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Toyota Tundra Outfitting

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Dave Marshall

Sun Mar 14 2010, 03:48PM

Registered Member #16 Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 02:22PM
Location: New Wilmington, PA
Posts: 554

I am a member and director of a large storm chasing team here in the Eastern US, and have quite an electronics package I use for my various chasing-related activities. I chase in a 2008 Toyota Tundra CrewMax Cab V8 (5.7L), and have installed all of these devices in the truck once before, but the result wasn't satisfactory.

As such, I've stripped the truck back to stock configuration, and have restarted the entire project. Below is a list of all the equipment being installed.

Toshiba Satellite T135D-S1325 laptop w/ touch screen add-on.
Custom designed/machined, steel, center-console mounted laptop mount for Toshiba.
HP DV5000 laptop (sans screen. Access via VNC).
Pair of Targus 90w Universal AC/DC powered laptop power supplies.
Icom IC-208H VHF/UHF ham radio.
Yaesu FT-857D HF/VHF/UHF ham radio (interchangeable with FT-817).
Icom AH-4 automatic HF antenna tuner w/ 102" whip antenna
Radioshack 200 channel scanner
*Cobra CPI 875 800 watt 12VDC to 120VAC inverter
*Homebrew 120v AC filter network for inverter output (RFI reduction) [changed to commercial 55dB EMI line filter]
Radioshack 7 channel Auto-scanning weather radio (catalog 120-0382)
Garmin Etrex GPS tethered to HP laptop & forwarded via IP
Verizon USB720 3G data card w/Wilson tri-band cell antenna
*Whelen Force4 2 rotator mini-bar emergency light
*Pair of 55w off-road driving lights (in place of fog lights)
Custom built speaker box w/ speakers for all radios
15w PA under the hood so radios can be heard while outside the truck
Canon mini-DV video camera for streaming video online
Canon HF100 SD-card 1080p video camera
High Def sound recording in the cab and outside the cab for overlay on videos. (2 channel, 4 channel, dunno yet)
12VDC to 8.4VDC 3A homebrew power supply for both video cameras.
*Sirius satellite radio receiver
*Large LC filters for *all* DC devices (RFI reduction)

(* indicates already completed)

The largest part of this whole project by far is the DC power network required for everything. The inverter will be mounted under the hood, fed by it's own filtered 50A fused, 6awg bus straight from the battery. The cab also has its own independent 60A fused 4awg bus that goes to a distro panel under the back seat. From there devices are powered by individual fused, filtered DC leads ranging from 8awg to 14awg. With one exception, all devices are isolated on their own bus. The two laptop supplies, my MP3 player, and Sirius will all run off a single filtered 30A lead.

The alternator is 175A. With all devices powered up but idle, current draw will be less than 20A total. The inverter itself could potentially see a maximum draw of about 20A while in use. The IC-208H and FT-857D are the other two potential power hogs, the 857 drawing 20A while transmitting and the 208H drawing 10A, but they won't be transmitting simultaneously. All of that being said, I see maximum peak current draw from the battery/alternator being about 50A @ about 60% duty cycle for short periods. Average will be more like 20-25A. Well within the capabilities of the alternator and battery. If time permits before the storm season gets rolling, I may also purchase a deep cycle marine battery and mount it in the bed with a dedicated DC bus from the alternator. If I do this, it will be controlled by a relay that will sever the electronics package in the cab from the vehicle's primary battery when the motor is turned off, driving it instead with the deep cycle battery. This will make sure I don't accidentally kill the battery.

The second most time consuming element of the project is the fact that I want *all* devices to be securely mounted using solid brackets and neat, orderly installation. No more bungie cords and velcro. Most of these brackets have to be hand made to fit the truck.

Another major project separate from but related to the truck is the construction of a motorized, compass-tracking camera mount for the roof, for the streaming camera. This will probably get it's own project thread once it's under way.

Photos are forthcoming. Hopefully this evening. Additional equipment may be added to the list.

-Dave

ragnar

Sun Mar 14 2010, 03:52PM

Registered Member #63 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:18AM
Location:
Posts: 1425

Cool, Dave. What device do you use to VNC into the laptop? Does the Toyota have an alarm?

Dave Marshall

Sun Mar 14 2010, 04:03PM

Registered Member #16 Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 02:22PM
Location: New Wilmington, PA
Posts: 554

Yes it has a built-in alarm. I use TightVNC to get into the headless HP laptop from the Toshiba.

The Toshiba runs Delorme 2010 (mapping), GRLevel3 (weather radar), internet browsing, and Ham Radio Deluxe to control my HF radio. The headless laptop runs video streaming, the internet connection, streams the vehicle location to a couple of websites, forwards GPS data to the primary laptop, and also provides a radar image upload to my website that shows where the vehicle is in relation to the storms.

I'm in the process of setting the HP up to be a 'fire and forget' sort of system. On power-up it connects to everything but the stream automatically. The video stream will be on-command because of bandwidth monopolization.

-Dave

Dave Marshall

Mon Mar 29 2010, 05:24PM

Registered Member #16 Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 02:22PM
Location: New Wilmington, PA
Posts: 554

Some photos finally!

First up, the DC filters. Every non-stock item installed in the truck that runs on DC will have one of these in line with it. There are only a few items that share a filter, and they're generally the low noise potential items. The cores are made from 1/2" diameter steel and are 4" square, welded together. Using steel instead of ferrite makes them very lossy at RF, improving RF attenuation. The capacitors are two 27,000uF aluminum 'lytics and two 100uF tantalums, all in parallel. The filter is arranged as a 'T' low pass filter, and the coils are bifilar wound, about 24 turns per inductor, so 50 turns total per choke, wound with 14awg wire. These seem to be extremely effective so far.

Second, the early stages of the DC distro box. This is the primary one, located in the rear of the vehicle. All devices are individually fused (had a minor fire once before. Never again!), most of them at the box, but a few like the radios have fuses at the back of the radio instead.

Third, the inverter install. I decided to put the inverter under the hood in an area that doesn't see any real moisture even in heavy rain, and that has an excellent draft from the engine cooling fan. This thing is loud under heavy power load, and putting it up front makes the power leads shorter, and makes my filters more effective. You can't see it, but a larger version of the same DC filter seen above is installed between the battery and compartment wall. It uses 3/4" steel bar, is 6" square, and wound with 10awg wire. The inverter also has its own 60A fuse and 4awg connection to the battery. Mounted on top of the inverter is an AC line filter, which has proven quite effective. A second one is going to be added for further noise attenuation. The second photo is the illuminated push on/off switch for the inverter in the cab. The light is illuminated when power is applied, and goes out if there is a fault. This took a little trickery to do.

Next we move on to the laptop mount. This is custom built from raw steel stock. It consists primarily of 1.25" square hot rolled steel tubing for the bracket itself. It mounts to the seat via the seatbelt retainer bracket screw posts (using an L bracket and 1/4" hardware) and also uses one of the head rest post holes to stabilize the driver's side of the bracket. The swing arm is 1" "C" stock. Both the swing arm and the horizontal slide rail have a 5/16" slot milled in them that allow any number of positions for the laptop, which rests in a cradle on top of the tripod head. It doesn't rely just on the normal tripod mount. Once the cradle is finished, it will be bolted to the tripod head. All this part of the project needs to be completed is a bit of clean up, paint, and the laptop cradle, which should be done as soon as my laptop returns from the factory.

Finally, the bar light install. This proved to be more of a challenge than I thought due to an electrical failure after installation, and a decision to move the switch. Yes it's a gawdy red 'trigger guard' style illuminated toggle switch, but this serves a purpose. Because I'm with the fire department and run blue lights (instead of yellow, which is unregulated) I must be absolutely certain that it cannot be accidentally activated. I also need to *KNOW* that it is off while I'm driving. That thing is bright and almost eye level, so its quite evident when the light is on. The first image shows the bay of switches that was already there. The only functional switch on that set is to change the dashboard thermometer from Fahrenheit to Celsius (seriously!). I don't ever need to switch to C, so I just removed it. I fabricated a flat plastic blank to fit in the hole it left behind, and mounted the switch to that. The second image shows the switch off and on. A second switch will eventually be added below that one for yellow LED 'hazard' lights once they're installed.

More photos to come tonight and tomorrow!

-Dave

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