Brainiac 10" Tablet Mod - Who is rocking these?

Girald

Im referring to this, for the ones who dont know... The best looking infotainment upgrade that ive seen
https://workshoptwelve.com/nissan-370z/

Ok, so who out there has it installed?? Problems, no problems?
What paint did you use, and did it match the dash, etc [ yes there is a youtube on painting but they dont specify the product number ( paint can ) that works perfect...] What was the order to delivery lag time and did you come up with great fixes for some of the lost functionality from OEM?

Car: 370z sport tech
Goal: OEM nav gone and sexy dash in

So, I went ahead and ordered this kit with the 1.5 option .. path of least resistance. The idea is to get the ecutek dashboard setup ( completly craps all over the mini gauge dash screen for the R35) and of course have google maps among other things.

So, right off the bat, im accepting that I wont have steering wheel infotainment controls, back up camera or or hands free ( FOR NOW) There are solutions for all of that, but If i can take it in stages then im happy.

Aside from trying to figure out an Arduino approach to making some night hud displays, this looks liek a bad *** project...

Thoughts?

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bunk

That looks really nice! BUT, the lost functionality, having to paint stuff yourself, kinda loses it for me. Your goal is to have the ecutek dashboard, so this would be great for you though. Update this thread after you have everything installed

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cooltoy

I believe there is a few in this thread. Not sure if they are still around, but you can PM them.


VOTE for the 370z to be the next car that gets brainiac!!!

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husam2012

I have the V1 of the kit. It's great but definitely involved. I had a body shop sand and paint mine for $100. PM me if you want the details for the audio and other stuff as I have to dig through my order history.

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NorthStyle

I have the V1 version in my car as well, and as husam2012 said: it's a bit involved, especially if you want it to sound good.

The paint I used was Duplicolor RBA100 flat black, but the Duplicolor PAE101 semi-gloss black is a close match as well.

You can order a JoyCon to have steering wheel controls work, there's a brief write-up somewhere on the forum that explains how to wire it up. I haven't cared enough to figure it out just yet but I did go ahead an order the parts. Heads up: they've been difficult to order in the States lately and had to have a friend in Germany order one directly from the company, then send it to me from there.

Back up camera/hands free... they're working on that but I just added the OEM reverse camera mirror to my Nismo; cost around $250-300 off of ebay but not a route everyone may want to take.

Problems.... not a lot, but enough to be frustrating.
1. With the V1 kits, if your tablet dies you have to take the entire center apart to pull the tablet for charging. There is a workaround where you can configure the tablet to power up once it sees power, but I ran into an issue where either a) it would take 5-10 minutes to do so then b) eventually, it wasn't pulling enough power to run the startup while powering the tablet so it would get halfway through powerup then shutdown and enter a reboot cycle indefinitely...

Solution: I added a USB "Y" so that I now have the option to plug my tablet in through the wall outlet in my garage so that if I'm not driving it often (which I don't), I just plug it in and it can sit.

2. Sound from the tablet's 3.5mm is garbage, plain and simple. I already had an aftermarket 4ch amp, however even when using the amp's built-in crossover, it wasn't enough to separate the frequencies so the sound was muddied.

Solution: I added a Clarion electronic crossover and used that for complete frequency separation before going into the amplifier.

2a. With that, the crossover was picking up interference from the 3.5 once the engine was started, but only when the car was running. If left in the ACC/On position, no interference whatsoever. I rerouted all the cables, checked all my grounds, etc. but couldn't get the sound to go away. I hypothesized that the sound was a product of pulling from the 3.5 or something to do with the crossover. I bypassed the crossover, and it went down, however it was still there (the crossover amplified the noise). So , I determined it had to do with the 3.5 outlet.

Solution: I added a DAC (NextDrive SpectraX) to pull sound from the USB of the tablet, and eliminated the 3.5 entirely. This helped out two-fold. First, the interference was completely gone. Second, the digital sound is on a whole other level above the analog provided by the 3.5.

2b. Another problem surfaced when using the DAC: the DAC was pulling power from the tablet (this was before I had a solution for Problem #1). So, due to the natural power drain combined with the power pulled by the DAC, the tablet would die overnight. Low and behold, the DAC was always pulling power, regardless if the tablet was charging or not (I had figured it would cease pulling power once the tablet went into standby but nope).

Solution A: I tried adding a USB On/Off switch inline between the tablet and DAC so that I could manually kill the connection, thus turning the DAC off. While this did help battery life, there was still some parasitic drain and the tablet would die after 2-3 days vs overnight. So this solution was a failure.

Solution B: I spoke with Workshop 12 and they recommended adding a Lava USB hub, with a caveat: the hub would need to be modified. This would add additional USB ports and the modification would ensure the power was killed once the tablet went into standby (the mod was just clipping a connector within the hub itself which took all of maybe 5 min start to finish).

With that, I had better sound, better battery life, and could keep the tablet charged when I didn't drive the car. However, shortly after Workshop 12 came out with their electronics box that solves most of the issues I encountered minus still pulling sound from the 3.5 would I'd still recommend going with a DAC.

Hope this helps

geeteezee

Great review, appreciate you taking the time!

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Girald

Yeah, thanks for that write up..

Im glad that the V2 is out. I suppose it will make life easier, though i prob envy you since the V1 might offer a bit more of an anti theft deterrent. I garage the car, but its not always in the garage.

Im not sure about what will happen with the bose system... i really need to crack open the FSM to see how its harnessed and amped if not just in the head unit. Ill start playing once the braniac deal shows up...so, thanks for the heads up on all of that... I used to be a sound reinforcement engineer for concerts and a light tech for 6 years, so this should be right up my alley. Another fun project



I did do a bit of research on the other items i need...

the back up cam....
I do have the sport tech - so i have a hard wired back up cam... Now i just need to see how the cam activates/deactivates from the OE navi unit. im guessing ill find the reverse signal on one of the harness pins - Otherwise, ill have to pull from the reverse lamp and get a 5v stepdown..

For the cam, it looks like i will need the easycap usb DVR to analog device... I actually found a model in amazon with a review from someone who did this operation on their car... Also,that dude used an app called USB camera and described how he used a usb extension from the easy cap to the usb hub , spliced out the red power wire and used that as a power toggle to activate the app and thus the camera when in reverse..

Ive seen similar deals on youtube... Im going to bench test the idea myself with some spare av equipment i have lying around this week.

The steering wheel control:
I did see that, and I see there are a few models for resistivity controls. I want to contact the makers if possible to see if the 1/2 price versions for resistivity controls only would suffice (the JOycon EXR)

FM radio ( and FTA TV for that matter):
I bought an FM receiver for USB that ill be testing when it comes in.. After using "nextradio" app in the past on my phone, im definitely going to want that for the tab. I can run sling TV all day, but it would be nice to pick up FTA TV also for morning news, etc.

Hands free phone:
My only beta solution here is to buy a cheap hands free device with a talk button and a 3.5mm (then fitted to RCA and out to the amps on a splitter), pull the plastic apart to expose the circuit board, solder in the steering control for phone pick up... if that tests well, ill hide it in the headliner or somewhere where the mic will work, and call it good..

Most of the testing should happen by the weekend... but I wont give a final result until its all in the car.

The FAB...
im all about paint these days. Knowing the color now, is more than 1/2 the battle.. I spent a week straight sanding and clearing a fly1 hood that was supposed to be fiberglass but turns out it was hex CF underneath. (a reject because of some bubbles in curing) Since the virus thing is happening I couldn't paint it, so what the hell, lets expose the CF for a while. It looks good

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Girald

Yeah it would be cool if it was a finished stand alone product, but im cool with it.

I get into DIY like nobodys business.. I think i have a solution for most of the issues.. Im going to youtube all of it, and post it all here and in the workshop 12 forums if it all turns out perfect.

Fully functional, this is prob one of the best updates (in my opinion for this Z)

As for ECUTEK... I made a few dash screens already for the tab... looks fking amazing... Its nice to see live knock sensors, wheel slip AFR etc etc in real time. Being able to make the gauges in any color and add in custom backgrounds to further make it look OEMish makes the setup worthwhile...

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Asus_

I have the brainiac mod.

I installed a tiny single din headunit back there and plugged the tablet via usb, so when the car is on, the tablet is getting charged and sound quality is exactly where i wanted it.
If you do go the headunit route, make sure the one you pick allows you to control the tablet. I went in-store and plugged the headunit to a few units that were on display.. Allot of the newer headunits out there with all that fancy android auto and whatnot sometimes takes away the tablet control and forces you to use the headunit. i can get the name of the headunit i used if you'd like... was like $90 and its very very small.

I uninstalled and disabled all apps/programs/features on the tablet that i would not be using. Set brightness and screen response timer/dim etc.. accordingly for car setting... turned off network since i dont care for internet and put tablet to airplane mode. This make the tablet use little power that you'll never really worry about it. I've left the car parked for several weeks and tablet was still good. The tablet has never died on me, its never gone below 95% and i drive only weekends

Cyber

I just got mine installed last week. It's a project that I've been putting off for a year because I couldn't get the plastic to look good enough even after following workshop 12s videos that offer some guidance. After my third attempt didn't come out how I wanted it too I put it off for another couple months until deciding to vinyl wrap it. The 3M matte black vinyl ended up being a great match. I can post up some pictures if you like. I'm a little concerned about the longevity of the vinyl but I wouldn't mind wrapping it again. It was my first time using vinyl and I have the v1 plastics (one piece instead of two) which gave some difficulty on the bottom of the 3 dials. It's wrinkled but I can hardly see it in the car so I will live with it. However, I think the v2 plastics would be really easy to wrap. I do have noticeable hiss but I'm optimistic that I can troubleshoot that issue (workshop 12 emailed me some steps to take). I do see myself upgrading to a setup like NorthStyle mentioned one day. I do plan to wire up the Joycon EXR on Friday to my steering wheel controls. I used a donor metra harness to remove some pins to fit into the brainiac mk1 elecronics harness so that I won't have to splice into the factory wiring at all.

Cyber

Update: I got the steering wheel controls programmed using the Joycon EXR today! Wiring it up to the car was easy thanks to detailed instructions from forum user bigaudiofanat in scope22's thread; Thank you! The programming process was straightforward after watching some youtube videos. I did have to make adjustments to the sensitivity screws on the joycon board in order to read all the buttons. Speaking of buttons, I was able to detect 5 buttons (Source, Switch Up, Switch Down, Volume Down and Volume Up) which you can program a short and long click for each, so a total of 10 buttons really. I keep seeing documentation on making the joycon EXR detect the reverse light and I think that's my next little project for the tablet.

NorthStyle

Did you have any issues with the EXInterface (Manager) program? For whatever reason, whenever I launch it (Windows 10) it automatically goes into "Not Responding" and I can't do anything with it... I tried it with the JoyCon plugged in, unplugged (although it'll recognize it being plugged in but that's about all) and the site is pretty much useless for troubleshooting information. Pretty frustrating

Cyber

I didn't have any issues with the software starting. I'm also on windows 10. Where did you download it from? Have you tried reinstalling? That is frustrating, I wish I had an answer for you.

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NorthStyle

I downloaded it from here: http://www.exinterface.com/cpjexr/

I even went so far as to try installing previous versions but they always had the same end result which would be the not responding then freezing/restarting as soon as the program ran.

Cyber

Yeah, that's where I installed it from too. My antivirus was initially interfering with the installer. I had to run the installer as admin to get it installed. After installation I didn't have any issues. Maybe try a different computer. Good luck!

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