Xoom into Saturn
From Phospher
What's in the car
- Two sets of Rockford Fosgate T1652-S component sets (front and rear)
- AudioControl FOUR.1 for line level control and EQ--Thanks Paul!
- Polk Audio Momo C400.4 4 channel amplifier for component sets
- Rocford Fosgate T1500-1bdCP Class BD monoblock amplifier for the sub.
- Resonant Engineering SeX10D4 10" sub woofer in sealed 1.8cft enclosure
- TC Sounds VMP12 Passive Radiator at 390grams
- Belkin A2DP Bluetooth Stereo Receiver
- Motorola Xoom Tablet (removable).
Special Thanks to Jeremy and Paul for the helping hand in getting everything designed, installed and tuned!
What's not in the car
- I removed the Pioneer Premier AVIC F90-BT Navigation head-unit--I was never a fan of this unit. I'll probably install it into my wife's Toyota Solara so that it doesn't goto waste.
Where we're going, we won't need headunits.
April 23, 2011 at 4:45pm PST
The idea is to replace the entire stereo and navigation system in my 2006 Saturn Ion Redline with the Motorola Xoom Tablet, a few amplifiers, new separates and sub woofer.
What I have on hand:
- Motorola Wifi Xoom
- Polk Audio C400.4
- Kicker KX 600.1 Class D, Lightning Audio Storm X1.2000.1D, Audiobahn A4002T and a few others. Need to decide which one to use.
- Two Apline Type-X woofers, one Alpine Type-R woofer and a few Cerwin Vega 124 subs. Again, need to decide which one(s) to use.
- Old Rockford Fosgate separates. Probably need to just buy something new
- Rockford Fosgate 1farad capacitor RFC1
- Plenty of stinger 16awg speaker wire
- Plenty of 4awg power wire
- Fuses/connectors and such
- I have a Belkin Bluetooth Stereo Audio Receiver. I'm going to give it a shot--it'd be nice to run the tablet without wires, making it clean and seamless to remove/re-install the tablet.
- An awesome method to adjust levels AudioControl FOUR.1 Thanks Paul!
- Motorola Droid X rooted and ROM'd with the Liberty spin of Android allowing Wifi teathering to the tablet
What I need:
- Possibly new separates
- Some sort of Mount
- A clever idea and method to mount the Xoom into the dash without blocking controls and vents. Oh yes, and not look like an idiot with a computer in the car that's blocking half of the windshield. The tablet should be removable as well.
April 26, 2011 at 7:43am PST
I ordered the RAM-HOL-TAB6U chassis and RAM-B-138U mounting arm from ram-mount.com.
April 29, 2011 at 10:02am PST
First man on the job
Getting the driver door panel off
Getting there
6.5" removed
New tweeter location
New tweeter location before
New tweeter location almost after
New tweeter location almost after again
New tweeter location after
New tweeter back
New Rockford Fosgate T1652-S 6.5" woofer
New Rockford Fosgate T1652-S 6.5" woofer basket and magnet
Grill that came with the T1652-S set
New spacer. The woofers hit the window
Ready to be installed
It fits!
16awg routed up to the new tweeter location
Checking the blueprints
Driver panel back on
A shot of the complete passenger side
Closeup of tweeter
Closeup of woofer behind door panel
Foreman fell asleep
Ground, constant, switched and illumination
A nice twist
A good portion of the interior removed
Pioneer AVIC F90-BT removed (navigation, etc...)
Center console removed
Twist connected to GM harness
Fosgate T1652-S crossovers
Battery terminals for power distribution block
Rear deck removed
April 30, 2011 at 7:02am PST
C400.4 and 600.1 installed
Horribly blurry shot of high current terminals attached to a extra long GM battery terminal
Initial power-up of distribution block
Mocking up seat back flow
FOUR.1 hookups
FOUR.1 clearance
Dash back together and ready for the RAM Xoom mount
Initial trunk shot of everything put together
I decided to go with a 12" Polk Momo in a sealed box. My TypeR and TypeX woofers took way too much space, and the wife insisted on keeping the spare tire :P. The sub is connect via spades so that it's easily removable, if needed.
The 12" Polk sounds amazingly powerful and clean.
600.1 completely covered by box
Old Motorola USB cell phone charger I'm going to hack up
Phone charger guts
12v in 5v out
This will be the source of clean 5vDC for the Belkin Bluetooth Audio Receiver (it used a 120v wall wart).
April 30, 2011 at 10:52pm PST
I've got the system pretty well tuned. The primary input is connected to the Belkin Bluetooth stereo receiver, the FOUR.1 has an AUX button which its input is connected to a mini-jack cord that I've stuffed under a passenger console panel, for now. I'm planning on moving this to a female surface mount mini-jack for cleaner and easier access. The A2DP BT audio receiver sounds amazing with my Xoom tablet and Droid X phone. Also, the 5v phone charger adapter provides a super clean source of power for the Belkin BT receiver with absolutely zero engine noise.
May 4, 2011 at 11:20pm PST
I canceled my order for the Ram mounting chassis and arm and decided to build something myself for a few reasons. The Ram chassis is spring-loaded which didn't provide for a seamless way to remove/reinsert the tablet, it also didn't provide any means of connectivity. Instead, I purchased the Standard Dock and modified my existing metra dash kit. The dock gives me power and audio. Another plus is when the dock receives power, it turns the tablet screen on--pretty cool.
Dash face removed
Placement
Placement with dock
Mock up of something I might use
Cut dash kit with dock mock up
Opening the Xoom standard dock
Removed upper weight from dock for mounting bolt clearance
Removed upper weight from dock for mounting bolt clearance, again
Bronze back-strap which will be the new mounting support for the dock
A little persuasion...
Perfect
Closeup (two screws go here)
Xoom fit checks
Shot of strap with Xoom in the dock
Xoom clearance without dash face
Xoom clearance with dash face
All back together
Picked up a Xoom car charger
Cracked it open
Surgery
Shrink tube
12-18v in, clean 12v out.
All done!
Again...
And again...
Bass knob arrived today!
May 4, 2011 at 11:51pm PST
So far so good. The dock is rock solid during my test drives--no bouncing or shaking whatsoever, and the screen lights up with I turn the key on. The primary input to the AudioControl FOUR.1 is the hardwired line-out from the dock. The AUX input to the FOUR.1 is the Belkin Bluetooth A2DP receiver.
The only cost in getting the Xoom into the car was the price of the dock ($28.99).
So far, I haven't seen a need to add additional support. The tablet lays nicely against the dash face--I may however add more support for piece of mind.
May 13, 2011 at 10:28pm PST
Unboxing the TC Sounds 12" Passive Radiator
Unboxing the Resonance Engineering SeX10D4 driver
May 15, 2011 at 10:41pm PST
We picked up a 1.8cuft sealed 15" pre-fab enclosure from a local stereo shop for a good price.
Special thanks to Paul for his hard work modeling the enclosure, radiator and driver combinations.
Massive amounts of excursion. This combination far surpassed our expectations.
- Enclosure tuning frequency is 27Hz
- F3 is 23Hz
- Net internal volume 1.6cuft
- 390grams "mms" of mass on the passive radiator
The video merely demonstrates excursion and the movement of the passive radiator--no justice in sound quality. This thing sounds amazing!
June 14, 2011 at 9:43pm PST
I wasn't happy with the Kicker KX600.1. The amp wouldn't make any power without the "bass boost" knob turned up. After setting the gain with the oscilloscope, the amp put a total of 532 measured RMS watts to my subwoofer. Not bad, but not enough.
You can't see it, but this is an awesome app. It generates tones from 20Hz-20kHz. The GUI hasn't been optimized for tablets :/
June 14, 2011 at 10:37pm PST
The idea of the new system
The RCA level knob will probably end up being a voltage divider to attenuate source 3.
June 14, 2011 at 10:41pm PST
The MiniDSP devices arrived today!
July 6, 2011 at 10:11am PST
The TC VMP passive radiator at 390 grams and the RE sEX10D4 is an amazing combination and sounds great--but I think I'm after something louder. Paul is using the Fi Car Audio Q series 15" and handles an amazing amount of power with ease, I may go with the 12" version. The 12" models well in BB6 with a nice hump around 45Hz, which I think I want. I'm also considering the RE sEX12D4 or the sXX12D4. The RE subs model much flatter and lower, so we still need to run through a few different models in different enclosures. The enclosure I'm running know was a POC, I believe we'll build something custom that spans the back seats and is hidden with a beauty board.
Also, after upgrading the sub amp (KX600.1 to T1500-1bdcp), I've measured 985RMS watts going to the sEX10D4. The RE sub handles the power like a champ without any problems.
