Fucking great weather; still missing a wheel
Took this opportunity to do some wiring work. Firstly, I added 2 power sockets under the dash. One to charge the phone and one for the navigation (possibly). They are those two black barrels on the next pic. The view angle is from above, through where the windscreen and the scuttle panel normally is.
The wiring for accessories goes directly from the battery through the relay, which is activated by acc position of the ignition switch. It's spliced into 3: two for those power sockets under the dash and one goes into the boot (I've pre-wired that when I made the whole loom). Nothing else sits on the acc pin of the ignition switch, so I can turn it there to charge the phone, without worrying that the (tiny) battery would flatten any time soon.
View from below, when the windscreen is on, the sockets are accessible from the passenger side, right above the relays and fuses.
HTC's charger connected and tucked away. I guess I'll keep it there permanently, no reason to disconnect this charger.
While I was there I also re-mounted the ignition switch / steering lock. In its default position I keep hitting my left knee, so I moved it further forward and turned clockwise, so it sits
behind the dash. Still can be easily reached. You can see the hole in the tube for the steering lock there. Don't worry, I didn't lose the steering lock due to this mod - I never had it. The steering column is smooth.
The little 3.5mm plugs in the pics above are for music and phone connections into the intercom. And the intercom itself sits in the boot, which is why I needed power in there as well. It's velcro-ed behind the rear bulkhead. It's a common type of intercom that bikers use, as far as I understand.
It's not fully "plumbed" in yet, there will be two more little boxes for galvanic isolation of phone and music leads (fighting ground loops and noises), and also a Cobra walkietalkie. The headset leads from the intercom are passed forward and are hanging behind the seats.
And into these leads I plug my headsets
Now, this is how the whole thing is supposed to work...
The intercom's basic function is to allow conversation between the driver and the passenger. The intercom has VOX function, so mics are activated by speech level. The music input is for the mp3 player, and the music is immediately muted to 50% when mic input is triggered. The phone input is, sadly, mono, and works in such a way, that when input is detected, all other inputs (music, and radio) are muted to 0 until phone conversation is over. In my case this wont happen, I'm using phone for music (stereo) as well, so I made a special cable to combine both inputs. The phone will mute its own music with incoming call anyway. Will see how it will work.
Then there's the radio input. For that I made a cable to connect the aforementioned Cobra walkietalkie. The radio will be turned on all the time and will sit in the boot. It starts transmitting when the intercom gives the PTT (push-to-talk) signal, which happens when one of the mics on the headsets are triggered. But there's another trick, the cable I made has an extra 2 wires going to the front of the car and into the switch on the dash. The switch is a "privacy" switch, which allows me to disconnect the transmitting side of the radio so I can talk to the passenger or on the phone without broadcasting it. I will use one of the unused buttons on the dash, possibly the foglights switch
It may sound overcomplicated
But that's a fairly standard setup for bikers I guess, and there are certain similarities between them and the 7s. For example, there's no way I can pick up the phone and have a conversation when driving, or talk to the passenger normally, or use the walkitalkie to talk to daboom on the trip. Now it's all automated, I just sit in, put the headset on and turn the ignition.