OEM quality 7" tablet with steering wheel controls and backup camera

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Originally Posted by jmullan99

Yes, one minute does seem a bit long. And I'm not sure how to overcome that.


This depends on a lot of things. Condition of the battery, how often you run the car, time of year (temperature). A decent battery in the middle of summer could likely take the discharge overnight of a steady couple amps. A day or two with a so-so battery in the dead of winter, maybe not.


Can't wait to hear your results.

John

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So guys, as promised here is the update. Right at the outset it doesnt look promising from backup camera standpoint.
First of all when router is on and tablet/video server are connected to the network, picture from backup camera is available. Once things settle down you get picture, but the main problem is start-up.
Here are few things I have tried
1. Router on, video server on: now stop and start the camera. The picture comes instantaneously the moment camera is powered on.
2. Router on and camera on: now stop and start the video server. It takes roughly 20 secs for the picture to show. Not great but could be lived with.
but here is the main issue
3. Router, Video server and camera all are off and now power them all on: It takes close to a minute for the router to start, for tablet to connect to it and picture to show up.

Seems like starting the router is the bottleneck. I am not sure if there is any way to speed up the process of starting the router and tablet connecting to it. At this moment I have set all of this as DHCP, do you guys thinh changing that to static or some other value will quicken this process? I have a feeling that time is spent in assigning IP addresses (just my guess).

So either the router needs to be powered on all the time or need a way bring the network up in less than 15-20 secs.
thoughts?

I couldn't say that DHCP is the only thing that takes tiime on the router. It has it's own boot process and that takes time. Is it also set to look for a WAN?

My hotspot is pretty much on 24/7. It has an internal battery and a sleep mode when nobody is actively using network. It charges when car comes on. If for some reason its battery runs low, I can just bring it in the house and charge it. But this is rare.

Idea: get a small gel cell battery, connect it to supply your router and video server when car is not running and charge when car is running (IE via ignition wire and a relay). If your router takes 12V then no inverter is necessary. I forget what voltage the camera server requires but I seem to recall it was 9V so the adapter may be necessary. As mentioned before, a small inverter would be fine if you have to use the adapters. So now, if the gel battery runs down, no big worries, and the relay will ensure it doesn't back-feed the other items on the ignition circuit. And obviously the bigger battery you can get means the longer it will last. If you get a 14ah battery, and the devices are drawing about 1amp it will last "approximately" 14 hours in a perfect world. In reality it will last less.

It's just an idea, not sure how you might want to handle it.

Cheers.

DHCP would be the biggest bottleneck currently. The next would probably be the wifi on the router booting up. You could shave some more time off if you ran a cat5 to the tablet and used a USB --> ethernet converter. Not sure how possible that is though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jmullan99

I couldn't say that DHCP is the only thing that takes tiime on the router. It has it's own boot process and that takes time. Is it also set to look for a WAN?

My hotspot is pretty much on 24/7. It has an internal battery and a sleep mode when nobody is actively using network. It charges when car comes on. If for some reason its battery runs low, I can just bring it in the house and charge it. But this is rare.

Idea: get a small gel cell battery, connect it to supply your router and video server when car is not running and charge when car is running (IE via ignition wire and a relay). If your router takes 12V then no inverter is necessary. I forget what voltage the camera server requires but I seem to recall it was 9V so the adapter may be necessary. As mentioned before, a small inverter would be fine if you have to use the adapters. So now, if the gel battery runs down, no big worries, and the relay will ensure it doesn't back-feed the other items on the ignition circuit. And obviously the bigger battery you can get means the longer it will last. If you get a 14ah battery, and the devices are drawing about 1amp it will last "approximately" 14 hours in a perfect world. In reality it will last less.

It's just an idea, not sure how you might want to handle it.

Cheers.

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Thanks.
I am pretty much thinking on similar lines. Basically getting rechargeable batteries to power up those 2 devices.
The video server is 5 volts, so I will need to think about either an inverter or may be just adding appropriate resistor in a serial circuit if I power these from Car battery. Can you tell me more about how you have set this up such that when car comes on ur hotspot charges and also about the sleep mode. I am electronically inclined so I think I can manage it with some guidance. My biggest problem is going to be running wires in the car as I am completely illiterate in pulling panels :)
Now I really want to make this work just as a challenge :-)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jmullan99

I couldn't say that DHCP is the only thing that takes tiime on the router. It has it's own boot process and that takes time. Is it also set to look for a WAN?

My hotspot is pretty much on 24/7. It has an internal battery and a sleep mode when nobody is actively using network. It charges when car comes on. If for some reason its battery runs low, I can just bring it in the house and charge it. But this is rare.

Idea: get a small gel cell battery, connect it to supply your router and video server when car is not running and charge when car is running (IE via ignition wire and a relay). If your router takes 12V then no inverter is necessary. I forget what voltage the camera server requires but I seem to recall it was 9V so the adapter may be necessary. As mentioned before, a small inverter would be fine if you have to use the adapters. So now, if the gel battery runs down, no big worries, and the relay will ensure it doesn't back-feed the other items on the ignition circuit. And obviously the bigger battery you can get means the longer it will last. If you get a 14ah battery, and the devices are drawing about 1amp it will last "approximately" 14 hours in a perfect world. In reality it will last less.

It's just an idea, not sure how you might want to handle it.

Cheers.

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I'm a total newb here, and have just registered because of the thread you have going on here. I've read through the whole thing, and have an idea that may or may not work, but couldn't all of your devices (or whatever ones you want) be off and initiated when you use your keyless entry to unlock the doors? This way you wouldn't be consuming power when it's not needed, and it could act as an on switch that would alleviate the burden of the time delay for your rear camera. Like I said, i'm a total newb, so i'm just throwing it out there.

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Originally Posted by ZombieLinux

For the steering controls, you could just use this: http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=3310
Its smaller, easier to set up, and supports dedicated media keys.

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Have you tried this? I can see it working if someone can get the signals from the car in the right format. I have no experience with arduino so I don't know how they work. Pac-Audio has a SWI-X that translates the car signals into IR signals to be used with all head units that have an IR remote. I think that would get every cars signal into one format instead of trying to make it work with different vehicles.

I want to know more about this dqve process. How exactly do you trick the Tablet into thinking it is docked

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