My Mudane

[tim2100]

samuelellis said:

Ok so - what do you drive? I noticed that your garage is currently empty

And as it has been previously mentioned in this thread a slightly oddball mondeo is a good thing to see in a sea of boring repmobiles. Besides whats wrong with a Mondeo - it is a decent car

Now in regards to utterly pointless I regard golf as being utterly pointless but would not comment on someone if they enjoyed golf

Good answer

[samuelellis]

tim2100 said:

Good answer

thanks

[TomTheTyke]

indeed in the world of cars anything other than a golf diesel could be called utterly pointless but then PH would be pretty dull. All that i.c.e. isn't my cup of tea either but it's the OP's money, he's clearly slightly mental but fair play!

[samuelellis]

TomTheTyke said:

indeed in the world of cars anything other than a golf diesel could be called utterly pointless but then PH would be pretty dull. All that i.c.e. isn't my cup of tea either but it's the OP's money, he's clearly slightly mental but fair play!

i take offence to that, im not slightly mental - im completely mental

[samuelellis]

Right well due to ill health ive not been able to do much to the car until recently so this is what ive been up to

I just got a ODB2 bluetooth dongle and the torque application on my android phone so i can pull allsorts of data from the ECU and have it show a ton of extra stuff but the car has nowhere to hold the phone

this was my idea



So i got a spare centre console and got the vents out of it and took the metal trim piece off where the heater controls would be





So a bit of chopping about and i have a nice slid-in mount for the phone and slag-nav



So to give it some strenght i fibreglassed the front up



and as you can see i the phone and nav slide down



So then use some spare cable trunking to make centre mounts for the nav and phone



block off the back of the hole and re-inforce the centre mounts



The other thing ive been working on is the headunit fascia adapter, as the Mundane comes with a double-din unit and i have a single DIN headunit the manufacturers put a pocket in the adapater, i needed this blank to mount my voltmeter and epicentre control so

Chop the pocket off


Then fill the hole with fibreglass


And then when that is dry get the front fibreglassed and sanded down flat-ish


then some bodyfiller


Once that is dry a quick sand down to make it smooth and flat, then prime the fascia adapater



So now im just waiting for the fibreglass that holds the satnav and phone to dry before fillering it smooth

After that i need to sort out hard-wiring the power adapters for the phone and nav

[samuelellis]

So todays updates so far

Head-unit adapter has had a few coats of black spraypaint



Going to do a couple more, once that is done i can work out where the voltmeter and epicentre dials are going on it


Sat-nav/phone mount has been fillered and sanded a bit



Currently waiting for it to dry fully so i can put another thin layer on to smooth off the bits that need it (IE under satnav and phone and middle section)

Then i can mount the power button for the nav and phone chargers on that raised panel inbetween the phone and nav

A rear view of the panel




and i just want to say this

I bloody HATE filler dust - this shirt and pair of yeans only went through the washer last night

[samuelellis]

So update



I found a stone effect paint in B&Q that gave a nice texture so primed the panel, sprayed it with the stone effect and then left it overnight before a coat of matt black was sprayed on
TBH the panel is not what you would call brilliant at this point in time BUT its the first time i used bodyfiller and first successful use of fibreglass so im going to use the panel and when my skills are better i will make another one

So onto the power for the phone/satnav - the problem i have had is the phone and satnav are immensely picky about chargers, if the phone is not happy it either does not charge or reports voltage too high Charging stopped and the satnav just goes into PC connect mode, this means that you cant actually use it

So i found a cig lighter adapter that charges the phone and i am using a garmin original charger for the nav

Next step was to buy a cigarette lighter splitter to make life easy for myself (Ie use that to run the two cigratette lighter PSU's) BUT i found that the phone charger even though it works plugged into the cigarette lighter it does not work when plugged into the cigarette lighter splitter, why it does not work i cannot workout but the USB charge port on the splitter charges the phone

So the plan now is as follows

Feed from the front battery (live and ground to the cabin) fused at 5-8amp
Plug from Cigarette lighter splitter removed
Wire switch between the power feed from the front batt to the cigarette lighter splitter
Mount splitter behind glovebox for easy access if needed in future
Run Satnav charging cable and phone USB charging cable to dash
Fit the custom centre console i made

[BorkFactor]

Interesting improvements, your phone and sat nav holder actually look get good - will be good to see it in the car.

Impressive work

[samuelellis]

Yea my thoughts are it looks better and is more ergonomic than having cradles for the phone/nav jutting out of the windscreen at all angles and safer than having charging cables allover the place

I just need to get it finished so i can start considering the doorcards as that will be a very big difficult job

[richtea78]

When I first saw the filler pictures I did have to think WTF have you done but the finished product looks really good!

[samuelellis]

It still does not look that brilliant in the flesh but im going to use it and build my skills up until i can make a better one

now i need to think about the wiring for it and do some work with the raspberyPI board that is going on the car

[samuelellis]

Ok so i had some time to think about how to intergrate the RaspberryPi board running RaspBMC into the install and this is about as far as i have got


This is the list of goals i have for the Pi

Connect to my Android Phone when it is setup as a wifi hotspot for internet access
Controllable from my Android phone using XBMCRemote
Have access to a hard drive storing music videos
Output video to composite
Composite video split to 6 to 8 screens
Infra red controlable

So the first step is power

I have plenty of battery power in the car (im fused at 300amp to the rear battery rack) but its making a nice hard wired way to power the Pi

On the back of aftermarket headunits they have what is called a remote out so when the headunit is turned on it sends voltage down this cable to trigger amps/processors to turn on, i already have a relay off this feed to switch on the amplifiers in the car. The relay has a spare output so im going to use that to fire a 2nd relay

This 2nd relay will be connected to a butchered USB Cigarette lighter charger, this should also allow me to power a USB hard drive as well, below is a very bad MSPaint of the wiring for it


Now the video and audio
My headunit has a screen built in and that feeds the rear view camera, on its Aux in it has a feed for video as well so that is two screens dealt with. In order to avoid picture quality degredation of composite i will be using a video signal booster to help it out

Below is the planned wiring for the video - the audio will also feed from the Pi to the headunit and from there the wiring for the rest of the car will stay the same


Now i have tested my phone and i know it can work as a Wifi hotspot so that is one less thing to worry about, im just waiting for RC4 to be released with known working wifi adapters to make life easier

Things that i have not got working
As i have an aftermarket headunit that has its own IR remote and when the headunit is in Aux mode it ignores most of the buttons, i was hoping to get RaspBMC to work with this remote but after trying multiple IR recievers it does not work, its not a fault with the Pi or RaspBMC - its just that the recivers ignore the remote (i have tested this by running IRW on a SSH session and firing commands from the headunit remote and my Media centre remote - i get responses from the media centre remote but not the headunit remote) so i either need to think about having a media centre remote in the car as well or hacking up a keyboard and making a control panel

[theboyfold]

I have to say I love this build! I too was a proud owner of a 54 plate TDCi Mondeo, however, it was 'just' the Zetec, but it did have the more powerful engine

Hats off to you! Good luck with the rest of the build (if you ever reach a point that you consider the end!!)

[samuelellis]

Ok so i had chance to play with the RaspberryPi board and get it working sucesfully off a dc power supply with a external HDD so its now on a burn-in test

here is a quick video of it in test mode

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVPA7i3-VUA

If it works fine for the next few hours i will be setting up Wifi on it so it will see my phone as an access point

[samuelellis]

So a bit more config done with the RaspberryPi board for incar use

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRqX5_9YcyE

As you can see by the vid it is not far off ready to be fitted

[samuelellis]

So a bit of work on the doorcards

As the place where the windows switch does not exist anymore it needed moving



Some filler over to level it out



Then cover the doorcard in fabric tightly



Tape up the important bits of the door



Put the doorcard on the door and screw it inplace



Resin the door and allow it to dry so it should keep its shape



Removed doorcard and put it in the garage, add some more resin and matting to give it strength



now to leave it to dry and then once it is dry back into the door to make sure it has not moved about when drying

[Watchman]

And I thought I was tinged with "the mad" by building the biggest iPod dock I could:

http://pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f...

And even my new plans [#1] don't compare to your level of "the mad". I salute you


Note #1 = I'm going to replace the 12" sub with an 18"er, build 2 new boxes - one for 3x 12" subs and one for 4x 8" mid/tweeters with a convex front panel to "spread the love".

[samuelellis]

I fully intend this to be usable as a mobile PA system that i will offer to charitys when it is finished as well as my only car

This is going in the front doors



4 per door running off around 1kw per door

[Watchman]

I am a long-standing fan of JBL since I had a set of Control-1s and a SB-1 in the 1980s.

[samuelellis]

ok so quick update

I got the centre console in



Still to wire up the power supplys for the phone/nav and fit the headunit

Unfortunately i did kill to death my Brax Voltmeter so i need to get another one of them

The next step is to get the glovebox out to mount the Pi in it and then to attack the wiring for the Pi, nav and phone