In December I purchased a brand spanking new Galaxy Nexus phone. This was Google's new flagship model for their Android phone line and I was impressed. It came with a new and much tidier OS than any phone I'd seen and it seemed capable of anything. I wanted to hook it to my car so I could listen to tunes. We all know the old Subaru headunits lack any kind of AUX input. So I went looking for a headunit to play nice with my new phone. For a company that's trying to get their wares on the same pedestal as Apple's Iphone. I was very disappointed to see almost no options. The Iphone had dedicated headunits. Most just offered some generic USB connectivity. Which was not guaranteed to work with my Nexus. Bummer.
While shopping for headunits I also noticed something. What do these headunits have that my new phone didn't?
-GPS
-Navigation
-Music Playback
-Video Playback
-Internet Radio
-Bluetooth
-Touch Screen
-Hands Free calls
My phone has all of these features. Most of these units costed over $1,000 with all those bells and whistles. They also had lackluster user interfaces straight out of the 90's. Come to think of it. Most smartphones have better UI's all of these features and your whole music collection. Why would I need another redundant piece of hardware?
Smartphones also have..
-Internet Browser
-App Store
-Phone
-Torque App
-Voice Commands
Not to mention that Google's native Nav software is leaps and bounds better than any others. So I thought. Why can't my phone just BE my headunit? The easy answer is the phone has no amplifier. Audio only comes out over a 3.5mm stereo jack designed for headphones. Amplifiying this signal would work, but the resulting quality would suffer. So I did some research on the XDA Developers forums and found the Nexus Car dock! 3.5mm LINE OUT!! And Usb Charging. Not to mention It uses three small pogo pins to connect to the phone which means no wires!!
I bought an amp and the dock and went to work.
Glove compartment seemed like so much wasted space. I also didn't want to run wires to the hatch which I use quite frequently. The best part is that all of the things that used to be in the glove box still fit. The box works perfectly.
Had to create a new headunit. Used a generic black plastic box. The dremel and I became good pals. I love dremel tools! Used the side of the stock headunit and cut and chopped till it all fit together and looked seemless from outside.
One of the trickiest parts was how I was going to control the volume of the amp. I also wanted to be able to just plug in a friends Ipod or whatever with no issue. Had to go to an electronics hardware store and buy some potentiometers (Variable resistor). Then fab up a homemade RCA cable whose throughput was controlled by the knob. The Car Dock puts out a LINE OUT signal with no volume control. If I didn't have a volume knob it would just rage max volume on the amp. The knob is also way easier to operate while driving. The jack I made just runs in series to that.
Disassembling the Samsung Car Dock sketched me out something fierce. The original start to this project way back in march. At that point I jumped in assuming that a car dock for this phone would be out soon. I was wrong. Rumors of a cancelled car dock and 4 months on back-order, I received it. It cost me around $60 and I was timid about trying to crack it open without breaking it. Lucky for me I did not have to cut wires and re-solider them. Once I had it apart the wires simply unplugged from the board. Thank Gob!!
Getting the car dock inside the dash in a secure way was an issue. I thought about epoxy but figured it wouldn't last the cold months. I ended up using a left over piece of plastic to stick the window mount suction cup to. It's surprisingly wedged in there in such a way that it's super stable.
Final product. Sounds excellent. So many features. Looks better in person than in photos and gave me that love of modding buzz.
One of my favorite things about this project. Torque app displaying some gauges and a whole host of great information.
Cheers
