Dash Box developments...

Right, interesting developments and a couple of follow-ups. The latter first, I think...

As promised, here are the links to those two items I mentioned yesterday.

The red phone mount from the previous posting:
Ulanzi ST-03 Metal Smart phone Tripod Mount with Cold Shoe Mount for Microp... https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07D4D3XND/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_6.1QCbW99F6GZ

Double ball joint armature from the previous posting:
Zhiyou Mini Magic Arm Friction Articulated Ballhead Arm for Monitors Led Li... https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B077HR66X5/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_..1QCbX2EJM66

In conjunction with todays developments, this could get really rather interesting - and handy, to boot.

Today, I was woken, five hours earlier than I wanted to (today's a work day), by the postman. He delivered five Meccano parts from a specialist Meccano parts supplier here in England, imaginatively called "Meccano Spares". These guys are incredible: I ordered on Saturday, expecting maybe to get the bits later this week. They arrived today!

The four yellow plates are p/n 53a "Flat Plate 9x5 UK Yellow Original".

The aluminium doudle edged U bracket is p/n 1019 "Channel Girder 19 hole 1x3x1 Zinc"

The yellow plates are to provide a large surface with which to bolt the underside of the box to the dashboard panelling; the idea is to use these inside the box to spread the load under tension, preventing the box from breaking (it's a plastic case) under the stress of the bolts pulling it against (or certainly towards) the dash top surface. Two of these plates will go in the case. The other two, if needed, will be used underneath the dash, to do the same for the dashboard material (also, to prevent the vents that I'll be threading the bolts through, from being pulled out by mistake!).

Now, the girder came as a tad of a surprise - I thought it would be shorter between the upright 'arms'. In this case, it measures roughly 14mm x 40mm x 240mm. I got my sums wrong, it seems, when I calculated the measurements from the description on the website. Now, it might seem that I'm complaining: Far from it - this size opens out a couple of unexpected options for me.


The idea of the girder was to raise the front of the dash box and get it relatively horizontal, given the dash curves down front to back from the windscreen. I currently have my Amateur Radio control head mounted on the top of the dash console (the only bit of hard surface on the dash, the rest of it being that weird spongy surface that's an utter sod to work on, as can be seen in this photo.

The odd black coloured thing behind the radio head is my temporary phone mount, which slides all over the shop, as it can't get a good grip on the dash (one of the reasons for this project).

I'm now thinking of using the girder not only to fix the front of the Dash Box in place (screwing both edge strips down, one side to the base of the box, the other to the strip of console where the control head currently sits). I'll then, I think, be able to mount both the control head bracket, and the new angle phone bracket (see previous post), to the front of the girder.
This will give me all the space I need on the front panel of the instrument case that will become the Dash Box, for such things as stitches and accessory power sockets (and a car battery voltage monitor), future proofing myself for when I get a front winch and the associated lighting that will be installed at the same time as the winch.

Now, this all hinges on the new height of the front of the dash box (as propped up by the Meccano girder) not obscuring my view to the front of the car. More testing is required, but that won't happen today, as it's a work day.

More to follow, obviously...!

OK, another update on Project Dash Box...

OK, an update on Project Dash Box...

I hit a snag as I was working on the design today. While I no longer need to mount the dash camera to the new box (it's fitted to a bracket mounted on the rear-view mirror now), I still need to find a way to mount the phone to the dash in a way that is a solid mounting, not something that meanders all over the shop every time I go over a pothole. So, mounting it to the top of the dash box seemed to me, to be a good idea.

Uh-uh.

I checked this out today, and the damn thing blocks my view of the road to the nearside (left front), with a good 30 degrees of view completely blocked off, which is obviously unacceptable.

So, mounting the phone on the top of the box is a no-no, then. I can't fix the phone to the window, due to the inexplicable inability of both suction cups and self-adhesive mounting systems to remain attached on the windscreen. Likewise, due to the spongy nature of the dash trim covering, I can't fix either of those types of system to the dash.

So, I'm left with either drilling holes in the dash, or using something to attach the phone mount to the side of the dash box. I *think* I have a solution, and it involves the items in the photo below.

These are camera mounting accessories for tripods and the like; the one on the left is designed to fit larger phones to tripods for photographic or video purposes; the item on the right is a friction dual ball-head articulated armature (hey, don't laugh, this is what the damn thing's called!); both use the de facto standard 1/4"-20 threading standard to camera, tripods and photographic quick release systems.

If I can somehow screw the armature into the side of the dash box, and extend it to the front, the red phone mount will screw into the other ball joint, thus providing a fully articulated mounting for my phone.

That's the plan, anyhow.

I'll look further into this tomorrow, and if it works, I'll add links to these items at that time.

The Dash Box. Oh joy, new problems...

Right, there I was, ready to set-to and sort the box out, and a fresh problem, one I thought I had a fix for, popped up and said "AAAAARGH!"

I have the measurements for the front plate, where I'll be fitting some of the USB power sockets, the switches, and the control head for my Yaesu FT-8900R Amateur Radio transceiver. I thought I had sufficient space to mount my phone atop the box, and still have adequate (room to spare) view to see the bonnet and road to the front left.

No such bloody luck. There's a massive slice of view that's just completely obscured from the drivers seat, and that would be an MoT fail, let alone a common sense safety failure.

So, now I have to figure out where I'm gonna position my phone. Again.

Mutter mutter wibble grumble coffee coffee where's me coffee...!

The Dashtop box: Interim measures...

Dashcam installed, cable management improved

Right, progress :)

I have:

1. Removed the spaghetti junction of cabling in the front dash and centre console area.
2. Installed the dash cam on the Unimount set, attached to the rear view mirror stalk.
3. Replaced the haphazard mess that was accessory cabling into a more tidy and safer temporary installation, pending the installation of a properly (not a bodge job) Dash Top Box.

All in all, not a bad afternoons' work.

The camera installation. Look for the white thing centre top of the windscreen (that's my Payage auto toll dongle thingamibob for use on toll motorways in France). Look slightly left of that and a smidge lower. yep, that's the camera, hanging below the line of the rear view mirror.

Side view of the camera and mounting system. I'd have hung it higher, but the articulation of the Unimount accessory mount just wouldn't let me. That's something to work on later :)

The view out the front. Not perfect, but good enough for the moment.

Vastly (trust me on this) improved cable and accessory management. Note the liberal use of cable ties and self-adhesive mounting platforms. This is a temporary measure, while I work, 'slowtime', on the dash box. Also, I'll add a shout out for a bloody helpful tool, called a "Cable Tie Gun". It does the job of two hands, freeing up one of yours to hold things in place. Normally with cable ties, you tend to find yourself needing three or more arms and hands. Since the Human body does not readily accept such additional accessorises, mechanical tools have to suffice - this one's a doozy. You loosely attach the cable tie where you want it, then stick the free end in the teeth of the cable tie gun, and squeeze the trigger a few times. This tensions the tie, and then cuts it off neatly. My one came from Amazon. It's been an essential tool since I got it.

The plan is to have all the cables coming up into the dash top box via the venting behind the coin tray, over which the box will mount and be secured in place. I'm still working on how that'll be anchored in place.

Oh joy, it's before sparrow fart a.m....

Well, Amazon woke me up this morning, mutter mutter wibble burble before coffee etc. ;-)

So, the Plastikote paint and matt ("clear sealer") rattle can sprays, the new dashcam (A "YI Compact Dash Cam, 1080P Full HD Car Dashboard Camera with 2.7" LCD Screen, 130° WDR Lens, G-Sensor, Night Vision, Loop Recording - Black" Good lord, why do people give things such loooooooong highly specific names, when something like "Yi HiDef DashCam Mk xx" would be a lot easier?), and the Unimount system have arrived.

A word of warning: The adaptor plates on these third party add-on mounting systems are fragile. I broke the one for my new camera in testing it for fit. Luckily, I have a spare from a less capable kit, which uses the same ball joint size for the elbow fitting. Be careful, if you get this kit, folks. It's really handy, but treat it with great care!

The interesting thing here is that I _think_ I might be able to fit this to the rear view mirror. I'll give that a go in a bit, and get back to you.

Now, the raison d'être for the entire project was primarily because the phone and dashcam would not stay in place attached to the windscreen, using either suction cups or adhesive mounts (the adhesives lasted longer, but still gave way).

The new modular Unimount system looks like it might clamp directly onto the rear view mirror stalk, which is this works, takes one item off the dashbox project requirement.

This, if it works as I think it might, will reduce the pressure to finish that project today, and thus gives me more time to do a proper job of the Dash Box, rather than hurry up and maybe bodge it under the self-imposed pressure of getting it all done with the available light before dusk (have you tried working in a car after dark? Trust me, it's no fun at all).

More in a bit...

Further notes on the Dash Box project...

OK, a little planning progress while I await parts from Amazon Prime tomorrow.

My existing Dash Cam is also being replaced (time to upgrade, my current one is five years old, and has the resolution of a dinosaur!), and I've found an excellent way to mount the replacement without using suction cups that regularly fall off the windscreen, and adhesives that lose their stickiness. I'm going to bolt the mounting to the dash box!

I'm going to be using a "Dash Cam Mount, Anumit Universal Car Rear View Mirror Mount Holder with 16 Types, Fits Z-Edge, Old Shark, YI, KDLINKS X1, Falcon Zero F170HD, GoPro Hero and Most Other Dash Cameras/GPS" (Lord, what a mouthful. Let's call it the Universal Mounting, or Unimount, for short. You can find that worthy accessory here.

I'll be using the camera screw mount plate to anchor the unimount to the dash box, the double ball joint, and one of the dashcam plates to mount the new Yi dashcam I have on order. The idea will be to mount it either off the rear of the top of the box, or from the back plate of the box. I suspect it'll be better mounting it to the top of the box (there's more rigidity in the actual casing than the front and rear panels), but we'll see when it arrives. I would have fitted this mounting to the rear view mirror stem for a better view, but the stem is too short, which is a pity.

I also have some rattle can spray paint coming from Amazon with which to paint the box, so as to blend it in with the slightly off-beige (Land Rover call it "Bahama Beige", but that's expensive stuff to buy, so I've gone with Plastikote grey beige, and a matt finishing spray to save from any glare issues whilst driving.) colour of the dash trim. If the colour doesn't work, no worries, I can just spray the thing matt black, if I have to.

More later...

On a brighter note...

...I'm working on a car-related project this weekend.

The amount of cabling running around the dash of my Land Rover Discovery 2 Td5, from both the accessory power socket (Cigarette lighter socket) and the amateur radio installation in the car, is nuts, and gets in the way a fair bit (not in normal driving, but in plugging in the phone, the dash cam, and so on). Also, the darn window mounts for the phone and dash cam for some utterly weird reason aren't holding their grip, and keep falling off. So, it's time for a tidy-up.

At the same time, I'm future-proofing myself for some accessories I hope to install over the next couple of years, such as a winch, and external accessory lighting for such things as off-road driving in low-light or night conditions (it happens).

So, a dash box is the way I'm going. The inspiration for these are such products as the "Mud Pod" from Mud Stuff and the "Discovery Dash Console" from Raptor Engineering.

I'm fairly well trained as an electronics technician, being a Radio Amateur of thirty-plus years experience. I'm also a reasonable hand at vehicle electrical systems and installations, having played around with car electrical bits for many years. So, it seems to me that I can do a custom, future-proofed dash-top case for mounting a radio control head, accessory switch controls, power, and similar.

So that's what I'm planning to do this weekend.

I'm going to run a power lead from the fused accessory line up to the dash top, run it into an instrument case that I bought from Farnell, which will be large enough to mount USB power supply sockets, switches, and my two-way radio control head, securely, and tidily, with room inside for additional accessories over time, such as a Raspberry Pi for amateur radio usage (there are many digital modes that can be accessed using an analogue radio via computer), maybe even a HotSpot for my DMR hand held radio.

I need to get my hands on a few bits of hardware (that's Saturday taken care of!) for this project, but I already have most of the stuff I'll need.

I've managed (with a little help from other Disco owners) to figure out how I'm going to run the cables into the box. They're going to be run UNDER the dash board, up through the vents to the front of the rubberised coin tray, into the new dash box by means of a hole I'll drill in the base of the box. From there, the power wires will go to the 4 x USB power sockets (2 at the front, 2 at the back), the radio remote head control cable will be fed through another hole behind where I'll mount the control head on the front fascia panel of the box, and the external speaker cable will be run to the back of the case, where I'll mount the external speaker. I'm going to have to raise the front of the dash box by about 15mm-20mm, but that's because the dash itself curves down in a pseudo french curve to the front console panel. That's likely going to require some plastic card or similar.

I'm still none too sure where or how I'll be mounting the dash cam and phone mounts; I'm still looking into that.

More to follow!