available in US on April 3). The first Android tablet running Honeycomb (1st release Android release optimized for tablets) didn't come out until early 2011. Yeah, there were a few Android tablets shipping before then but weren't running Honeycomb.

Stuff from early 2009 likely was really crappy and used resistive (not capacitive) touchscreens.

They are, but anything that a major automaker that goes inside a car has been designed for and tested for the type of environment conditions that are common in cars. Cars get taken out to places Death Valley for high temp testing (Death Valley's a hotbed of car-testing intrigue - ABC News) and very cold climates, besides testing in environmental chambers. I'm sure they also test for vibration and shock encountered in cars.

Basic car warranties nowadays are almost always at least 3 years/36K miles w/some being 4 years or longer. Automakers have to make sure that there aren't a high % of failures within that time, otherwise it looks bad for them and ends up being costly. How many tablets do you know have 3 year or 4 year warranties?

I wasn't able to find the Nexus 7 quick start guide but Touch Screen Issues - Need Some Advice - Android Forums at AndroidCentral.com mentions

I wonder what it says for storage temperatures.

 

That explains the much poorer quality and performance of the auto electronics vs. the tablets. No one wants to have their auto electronics interface on their tablet while everyone would love to have a tablet as their car info center. End of story.

 

Heh. The problem is that design/product lifecycles (from initial design all the way until production) of cars are FAR longer than that of consumer electronics like tablets and smartphones. There's a huge amount of lag. I wouldn't be surprised if Gen 4 Prius design and engineering work started years ago and that they probably had test mules for awhile now.

The other problem is that automakers, those what make typically make in-car electronics such as major car stereo makers (e.g. Alpine, Clarion, Fujitsu Ten/Eclipse, etc.) and typical automotive OEMs (e.g. Denso, JBL (part of the Harman Group)) aren't very good software companies nor really known for really great UI design.

Take a look at the boundaries that Apple pushed w/the iPhone and followed up on w/a bigger version (w/o the phone) via the iPad. Look at how much the former influenced Android and the direction the Blackberry (formerly RIM) and Microsoft took. Compare that to what the companies I mentioned earlier have done...

 

No evidence of that and both ARE consumer electronics the auto electronics just of poorer quality and much higher price. One can see this in the Prius nav for $2K vs. much better Garmin's for $200.

Putting a tablet in as a replacement for the crappy auto electronics in the Prius is brilliant.

 

I think you're seriously confused or misreading what I'm talking about.
Auto infotainment dev’t seriously lags CE industry » Automotive World touches upon this.

A given generation of car usually is sold for somewhere between 3 and 6 years. It might receive a refresh in the middle, just like on the '12 Prius. Eco LLC Blog: 2010 Prius Preview: A Hypermiler's perspective. from March 25, 2009 claims "The design for the new Prius began 3 years ago in the Toyota think tank.". That March 25, 2009 date was the date the '10 Prius media embargo was lifted. I'm not sure how accurate that date is, but hopefully someone else has some other data to support such dates.

I and about 50 of us saw, got in and touched the '10 Prius in Detroit in January 09 but we weren't allowed to drive them (they were in a indoor closed venue). By then, it seems pretty apparent that virtually all the engineering work was already done and things were pretty frozen. The systems in the car all worked. Some of us got to drive the car in March 09 and the car went on sale in May 09.

I still have pics from Nov 09 of the Nissan Leaf at Tokyo Motor Show. They showed it there. I also have pics of a cutout model (for lack of better words) and interior, the best I could get. I also found a video at

. It looks pretty close to what eventually shipped.

Per California resident takes delivery of first Nissan LEAF and First Nissan Leaf delivered in San Francisco; what's up with the next batches?, the 1st ever Leaf delivery was December 2010. Nissan clearly had been working on it for a long time (not sure when was the official beginning) and they had test mules using the bodies of other cars for awhile. My Nissan Leaf Forum • View topic - History of Nissan EV from 2006 has dates that are somewhat relevant.

Think about the above timespan and how quickly smartphones and tablets evolve. 1st article I cited says 12-18 months. That's about right. The joke is a new Android phone comes out every 3-4 weeks or so.

The price divergence between PNDs and OEM nav systems is really unfortunate. I touched upon possible reasons at Thoughts on the navigation system | PriusChat. There doesn't seem to be a proper feedback loop to automakers about what I agree is outrageously high pricing for OEM nav systems and their updates. This seems true regardless of automaker. They can build some cars w/overpriced nav and they'll eventually sell, to someone.

As for "auto electronics just of poorer quality". Try putting in a Garmin unit and a modern tablet inside a car for 7-10 years and NEVER remove it. Let it go thru all the high temps, temp and humidity cycling. Extend the sample size to say 100. I suspect the at least 60% of the tablets will no longer work, the Garmin 20% of the GPS unit might not. And, both will have batteries that are shot.

The nav system in my 06 Prius (car bought new in January 06) still works fine after 7 years. I don't have the infamous MFD (Prius MFD) prob that afflicted some 04-05 Prius MFDs. The stereo works perfectly except for the intermittent problem at Volume Gone Wild (and then stops working) | Page 3 | PriusChat.

Long ago, when I still had a '91 Camry, I was a bit miffed that the OEM stereo (made by Fujitsu Ten) died somewhere around the 8 or 9 year mark (don't have the exact year OTOH).

 

The bad joke is a new Prius "info center" comes out every five years and they are 10 years behind a five year old smartphone.

Embedded Nexus on iPad would be the bomb.

 

i'm new to the forum, so excuse me. but what kind of steering wheel is that.

 

Cwerdna, thanks for your 3 excellent posts. You hit the nail on the head.

There are lot of 15+ year old cars on the road, and more often that not the electronics still work. We have two 7 year old cars, and the electronics in both of those have been flawless. Had they been consumer grade hand held crap, I doubt they would have been so reliable.

 

Pretty awesome work OP!

 

Back to the lag from Deep-Dive: Behind the scenes at Toyota's R&D center, Part 1 - Autoblog (this went up during the Toyota SUA PR nightmare):

Deep-Dive: Behind the scenes at Toyota's R&D center, Part Two - Autoblog is part 2.

The slides at

Code:

http://www.autoblog.com/photos/toyota-quality-presentation/#3156536

and

Code:

http://www.autoblog.com/photos/toyota-quality-presentation/#3156536#photo-3156536

might prove interesting to you.

Even though the onboard touchscreen system/telematics is generally not safety critical, hopefully you see how it's sort of stuck w/the baggage of the rest of a car's development. How quickly does the smartphone and tablet world evolve in 24-30 months? Two new generations of iPhones and iPads come out in that time. Android devices evolve very fast and two new generations of flagship Samsung phones (e.g. Galaxy S III and 4) come out in that time.