Ipad and Andromeda Installation

I'm extremely sorry to anyone who has been trying to follow my progress recently; my internet has been acting up a bit and I've been doing a bit of traveling for my internship on the side.

Anyways, the Andromeda finally managed to make it's way here from the west coast. I was really surprised to see the size of it, I was hoping it might be a tiny bit larger - but it will still do the job.

I put 12v onto the screen and it booted up nicely.

I had a bit of difficulty trying to figure out where I wanted to put the Andromeda. At first I wanted it to replace the stock dashboard gauges but it turns out we still need the stock speedometer  as we still need more equipment for the Andromeda for it to read the constantly fluctuating voltage from the speedometer sensor. And the Andromeda screen doesn't have an odometer so it might be sort of nice to still keep the stock gauges. 

This was the final position for both the Ipad and the Andromeda after a long time of putting them in different places to try and get the perfect spot for both.

I was a little worried at first but I believe all of the air vents are connected to each other, so the air that would have originally blown out of this goes to the other three vents. There is a little gap right below the wooden plug for the Andromeda wires to sneak down behind the dashboard to connect with the other 12v wires (headunit, the wires from the amp, etc).

I was trying to imagine where I wanted the headunit to sit behind the Ipad. 

Back to 4th grade tactics I suppose? I used a piece of cardboard to plan out the mount for the headunit (and just about anything else that needed to be mounted in place in slightly more complex locations). 

My Dad found some scraps of birds eye maple lying around and even though you won't really be able to see much of it, it would still look fairly nice in the dashboard.

Using this saw is one of the most infuriating things I have ever experienced. First you need to use a drill to drill through the wood and then you need to turn the saw around as you come around corners or need to change direction. But the blade is so flimsy that you can just break it with a really careless turn of the wrist. 

And unfortunately the saw wouldn't get all of the little details around the corners - so I filed them out with one of my dad's wood files. 

My Dad had to do this part as it got a little tricky. This is brazing (the welding of brass essentially), which got really really really bright - I had to wear two pairs of sunglasses to be able to see without hurting my eyes. Borax acts as a flux for the brazing rod. 

I had to cool the pieces off instantly so the flux peels off and doesn't stay on the pieces.

I am still a little nervous about the effect that these neodymium magnets (the strongest magnet a consumer can buy on the market) will have on the Ipad but my Ipad mini has a SSD (solid state drive) which is not affected in the same way that a regular hard drive is by magnetic fields. And the Ipad also does not have a true LCD screen so it will not get so dim over time - but these magnets are still really strong so I will just have to wait and see what actually happens to the Ipad over time. 

I epoxied them to my awesome G-Form Ipad mini case. Visit G-FORM to pick one up for yourself. I highly recommend it if you truly wish to protect your Ipad. 

Here are the drilled holes into the back of the birds eye maple piece for the Ipad to really stick onto there.

And this is the final installation for both the Ipad and the Andromeda. I actually forgot to plug the RCA cables from the amp into the back of the headunit the first time I assembled the whole thing so I had to undo the past two hours of my work to plug the cables into the headunit and redo the whole thing which was a little depressing but it looked fantastic when it was done.

First Audio Test with the Ipad in the dashboard

But I was still having a lot of static in the speakers when I turned up the gain on the amp, and even though we got rid of the alternator and the engine we won't have any of the whine from the engine in the speakers - there was still a possibility that there might be a bit of whine from the DC motor. So I ordered a ground loop isolator from amazon that plugs between the RCA cables of the head unit and amp. Audio Test with GLI The audio is completely crisp now with hardly any noticeable static and no pop in the speakers when I change sources.