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Android/iphone Control On Oem Touchscreen Using 'mimicsx2'

Alkatraz
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Alkatraz Rising Star

Alkatraz

Posted
Posted

Hey everyone,

This is for everyone who is looking for a cheap (ish) solution to convert their system to English (sort of). This gives you full control over your smart phone and all of its capabilities. This can actually be used by anyone with any kind of OEM screen in their car, whether it has an existing touch screen or not. If you don't have an existing touchscreen then you will need to install a touchscreen overlay onto your OEM screen.

First things first, here is a video that I slapped together of the system in action. The phone sits snugly in the centre console compartment and everything looks almost completely OEM. Two small switches and the phone sitting in the centre console compartment are the only giveaway.

There are obviously millions of other things that you can use this for, I recently flashed new firmware onto my phone so don't have many apps to tryout. One thing that I am planning is to buy a Bluetooth ODBII dongle and the 'Torque' app from the market, so that I can setup a bunch of extra gauges on the screen and read any error codes that may come up in the future. On an almost stock car with only Intake and exhaust mods, the extra gauges are not really necessary but for anyone thinking of going with FI, this could be VERY useful. You can also get rid of the pointer that comes up on each touch, I just haven't bothered yet.

So now for anyone who is interested in trying the same setup, below is a quick explanation of what is required and a list of all of the parts that I used. Please don't bother asking for a full DIY video because I literally had to do this through trial and error and have absolutely no intention of pulling it all apart and doing it again. I am not a mechanic or an auto sparky and managed to figure out how to get this working, so anyone else should be able to as well.

The first thing that you need to be able to do is get the video from your phone to appear on the OEM system. I went with the RCA connections as this was the easiest and most accessible option, if someone knows of a way to hack into the TV Tuner and use that, let me know because it may result in a higher resolution output than the RCA connections. You then need to be able to pull the head unit apart (easy), pull the touch screen out (easy), pull the touch screen apart to install the MimicsX2 module and reroute the touch screen 4 wire ribbon (slightly harder), run 12V power to the MimicsX2, HDMI converter and MHL cable (this took some fiddling around and there will be probably be better ways than mine), wire up a couple of switches (easy).

1. The most important part http://www.customgadz.com/store/

2. http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=AC1623 (I bought this one because I didnt want to wait, but it does get very hot. I changed the power cable connection to USB. There are other options out there which may be worth trying.)

3. http://compare.ebay.com.au/like/360596549447?ltyp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes (I have a Samsung Galaxy S2 right now, so this plus the HDMI to AV converter is how I get the image on the screen. Depending on what phone you have there will be slightly different requirements.)

4. http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/321065224244?hlp=false (I hard wired this in under the centre console so it is completely hidden. I needed a 1amp USB to power the HDMI-AV converter, one to power the MimicsX2, one to power the Samsung MHL cable. There will be many other ways to get the power to these three things, this is just the way that I ended up going.)

5. Short HDMI cable. (The shortest that seems to exist is 0.5m)

6. Short RCA cables. (I couldn't find any really short ones, so I made my own. Mine are about 20-30cm long.)

5. A switch to select between the MimicsX2 touch screen control and the OEM touch screen control. Again you could mount this anywhere but I mounted it in the gap where the weird phone connector was in the centre console compartment. I moved this connector and the RCA connections into the space below the cup holders, so that everything is hidden and all that shows in the centre console compartment is the switch.

Ok, so now pros and cons.

Pros:

Well this is simple, you can use the OEM touchscreen to control the phone.....anything that runs on your phone runs on the OEM system, simple. There are some small exceptions which are really just related to how the phone works when using the MHL HDMI out cable (see cons).

This system works for almost any smart phone. As long as you can get the phone to output the video to the screen, there you can use this. (Iphone's need to be Jailbroken to do this I believe).

Cons:

The image is not the best, RCA is old tech so does not even come close to comparing to HDMI quality. HDMI has millions of colours, RCA only thousands so the image is nowhere near as sharp. As you can see in the video, it is definitely usable though. If anyone can figure out a way to get an HDMI image (or something better than RCA) onto the screen, please let me know.

Some of the apps do not function 100% perfectly when using the MHL HDMI out cable. With some video programs (youtube etc.) you lose the OSD which makes it hard to fast forward, rewind etc. This is really just a flaw in the Samsung (Android?) system and most of the apps that I have tried work fine.

The GPS signal strength is practically halved as soon as the MHL cable is plugged in. This appears to be another Samsung issue and I am looking at wifi and Bluetooth based GPS boosters as a way around this.

The touch screen is not perfectly accurate yet, its about 90% of where I would like it and CustomGadz is working on new firmware which will help, but it is limited by the quality of the OEM touch screen.

Well there it is, let me know what you guys think. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It definitely needs a little tweaking, but I will be getting a new phone once the 2013 versions start coming out (probably an SGS4). I don't want to waste too much time tweaking it right now, if the video out system changes on the new models.

Cheers

Al

t5iv Grand Master

t5iv

Posted
Posted

Excellent work mate! Looks hawt!

I'm actually in the process of getting something similar set up that alleviates a number of the cons that you have. ;)

Just waiting on some parts to arrive and then should be good to go.

  • 1 month later...

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