I bought the Longruner 7" touchscreen to try first and received it this morning. I plugged the HDMI and USB-C in and it worked perfectly right out of the box so I am going with it. I took the new media centre enclosure out of the bag today and it looks good, just need to sand the flashing off the edges and prep it for the copper sheet I'm going to wrap it in. Then attach the touch screen to the enclosure, mount the SBC and get it installed in my car...hopefully by this weekend.
http://longrunerpro.com/a/Products/20181122/109.html
Started covering the media centre enclosure in copper and learned a couple of lessons while doing so. The copper sheet I am using is .4mm (1/64th Inch) thick and while this might not sound very thick the sheet is not as easy to work with as I thought it would be...mostly it is not as ductile as I had hoped. I ended up bagging it on with MDF pressure plates applied between the copper and bag doing one side at a time using 15 minute epoxy. I got the majority of the enclosure covered and I'll finish the rest up today.
If I ever do this again I will make sure that the enclosure and sheeting are the exact same width. I could of fabbed a new enclosure and made things easier but I decided to tough it out and so far I'm glad I did.
Just about finished with the media centre install, need to modify the right front AC vent to accept the HDMI and USB-C cables that go from the SBC to the display. I looked for a display that had the connections on the back or bottom but had no luck finding one so it is what it is. I meant to do a lot more work on the system today but I sat in the car listening to music for almost 3 hours and suddenly it was getting dark out. My wife came out to see what I was up to and she sat with me for about half an hour listening...pretty sure I'm on the right track sound wise.
I might change my plan for mounting the midrange-tweeter drivers from top of the dash to door mounted angled up into the cabin...going to do a dry mount to check it out and then decide.
After considering all the +'s and -'s I've decided it's going to be the doors. This morning I did the aiming for the pods from the bottom of the door card to my listening position then modded the pods for the correct aiming angle. I cut the angle into the pods, wet out four layers of mat and two layers of 10 ounce cloth on a piece of mylar, laid the cut open pod backs on the wet out composite, added weight to the front of the pods while things cured after which I laid two 'glass strips inside the pods to secure the new backs in place...very solid connection. While the resin was curing I ran the 'speaker wires for the new set up...a very enjoyable day of work on my system with sunny blue skies and a hot cup of tea making things even better.
With this set up the centres of the drivers are within 16 centimetres of each other which should make setting the delays less of a hassle and I like the fact that the music (except for the subwoofer frequencies) will be launched from one small area.
Last edited by Donanon; 10-14-2020 at 10:09 PM.
Spent the day re-doing and shortening the grounds on the 12V buffer and media player and got the grills done for the speaker enclosures.
Also moved the buffer from the front of the cabin to the rear amp rack so now all grounds are star grounded. Since the +/- wires to the media player are now longer I took the wire runs up a couple of gauges.
Last edited by Donanon; 10-17-2020 at 08:48 PM.
All wiring is now complete and loomed, the speaker enclosures are attached to the doors and all I need to do now is mount the DSP, the media centre, the fuses and start tuning. If the rain holds off tomorrow I should get most of it done.
Got the drivers in and grills on the speaker enclosures. The grills are pressure fit and I added a few small neo magnets for insurance. I'm going to paint the magnets and speaker hold down bolts black tomorrow as I find the shiny bolts a bit distracting. I also re-mapped the speaker wire today...just to be sure.
Going to be a delay in this build log as I have come down with Covid19 and am feeling like shit. So to be continued.