You want to look at getting a lead to solder with a connector right to the gps on the roof.

Looked at this with a nexus... Very easy.

T Terran



'The' Car For The Modern Day UK Roads ( ie all the pot holes )

'A Freelander that leaks oil is just marking its territory' - Wise words

Now a member of the FL2 'Silly Bill' Club

Well, after a bit of a wait my 7" tablet finally arrived yesterday.

Upon examination of the unit I was gutted to find that it is powered via a micro USB on the side of the device.

The device fills the gap perfectly....except for the USB plug for which there is no room! I scoured the internet and discovered that only two of the five wires in the cable are used for power delivery. I cannot for the life of me work out how I would solder these directly to the circuit board so am left a bit stumped....and deflated.

Has anyone else come across this problem yet or any suggestions where I could take it for someone go have a look at it?

For anyone thinking of doing something like this, my Voyo X6 measures 188mm across and uses up every last bit of space behind the dash (had to trim a few bits of plastic from behind the dash too!)

Any suggestions welcome!!

Revoltz wrote:

Thanks for tips everyone, just gonna need to take my tablet to a Soldering Specialist because I'm not so skilled in soldering.

And Laukke, I'm going to copy your button solution I hope by the weekend everything should be done, I'll post here my results.

Holy great thread revival batman! But I've read them all and this is the best / most informative one, so I think it's OK

Just to let anyone interested in doing this know that I've think I've found the perfect 'modern' tablet.

In my recent experience: You can't get the Freelander PD20 anymore (just the PD10 which is too big), the Samsung etc tabs are way too tall (in Landscape orientation), the Nexus 7's are too wide, the Archos Xenon is only dual core.
[Note on the Archos, I found in PC World that they had a newer version than is talked about earlier in this thread (70b) called the 70c. Both are £60 with 3G but the 70c has 1gb RAM over the 70b's 512mb. Worth a punt I reckon for £45 saving on what I bought...]

But I took a punt of the new(ish) Asus Zenpad C7. These are around a similar spec to a Nexus 7 (same make), quad core.

4 variants:
z170c - Wifi, basic screen, 1GB. (£80 PC World)
z170cg - 3G/Wifi, basic screen, 2GB. (£105 DABS, Ebay)
z370c - Wifi, good screen, 1GB. (£100, Various)
z370cg - 3G/Wifi, good screen, 2GB.

I bought the z170cg. I wanted 3G, even though I think ultimately I will go for car-wifi, for the £20 difference it wasn't worth not doing. I would have gone for the better screen and RAM of the z370 apart from 2 things... 1) I read a review which said the z170 handled multitasking better (hard to figure I know given the RAM increase) 2) I couldn't find a z370cg anywhere!

Initial impressions are good. It's a fine thing to hold, very light and small compared to a Nexus 7 (albeit gen1) in the other hand. It's a nats todger under 189mm, and fits snug in the gap once the obvious plastic lugs are trimmed, but crucially does not stretch the plastic so that the screen surround & and the air vent surround are distorted. (Anyone who's jammed a tablet in one of these things will know what I mean!) TBH I wish I had the higher screen resolution... it's fine for a car, but you wouldn't want to read ebooks on it.

The visible screen is a perfect fit, maybe 0.5mm too wide on each side, but spot on to all intents and purposes. It has a USB and 3.5mm audio port on either side, but crucially they are towards the top of the tablet if positioned with the volume and power switch facing the bottom. This is good for two reasons:
1) The slant of the Freelander facia means the outlets at the top are easier to drill a small hole in the vent to plug a power lead in, which is what I intend to do, rather than breaking it open and soldering. As per the chap earlier in this thread.
2) The power button is conveniently accessible through the gaps underneath the removable rubber mat thing. So if you do need to turn it on, just pop off the mat and give it a press.

I'm in the early stages of playing with the tablet really, but I've got the Android app 'Tasker' sensing power and turning the screen on, no timeout, and launching Waze & Internet Radio. Tasker also senses no power and kills the apps (NB: Root may be needed to make this work properly), then an app called Autosleeper puts it into sleep. Seems to work OK, think it can be better. Most interestingly I've found a method to power the tablet on with key turn if its battery is dead (Google 'fastboot oem off-mode-charge 0'). Not tried it yet but appears to be a good alternative to soldering power buttons etc.

Worth noting that on the 370 models the back is removable, which would give you 2-3mm of extra width I guess. Can't see that it would be of any use though as it really is a perfect fit.

So hopefully my first attempt at uploading pics will do the rest of the talking. Note the last pic is my finger stuck through th'ole on the power button, to show it can be done!

Cheers

Nice find de1979 I'm now tempted to upgrade mine to an Asus Zenpad as well

de1979, do you know if Zenpad z170cg is MHL enabled?
I'm interested if it can output video.
Thank you

I found the answer myself and it's negative, according to Asus tech

thanks a lot, de1979! will probably attempt this during the weekend, seems a nice idea and should work well. parts ordered! MY2011, TD4 Auto, Xenon headlights, fog lamps DRLs, sunroof, tinted windows, almond electric seats w/ lumbar support, leather steering wheel w/ audio controls, dog/luggage guard, ambient lights, flush Whispbars, Mantec sump&tank guards, Xtrons Head Unit

Hi

It's been a few months now and I've come to the conclusion that this is probably a 'best compromise' at the moment, because there are features of the tablet I'm not 100% happy with.

It's full of bloat and this significantly slows it down. It's a more frustrating experience than using a 2012 Nexus 7. Lollipop doesn't help. Why Asus feel the need to ruin something out of the box is beyond me - they probably get paid to. I've stopped everything running I possibly can.

It's battery life is poor - overnight will see a loss of 15% with everything killed, which soon takes it's toll throughout the week, particularly when it doesn't charge very fast when in use as the screen and Satnav are on. I've got a new cable on order to try and help with this. It does occasionally do random things - I came to it this morning and it's dead and turned off overnight from 90% charged. Something must have been running.

And the biggie - it's not able to be rooted yet. At least I couldn't find a way. So features you may want in Tasker for a car are unavailable, such as turn off mobile data or wifi, or more importantly TaskKill.

I look for alternatives every time I go to the shops, but nothing has jumped out at me yet. How I wish a Nexus 7 would fit but it literally can't.

The fit is still good, and the overall effect is great. I ended up popping the back off the tablet just to give a few extra mm. You will have to drill holes in the left vent for power, and right vent for audio if you use the aux. Just have realistic expectations for it - it's probably on par with a dual core tbh!

Thanks
de1979

Thanks a lot, de1979! This is indeed helpful. I don't have high expectations, really - as long as waze and some radio app would work, I'd be happy. Not being able to root is an issue though - I did not even think about it, really - just assumed it would work... MY2011, TD4 Auto, Xenon headlights, fog lamps DRLs, sunroof, tinted windows, almond electric seats w/ lumbar support, leather steering wheel w/ audio controls, dog/luggage guard, ambient lights, flush Whispbars, Mantec sump&tank guards, Xtrons Head Unit

Waze is about the only thing that does work flawlessly because I can kill it with an Intent. My setup is (with Tasker):

Power detected: Volume Max, Display timeout 5 hours, Start Waze in foreground.
Power off: Volume Min, Display timeout 7 seconds, Kill Waze (with Intent), Stop Media.

If I left it at that it would be fine, works like a factory fit every time... but I always play Tune-in Radio (widget), load Google maps etc. I can't kill any of those tasks as I don't have Root, so it's a manual task to remember every time. I'd also like to switch off wifi/data/gps to try and conserve battery overnight, but Root is needed. Maybe I'm being too harsh on it - does the job I guess.

No laughing at my taste in music

I thought I saw something that kills wi-fi and 3g on power off, with no root. But I don't have an android device to check: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details...&hl=en MY2011, TD4 Auto, Xenon headlights, fog lamps DRLs, sunroof, tinted windows, almond electric seats w/ lumbar support, leather steering wheel w/ audio controls, dog/luggage guard, ambient lights, flush Whispbars, Mantec sump&tank guards, Xtrons Head Unit

Kabous... did your inline aux filter do the job? Going to order one I think...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kensington-Noise-R...=8-1-fkmr0

Also did you ever find out if there was a direct aux-in at the back of the HU?

Thanks

de1979 - got something for you: http://4pda.ru/forum/index.php?showtopic=6...ry46711087

It can be rooted after all , tried and it works. MY2011, TD4 Auto, Xenon headlights, fog lamps DRLs, sunroof, tinted windows, almond electric seats w/ lumbar support, leather steering wheel w/ audio controls, dog/luggage guard, ambient lights, flush Whispbars, Mantec sump&tank guards, Xtrons Head Unit

Thanks... but I'm afraid my Russian is not up to scratch, and I'm struggling to get any sense with Google Translate...