i415 Housing and Installation -- Ideas for new users

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Expand view Topic review: i415 Housing and Installation -- Ideas for new users

by lurch » Fri Sep 07, 2007 3:23 pm

what hutch says is correct. in the box its weatherproof. so if your mounting inside the engine compartment or elsewhere that might get wet or too hot it is protected. the one you see pictured was placed inside the trunk of a ford mustang, behind the carpet on the left side of the car. there is a little mounting bracket for an unknown device that my box happened to fit exactly into. my friend owns the cars and his son drives it, more for fun than anything i placed a ford oval logo sticker on the box during installation. to the untrained eye (such as a not so intelligent 16 year old) it looks very much like a factory part. i also have a i455 mounted in a smaller box on my own motorcycle. the mount point is open to the environment and its also right next to the rear wheel. it seems pretty darn weatherproof where its mounted even with the hole in the seal for the power cord. i will upload pictures for it at a later date when time permits. the one on my motorcycle is for fun, my buddies and i take road (and off road) trips. we thought our significant others might like to be able to track our movement when gone for a few days at a time.

LURCH

by hutch109 » Fri Sep 07, 2007 2:27 pm

The box is needed for protection of the unit - if you want to put it outside of the car - or keep it from casual viewers.

Its not needed if you don't mind anyone seeing it or having it scratched up.

box

by quest » Fri Sep 07, 2007 1:59 pm

Why is the box required?

i415 Housing and Installation -- Ideas for new users

by lurch » Mon Aug 13, 2007 10:16 pm

I thought I would share my installation idea/method with anybody else who cares.

Parts Needed:

The usual suspects.

1) Phone
2) Car power adapter

The Optional Parts.

3) Radio Shack power port extension cable ($8.00)
4) Otterbox 3000 ($20.00 +s&h)
5) Small piece of bubble wrap (gratis, ebay seller)


The Creation

All of the Parts.

Image


First thing I did was cut the male connection off of the radio shack power adapter extension cord. Then I stripped the wire ends to ready them for some splice connectors. I had to disassemble the cut off male end connector to verify which lead was positive and negative, marking the negative/ground lead with a piece of black duct tape for easy identification. If this step is skipped and the wires are connected to the vehicle power source backwards, the fuse inside the phones car power adapter will blow.

Image


On the other end of the remaining power extension cord I tied a knot about 1 inch from the receptacle so that...

Image


It will not slip through the hole I cut in the box.

Image


Then it becomes a matter of putting it all together leaving about 9 feet of power cord extending out of the box. I added the small piece of bubble wrap to keep all the parts snug in the box, without the bubble wrap the phone seemed too loose for my liking.

Image

Note: in the above photo the box is an OtterBox 3000, it seems to be an almost perfect fit for the phone and power cords, its a tight fit and with the parts positioned in any other way they will not fit.

The phone picks up the GPS signal just fine through the box, for testing I had it in my glove box and drove all around town for the past few days without any issue.


Now that this unit is installed:

The GPS signal is not at all hindered by the box or the placement of the box. The GPS signal strength is fine when around town, the initial install was in my driveway, I have lots of big trees and the vehicle was parked partially under the house eve giving a bad signal strength indicator that first day. Since then everything has been peachy.


Hope this helps someone.


Lurch

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