[Nexus 10 General] Andbanyan:
posted this in the accessories section but maybe it belongs here

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Alright so I made that dock for when the Nexus 10 is at home, but what if I want it in the car? Next project! I basically used the Exogear Tablet Mount along with Pogo Cable and Griffin Bluetooth Adapter to fully intergrate the Nexus 10 into my car. Thought I'd write up the details just like the dock in case anyone wanted to give it a go.

There's actually a lot that went into this, because:

1) It charges the tablet

2) Integrates with my car speakers

3) Is tethered to my phone, also mounted in the car

Stuff Used:

1) Tablet Mount

2) Pogo Cable

3) Phone Mount

4) Tablet Bluetooth

5) Phone Bluetooth

6) Power Adapter

7) Add a Circuit

8) Cigarette Lighter Adapter

9) AUX mixer

10) AUX Cable

11) PIE Interface

12) RCA Cable

13) Passive Amp

14) Ground Loop isolator

Step by Step

Step one was finding a mount/holder for the tablet. This one from exogear worked perfectly. I wanted charging, so I knew I wanted to integrate the pogo cable in somehow. I thought I would have to mod the holder a little but it was perfect as is - the pogo fits snuggly in the bottom:

Just force the usb end of the pogo into the hole at the bottom of the holder and you're good to go. I won't go into the details of removing the dash because every car is different, so I'l just say, get that cable inside the dash and leave it for now, we'll get back to it later. Lets stay on the outside for now. Next step, mount the phone:

Pretty simple. I found this mount to be the best - it was simple and allowed me to mount and dismount the phone quickly. I zip tied a charging cable for my phone and snaked that into the dash.

I integrated to my car stereo through bluetooth. But I wanted both the phone and the tablet to be connected. So I got two bluetooth devices. The trip here was to find ones that would auto connect without pressing any buttons on them since at least one would be behind the dash. And this was surprisingly hard to find. But this one from Griffin was exactly what I needed. It just plugs into a cigarette lighter and has a cable for Aux fro sound.

For the phone, I wanted one that I could use for calls and could control the phone with. So I mounted this little guy from Kinivo to the steering wheel. The one wire coming out of it split at the end to an aux for audio and a cigarette lighter plug. Bring that cable inside the dash.

Ok, so inside the dash is where all the magic happens.

So now we have to power everything. We have the following: USB from the pogo of the tablet, USB for the phone, 2 cigarette lighter plugs. Let's plug it all into this guy

But first you're going to have to modify it a little bit. So even though it says it can output 2.1A and 1A, that's only for apple products. Android handles things a little differently. If android detects that you're plugged into a usb port rather than a wall charger, it will only pull 500 mA regardless of what current is available. So we need to tell android that this is a higher current source. We do this by soldering the the two data lines in the usb together. The data lines are the middle two of the four. Just open up the case for the adapter and drop a ball of solder on the board for the middle two pins of both USB connectors. Trust me it works!

Now we need to plug the adapter into a power source. The easiest way to do this is to plug it into and cigarette lighter. But you don't find those inside the dash and I didn't want any cable on the outside, at least as little as possible. I wanted all the guts to be hidden. So for me, I had the fuse box under the driver's side dash which I wanted to tap into, and I think most cars have a fuse box in the same area. Find a fuse that is only powered when the engine is off. This is important, we don't want to drain the battery when the car is off. Once you find the fuse, get yourself an Add a Circuit . Very handly little guy. I used a 7.5 Amp fuse which was more than enough current to power everything.

Once you got that in, you'll need a cigarette lighter adapter. Connect that into your add a circuit and plug your power adapter into it and, boom, everything is powered.

Now we have to deal with the audio. I wanted both devices to have access to the speakers at the same time. So I needed a mixer. The strange thing is there is no such thing available for sale that I could find. I only saw stuff for high end musical equipment and so on. So I had to build my own. There's good guide how to do that here so i won't detail the instructions here. Those instructions are to build a 4 to 1 mixer, but we only need a 2 to 1, so it's a bit more simple but the basics are the same.

OK once you have that, plug your two AUX cable into the input and get yourself an Aux cable for the output.

So is where each car is different, but you need to get a PIE interface. Just find one for whatever car you have and use it with RCA Cable to hook into your car stereo.

Bonuses

1) If you find that you're volume is pretty low (which is likely due to the mixer), you'll need to get yourself an amp and put it in line. I got a passive one from here :http://phpaudio.jigsy.com/passive-preamp and I can vouch that it works great.

2) Be aware of the ground loop. If you're hearing excess noise, you might be coupled into you car's ground loop. The telltale of this is if the pitch of the static noise changes as you accelerate. If you get that, there's an easy fix. Get yourself a ground loop isolator to put in line.

Software

To wrap up, there are a few pieces of software that make the thing even better. One is of course Tasker. Set it up so that your phone automatically turn on wifi tether when it connects to both the bluetooth of the car and to the tablet. Second is Tablet Talk. It allows you to dial, answer and make calls from the tablet. It's an awesome piece of software and has great Tasker integration.

That's all I got!