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Jason's in-car
Custom Mount |
Date 24th April
2003 |
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Article by Jason Wagstaffe
I have been running this setup now for about 2 years now as it was the
result of being unable to obtain a mount at the time, nobody was importing
anything. How things have changed.
Spurred on by necessity I decided to have a go and seeing what I could do with
my recently redundant serial cradle. It had become redundant as I had just
purchased a USB cradle from Compaq as we are talking about the time when the
iPAQ's only came with a serial cradle on the initial purchase, no USB back then.
I have had no problems with the suction mount it seems to be very good, it
appears to be of German origin so hardly any surprises there !
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So after a quick search around my local Halford's and obtaining a cheap (tenner)
mobile phone mount, I set to work with the junior hacksaw on the serial cradle.
A few hours later and the use of a file, wet & dry paper and I was ready to
apply a little bit of primer and paint.
As you can see the mount I have is exactly like the one you would use to sync
your iPAQ with your PC, no cables having to be plugged in and un-plugged every
time you want to remove the iPAQ which must be a good thing and also means it
looks really slick and professional.
Power comes from a small homemade PSU I built from some instructions on the
Pocket PC Passion web site, and the parts were easily available for under a
fiver from Maplins. This PSU is
hidden under the dash (near the fuse box), and again feeds into the cradle just
like it does when sat on your desktop at home.
The serial lead from the cradle goes away again via the dash and is connected to
a GPS mouse antenna which is sat on the dashboard, its cable is hidden between
the dash and the windscreen as there is just enough room to squeeze it out of
sight.
Materials used
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Modified standard iPAQ 3600 series serial cradle
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Flexible mounting arm/sucker from Halford's with a Mobile Phone holder and large self-tapping screw
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Small touch of silver paint
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9 way D type "null" converter.
Set up
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