Thursday, August 19, 2010

Netbook To Chartplotter V 1.0

First a few pictures then I'll go into the final details






They don't make a touchscreen kit for this particular Acer One model (AO531h) and it is so slim there was really no place to put the touchscreen controller. Since the keyboard was essentially worthless now with the screen flipped like a Tablet PC I removed it and put the touchscreen controller in there. I got a 3-in-1 screen protector, microfiber cloth and mousepad to cushion the LCD screen and chassis when it's in the boat Ram Mount.


The Tough Tray II Ram Mount, wireless mouse and Bluetooth headset for voice control



I was able to just flip the screen and wiring to get it to convert to a Tablet PC for use in my boat without the battery but the battery would bind a bit on the LCD screen when fully closed stressing it so I had to remove a little unnecessary plastic and then covered with quality electrical tape (3M Temflex 1700)


For field GIS type of work like mapping a yet to be flooded lake they are building north of Davenport I can pop in the battery pack, flip the screen 180 degrees and add my custom Cellular data modem and GPS antennas (which I'll detail in a later post along with the antennas I've made for my boat) and I can walk the area and map out all the manmade and natural structure that will eventually be underwater. If I need to I can access Google Earth, Bing and other online map services or any other information I might need after I get into the field




Here's a couple of pics with the unit in the Ram Mount like how I use it in my boat. It's running OziExplorer and Depths2Ozi showing some depth readings I took on a photomap I made at the outlet end of the Lake Odessa wildlife preserve in late July when I couldn't get on the river due to a late season flood






That should be enough to chew on for one post, I'll detail the system in my next post and then have some pictures of the setup in the boat along with the boat's electrical/electronics package

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