Follow our guide to upgrading your
motor’s in car system with an Android tablet.
People have been doing it for years;
unhappy with the limitations of the factory stereo systems found inside cars,
or even those that can be bought off the shelf at Halfords and designed
primarily with music in mind, ordinary folk have been shoehorning in fully functioning
PCs in an effort to create the ultimate in car entertainment system.
Well, those ordinary folk aren’t quite so
ordinary because they’re automotive enthusiasts with the necessary knowledge
and drive to carry out such a thing that either belongs on a desktop or perched
on our laps – it’s certainly not supposed to go in a car.
“Out
of the box, android is tailored to work in a car”
Apart from the cost and massive effort that
it requires, hacking away at your interior in order to permanently install a
computer isn’t very practical. But technology has moved on a lot since the
‘carputer’ was invented. Instead of a Windows box, a hacksaw and nerves of
steel, people are starting to use Android tablets instead. After all, modern
tablets can do practically everything their desktop counterparts can, and more.
Sure, plenty of people are still doing it
the traditional way. There’s nothing wrong with fitting a conventional PC, but
it’s so much easier to install a tablet, it seems crazy not to go down this
route.
One of the main advantages of the tablet
approach is that it’s not a permanent one, so the device can be removed from
the car after it’s served its purpose, or when it’s time to upgrade. Tablets are
also relatively inexpensive the example in this feature costs just $150 – so
anyone can have a go at installing it inside a car if they fancy it.
Easy access
But the best thing about using tablet PC in
car is all the wonderful things you can do with it to make long, tiresome
journeys easier and more entertaining. To begin with, tablets – particularly
those running the Android operating system come with an excellent, free,
satellite navigation application built in, which helps you get from A to B
easily and quickly.
They can also play music and movies, and
you can even surf the internet or send emails on the go – basically everything
you can already do on it, but all this functionality is available at your
fingertips so you’re never without access to information. Tablets are seriously
easy to use in a rush, too, thanks to their easy-to-navigate menu systems and
responsive touchscreens.
If you only drive very infrequently, you
might not get much benefit from an in-car PC, but for those of us who spend a
considerable amount of time on the road, it’s a real boon. Sure, you can do all
this on a smartphone, but a screen size of at least seven inches makes tablets
much easier to work with. Bigger tablets with screens larger than 10 inches are
probably pushing it a little, but mid-sized devices like the 7 inch Archos 70
Internet Tablet pictured here seem to be the sweet spot.
But the problem with the tablet is that
it’s not really designed to go inside a car, much like a desktop PC isn’t
supposed. That throws up all sorts of problems. Where are you supposed to
install a tablet inside a car? How do you connect to the internet, and how do
you even see the thing when it’s a sunny day? Thankfully, these are all minor
hurdles that are relatively easy to get over, provided you know what you’re
doing.
Installing a tablet PC can be approached in
the same way that you’d install a smartphone inside a car, only no one really
makes a cradle for devices this big. There’s a variety of ‘universal’ cradles
on the market that you can use to fit any kind of tablet, although some of them
are of dubious quality. We decided to make our own simple Velcro in car mount
instead – no sniggering, it really works and it costs practically nothing so if
you don’t like it, it’s easy to reverse the changes. Check out the walkthrough
on the right.
Apps
like YouTube can help keep passengers entertained on long journeys, so you can
concentrate on the road without “help” from backseat drivers
Once you’ve found somewhere suitable to
mount your device, you’re pretty much ready to start using it straight away.
Our operating system of choice is Android, simply because out of the box it’s
tailored to work best in a car, so it doesn’t take much to set it up.
The Car Home app
For this kind of work, Google has included
a dedicated app called the Car Home application, which gives you easy access to
the functions on your tablet that will be of most use in your car, including
music, navigation and finding points of interest on a map. Whenever you get in
the car and turn your tablet on, this is where you’ll want to head.
In the apps menu, look for the Car Home
application and open it. If it’s not there, you can download it from the
Market. On the first screen that appears you have a variety of functions at
your disposal, but first we recommend swiping the screen right to access the
secondary menu. From here you can adjust the brightness settings choose from
Daylight, Night, or just set it to Automatic.
If you want to customize what you see on
Car Home, it’s easy to do so by simply adding new shortcuts to the main menu.
Just click ‘Add shortcut’ and choose one from the available menus. Any that you
don’t like can be removed simply by holding your finger down on them and
dragging them to the bin.
You can choose to listen to your music
collection by tapping the ‘Music’ shortcut and searching for a song, but the
most valuable app in the collection is Navigate. Just tap on it and it
determines your whereabouts in seconds. You can then enter your destination and
it gives you turn-by-turn navigation instructions. Alternatively, you can tap
the ‘Speak Destination’ icon and say where you want to go. You can give it
either an address or a venue you’d like to visit “the theatre”, for example.
The only slight setback of Android
navigation is that maps aren’t pre-loaded and must be loaded on the fly.
Subsequently, a mobile data connection is essential. 3G isn’t always reliable
wherever you drive, but thankfully Navigation still works if your connection is
dropped partway through your journey.
1. Get the ingredients
An easy way to fix your tablet to your dash
is to use old-fashioned Velcro. It might seem a little basic, especially when
you’ve just shelled out $450 for a new tablet, but it works. Get yourself some
Velcro strips, but not any old ones – you’ll need the heavy duty stuff so your
tablet won’t fly off the dash when you’re going round corners.
2. Ready your tablet
Once you have your Velcro strips, attach
one side your tablet. Fix one to the top and one to the bottom for maximum
strength when it’s attached to your dash, or use a long, thick piece and affix
it to the middle of your tablet. If you’ve got pre-cut strips, you’re set to
go, otherwise cut them to shape. Apply more to make it more secure.
3. Attach it to your dash
Find a suitable spot for attaching your
tablet to your dashboard – a flat surface works best, although a curved area is
also fine. Ten apply the other half of your Velcro strips to your dash so that
they attach to the strips already applied to your tablet.
Now just attach the tablet to the dash and
you can start using its in-car functions.
1. Charge it up
While those perky review writers might rave
about your new tablet’s battery life, if its constant demand while you’re
driving along, it’ll last about five minutes. To avoid ending up with a tablet
running on empty, you need an in-car charger in the form of a 12V adapter. You
can pick these up from Amazon for under a fiver.
2. Installation
You need to mount your tablet. Sure, you
might be able nestle a smart phone in an air vent, but try the same thing with
a tablet and your health is at risk – imagine a kilo of wafer-thin plastic
heading towards your face in an accident. There are some universal mounts
available, or you can make your own, as shown on the previous page.
3. Sun screen
It’s amazing how little you can see on the
screen of your tablet once the sun comes out, so you should invest in a screen
protector. You’ll need to shop around because there are many tablets out there.
We found an anti-glare screen protector for the Archos 70 on the Archos website
store for less than $15.5 (www.bit.ly/xJbcft).
4. Turn it up
Tablets don’t have the finest audio, so why
not port the sound through your stereo? The easiest way is to connect your
tablet through its headphone socket to your car stereo’s auxiliary input via a
3.5 mm analogue audio cable. Or you can use an FM transmitter to output sound
to the car’s speakers. Bluetooth is an option if your stereo has it.
5. An internet connection
Some of a tablet’s functions only work when
you’re connected to the internet. To enable a 3G data connection, you can
tether a smartphone to it or get hold of a Mi-Fi device, which lets you connect
multiple devices wirelessly. This is particularly useful if you have more than
one tablet or smartphone and want them all connected at once.
6. In-car apps
What good is your tablet without some apps
to help you get the most from it in its new surroundings? Most Android tablets
come with free satellite navigation, and there are apps that turn off
unnecessary functions that might interfere with others.
There are even some that tell you what
speed you’re doing or what the weather forecast is like.
1. Get set up
Typing on your mounted tablet is slow and
annoying, but you don’t need to brother using your digits each time you want to
navigate to an address. Android has a voice function built in, so you can use
your mouth to issue commands instead. To find the voice navigation application,
go to the Car Home app in apps menu.
2. State your business
From here, tap ‘Speak Destination’ (Ok- you
do need to use your fingers once) and the Navigation app finds your current
location. Then just speak the address of the destination you want to reach and
the app finds it for you in moments. If it’s a particularly long address,
you’ll appreciate how much time you save doing it this way.
3. Find an unknown address
If you want to go somewhere but aren’t sure
of the address, you don’t have to fumble about searching for it. Tell Speak
Destination roughly what you’re looking for (the Imperial War museum in London,
for example) and search for you using the power of the cloud, finds your
destination automatically and starts navigating you towards it.
In-car tablets and the law
UK law hasn’t kept pace with the speed of
technological advancement, and as it stands there is no legislation aimed
specifically at using a tablet in a car. The only information that might apply
is aimed at smartphones and states that it’s only a crime if you’re holding the
device while you make a call, send a text message or access the internet while
the car is moving.
It isn’t illegal to use the device hands-free
or access satellite navigation, but you can still get clobbered by the police
if they believe you’re not in control of your vehicle while you’re doing so.
Obviously, you don’t want to be seen using the touchscreen while you’re
driving. Nor do you want to be seen watching Toy Story 3 while bombing down the
M1.
In other words, you’ll be fine to use your
tablet in-car as long as you exercise a little common sense. Make sure your
tablet is properly secured too – although it’s not illegal to have a tablet on
the loose, it is dangerous.
Check your car’s performance
The Torque app tells exactly what your
engine is doing while it’s running. There is a variety of information
available, such as how much power and torque your engine has, what the fuel and
air status is, and – if you have one of those fancy turbochargers bolted to
your motor – how much turbo boost is being used.
Proper boy racers will rejoice, because you
can also measure your 0-60mph and quarter-mile time, as well as search through
a list of logged faults if it all goes wrong. You can even customize the main
display to show only your favorite functions, and there’s huge list of other
options you can add whenever you get bored.
All this doesn’t come cheap, though, and
the Torque app alone will cost you $4. You also need a compatible OBDII
Bluetooth adapter, which connects to the OBDII port in your car and sends the
appropriate electronic signals to your tablet via Bluetooth.
(Pic: Install Torque to find out what’s
going on under your bonnet.
The app presents masses of data. Who need a
rolling road? )
