I set out to modified my stock sunvisor to house a lilliput for my passenger so they can view a movie or play a game while i used the main screen in the dash for navigation and music controll.
Write Up
1. Remove the sun visor from car
2. Open it up: Mine was basically two halves on a hinge that poped together. Remove any exisiting Glass/Mirror Light fixtures.
3. Remove the fabric/foam: mine was glued on all around the edges and there was little sharp points that pierced the fabric around the edges. Do this carefully as to not rip the fabric/foam. Start at one end and slowly work it free with an exacto blade.
4. Measure out and cut a rectangle shape for the lilliput. Exact Size and Cut are important here.
If you cuts werent 100% straight and clean (Like mine which were ragged pluss i had some recesses where the mirror and light were) Then get a thin sheet of plexi glass (1/8") and recut the shape perfectly. I had the guys at my prototype do the cut on a mill. I epoxied it on and sanded down the edges to smooth the transition with a dremmel
Note: these cuts become less crucial if you plan on fabricating a bezel to place on the front of the LCD. Initially i planned on not having one but later on becasue of other considerations (the screen poked out of the front 1/4") decided to.
5. Install the IR sensor and Buttons. These have to be wired up without the ribbon cable so use
this website as a reference when wiring up the buttons. You will need small gauge wire and thin diameter solder and very sharp tip on your soldering iron.
You will have to purchase other buttons that have a longer reach on them and create a custom backing for them. I did this by hot glueing the Buttons to a thin peice of circuit board material and then make a cylindrical build up of glue for the standoffs. It is a little time consuming but once you have the buttons mounted to the board and the hot glue standoffs then you drill your holes in the front of the Sun Visor and glue the board/buttons with RTV silicone to the Sun Visor. Once that dries then your good to go.
While your drilling holes Drill about 10-20 air circulating holes in the back so heat can escape.
For the IR sensor drill a hole for the window and hotglue into place. Again i had a circular peice of plexi cut on a CNC for the window. I have been told that you can get them premade from
www.mouser.com or
www.digikey.com
6. After you have all of you holes drilled then continue to replace the Fabric portion. Make sure it is lined up perfectly first before you tack it down. I used hot glue.
7. Mark and cut out the fabric where the LCD should go. This is where the clean cuts comes in. Make 45 degree cuts in the corners and leave about 1/2 an inch flaps so you can fold the flaps to the inside. Use hot glue to secure the flaps on the inside
8. Then secure place the lilliput LCD in the sunvisor for a test fit. Work out the internal wire routing. Chances are you are going to have way too much wiring to run through the hinge peice that connects the sun visor to the ceiling of the car so what i did was make a notch in the plastic near the hinge peice where the wire would come out. Then i wrapped the wires with electrical tape for appearance.
9.Install custom bezel. This was made out of a piece of ABS. It was milled to the correct shape and then finished with paint. To attach the bezel to the Sun Visor what i did was drill 4 small holes in each corner on the back side of the bezel. Then i took 4 1/72 screws and grinded the head off. I epoxied them into the holes. I then painted the bezel with 3 coates of black primer waiting 30 minutes between each coat and wetsanding with 1000 grit. The paint turned out excellent. Then I secured the bezel in place with matching nuts on the inside.
10.Label Your buttons. I used Avery Inkjet T-Shirt Transfers (Item 3275) To print out out some buttons I designed in photoshop. When you print them out you have to print the mirror image (You can use the document i attached for buttons if you wish). You can do this by flipping the image in photoshop or if you printer has that option. Next cut out your labels. Crop it as small as you can. Put it on the sunvisor in the right spot. It might be a good idea to use some tape to hold it in place. Next you have to iron it on. Since the labels were so small and using an clothing iron would be tedious. i busted out my soldering gun and put a dime over the label and heated up the dime. This worked out really well. After heating for about 30-45 seconds in a circular motion i let it cool down and peeled of the label. Thats it!!!
Linear Mode
