Display extender install in a Ford Mondeo

Greetings all

Finally I have taken the time to install the display extender I got from Stu in august '08.

The hard part was to figure out where to put the display unit. My car has a factory installed 2 DIN touch screen and I did not want to throw that out.

I got rid of the overhead sunglass compartment instead. The display is now held in place by a milky coloured plastic plate that fits over the hole where the sunglass 'drawer' was. It's been glued with hot glue that makes it easy to dismantel if I sell the car.

The flat cable connecting the display to the head unit runs over the ceiling. It took some time to get the cable from the side and over to the center without messing with the side airbags.

The power comes from the power outlet in the cargo compartment. I have to get a noise reduction component, because I get noise from the empegs drives and from the engine.

I use the sled, but not the cables. I only needed power, ethernet and line out to the AUX on the car stereo. I guess the noise might come from bad earth wiring. Need to look into that.

I don't need to pull the empeg out to upload music to it. I connect it to a Linksys WAP54G Access Point. It a kind of a bridge I get acces to via my wireless network. It's not installed i nthe car - so I have to plug in the cables and turn it on every time I upload music. If I can find room for it I'll install it this summer.

Unfortunately I did not have my camera in hand when I did the install. Here are some from the (almost) complete install.


Don't mind the crack in the windscreen


It almost looks like a factory install. The buttons are a tad far into the display unit due to the plastic plate I have in between the circuit board and the fascia. I have to use the fingertip to press them in.


I mounted the sled on a piece of wood and fittet that over a large hole in the wheel arc wall.


This is where the ethernet cable and the power switch comes out.


The flat data cable runs across the ceiling.


I think it look very nice! I am a bit worried that the display is to heavy for the clips holding the console. Time will show...


This is the sunglass drawer with the bits I need to refit.


The wireless access point.

Wow! That is a very nice job!

That's a brilliant install!

Except for one thing:



You got away with this because it's probably cool weather where you're at right now. Please, for the love of all that's holy, get in there and peel away that hotglue right now, before the weather warms up and it's too late.

As soon as the weather warms up and the sun hits your car, that hotglue is going to melt right off, drip all over your upholstery, and gum up whatever objects you were gluing in place. Hot melt glue is just not appropriate for vehicle installations.

I learned this the hard way when I did my radar detector stealth install. It took a while to clean everything up and re-do it all with RTV silicone.

Looks great!

Woops... didn't think of that. I really need to address that as soon as possible. It's been around 8 degrees celcius today, but it's getting warmer later this week.

I just got in from taking some night pictures, and the light from the lit buttons reflects in the milky white plate. I need to find some other material - and then I'll use silicon glue.

Thank you for the heads up!

At what temperature does the hot glue melt?

According to Wikipedia, it is either 120ºC (250ºF) or 195°C (380°F), depending on whether you used the high temp or the low temp glue.

It's possible that if you used the high temp glue you might be all right up there in Norway, but in certain parts of the States on a hot summer day in the sun, even the high temp glue wouldn't survive in the headliner of my car.

Great install Kyrre!

Brilliant. Thanks for posting this. Spring has arrived here in Seattle and it is time for me to use one of my two extender kits.

Can I fly to Oslo to inspect?

Sure you can fly to Oslo to inspect the install

I'll even pick you up at the airport (35 min from my house).

Yesterday I got the network going. I can now sit in the livingroom updating the empeg via WLAN. Next step is to get a device that remotely turns the power on and off on the network euipment so the battery doesn't run out of juice overnight. I tend to forget to turn it off... It's not really a problem now - but over time I guess it will wear out.

Anyone know of such device?

BTW: I work for the air line company Norwegian, and we just got a brand new 737-800 #6000 from Boeing. The factory is in Seattle, right? See some pictures here

That's a lot of planes. I remember being impressed on an Orion Airways flight when I read that their fleet included the 737th 737, though that wasn't the plane I was on.

Peter

Yes, it's called an "empegcar" (or Riocar).

The way this has been done before, is to set the shutdown timer in the empeg to be, say, 20 minutes, rather than the usual few seconds.

This gives you 20 minutes to connect to the empeg over wireless after parking the car. After that, it shuts off. Use the amp-remote connection from the empeg to also switch power off on the wireless client box. No more battery problems.

A software hook is needed somewhere to prevent the empeg from shutting down while the wireless is in-use. I don't remember how most people do that, but it's an easy kernel hack if nothing else.

crazymelki had all of this set up rather nicely once. I wonder if the Search function here can find the details of his setup ?

Didn't TonyC do this some time ago too?

Stig

Could have been. I do seem to recall that there was more than just crazemelki doing this.

Hehe... it's not our plane #6000 - it's Boeing's We just happened to get that exact plane.

We are getting 53 737-800 the next four years or so. Our fleet today contains 26 737-300 and 5 737-800.

Found it!

I also discovered that the illuminated buttons have one setting for indoor use, and one for the sled. I thought I broke it after switching to the sled wiring and the lights went off. Need to use the empeg more often.

I forgot to shut the empeg off for two days , so on wednesday the interior lights didn't even turn on. I had to call for a tow car to get me going. It was one of those days. I was really stressed out - going to a meeting - and then this thing with the battery happened.

Had to wait thirty minutes for the tow car, and broke all records (and laws) on my way to work - coming in 15 minutes late for the meeting. Exept, the meeting was an hour later... bugger! Took me two hours to get my heart rate down...

I had this problem with the MP3mobile VFD that I hot-melt-glued into my MX5 dash... the summer of '97 was very hot and the display just fell out after leaving the car parked in the sun for a few hours

Hugo

When I was doing the wireless connect thing, I just would turn the empeg back on after I turned the car off. I set emplode to turn it off when I was done uploading.

Nice work on that install. All these remote display jobs really pave the way for the future life of empegs.

This image caption should be:

ATTENTION THIEVES



Just kidding. Totally stealth install, nobody will even notice. Nice work.

I don't think any Norwegian burglars would ever find this post They are just to darn stupid.

The hot glue still holds. It's not that hot in Norway, I guess. If I'm visiting my dad's in Spain next summer I will have to replace it with some sillycone.