the touchscreen is on it's final fill and sand stage so i dont think i'd want to mess with that.

another alternative i was thinking about thiis morning woud to have the bottom slide piece be controlled by the servo. so the servo would push out the unit. Then in the middle of the dsp there would be the pivot arm that, when reaching full extension it would stop and force the dsp to fold backwards toward the dash as the bottom kept moving forward.

i wonder if using two servos would be better? on that would slide the unit down and a second that would rotate it.

 

ok.. my latest idea... even though i said i didn't want to go this route earlier i think it will work. I am now considering using a different dvd drive, the tray type. if this will fit in the opening i can use this instead of a servo. i could set up the sliding tray and the pivot hinge the same way but i could use springs to retract the face when the dvd drive sides back in.

it's 12:30am and i'm not sure if this will work but it's just another option

 

With 2 servos I guess you have some timming issues.
i was looking at some stereos in the store yesterday to try and see how all those hinges and stuff work. Some of those things are amazing. I could not tell you what is happeneing in there.

I was also thinking about my pioneer AVIC D1
the face drops down flat, and can come back up, the only thing I saw under it was some rollers

they had some cheap sony I think it was for 130.00.
the face slid down, not really flipping, just came out past the units trim panel and moved downwards, and a face behind it would slide up about 1/4 to 1/2 an inch. I have no idea why it did this, it had some other face behind it for some reason. some marketing crap maybe. looked kinda cool when thinking about hinges anyhow.

i started thinking maybe it would be possible to buy one of these cheap units and gut it out, and install whats needed into it, vs buying a 164.00 actuator or something alike.

I have been looking on the net for a bit trying to find some more indepth pictures of how these things work.

 

i was also looking at the flip out nav units at best buy yesterday. the jensen one looked like it worked exactly like our original plan. you may have a point trying to gut out another head unit but i'm not sure i wan tto dump more money into this without being confident in how to actually do it. i'll check ebay a bit for broken h/u's to see what i find.

 

so when are you two getting married

 

So I have been messing around with the original design some more, it has got to the point where it is driving me crazy.

I worked it backwards and came up with the pieces in the left. it appeared at first that there was not enought servo travel to make it work. (the top left example has the push rod go well past what the servo travel is)

then in the right I made the servo arm a little longer, and it seems like it could work.



I guess the next step would be trying to get the push rod connected to the servo and DSP to stay somewhat flat?

 

ok, here is a 3d view. I tried setting the servo so the arm would rotate horizontal, this would make a mess of all joints and would nee some sort of universal joint on both ends.

I dont know, what do you think?

 

You guy's can find little hime joints and such. At a hobby shop that deals with R.C. car's & plane's.
There may be alot to look at there, for this little project you guy's have working...

 

:wow: i think i have a project to get started on sunday! this is so far above and beyond what i had expected. thanks so much.

I will have to check the clearance for the arm, but this looks like it'll work. do you happen to have any dimensions for the arm length, how far away the servo needs to be, etc..

If the height is an issue i will try the hobby store for the joints wiz mentioned.

 

yeah I was thinking along those same lines.
but it would probably be better off having the servo mounted sideways as in my 2d renders above the 3d post.
I also think it would need some small springs, mounted from the DSP to the sliders to keep the unit horizontal till they hit max extension.
And probably one on the servo arm mounted to the dsp, this way when the unit went to retract, the dsp would be pulled back up from the 90 degree rotation down, rather then pull the unit in with the face rotated down.

 

No big deal, I use 3D max at work for video games. we are kinda ramping up to move on to the new stuff, so I can squeeze this stuff inbetween.

as far as the arm length for pushing the unit out, thats at 7.5 inches to scale whith whats in the scene.

the servo arm is 1.9 inches (pivot to pivot)
I found that the average servo moves 90 degrees. I see some can do more. with this set up, the servo is not reaching a full 90 degree rotation. it is stoping like 15 degrees before.

the unit is moving out .6 inches from the flat face I built.

the center of the pivot joint on the back of the DSP is about .444 inches to the back of the DSP.

the height of the servo arm pivot measures .42 vertically up from the pivot of the DSP

With these measurements, I see the whole unit slides forward 1.3 inches.

I would be almost positive you would have to adjust for real world variables, but this should get you in the area of something working, or at least I hope.

if you need to move it out further let me know.
I will have to set the head unit correctly in the out position, and reverse engineer it from there. it is kinda a pain in the ***, but not too bad.
basically I set a few points, set the servo arm length over, move the rods about. eventually it comes back together.

 

that makes sense. i was thinking about where i'd need springs. if the unit doesn't seem to want to rotate at the right time i could use some nitnol spring with a micro switch but that would just complicate things.

 

awesome, thanks for the measurements. I didn't realize you were doing all of this in max! I thought it was a cad program. I work in maya everyday. I'm a modeler (i'm modeling wwII vehicles as we speak) but i've animated too, never rigged anything though and that's what limited me on this project. I have to read up on rigging now!

 

I was thinking like this.
one Nitinol spring on each slideing shaft.



Maybe makes some tabs on the sliding shaft and the back of the DSP to mount the springs.

next, when the unit shuts, if the sliders slide real easy sliding, I would imagine the unit would try to close with the DSP face rotated down. so you would need resitance to stop the unit from pulling in slightly, and cause the servo to close the dsp first. Maybe just those 2 springs would do this.

Or maybe 2 regular springs mounted in the back of those sliders could provide enough resitance.

or maybe one more Nitinol spring mounted to the back of the dsp connected to the servo arm.