Club Sporting the S2 pt. 1

So I've been a bit busy. I promise I'll do a larger post with video and whatnot about the Erisin ES777A - full overview of features, performance, my customizations etc.

For now however I've been doing some other things to the car. Mainly prepping it for the track events of the summer. I'm going to do all my modifications with the Porsche Club Sport ideology in mind - this means reducing weight and improving chassis performance. My inspiration of sorts is the 968 CS.

I really don't want to save weight on the basic convenience features like the 968 does, this means electric windows, power steering and stereo. I believe I can achieve similar weight savings by doing other things and still maintaining the daily usability of the car as good as it is.

This was my first purchase:

A polycarbonate rear window. It weighs less than 10 kilos WITH the frame. Swapping it over with the original will save over 20 kilos when the rear wiper is removed with it.

Next on the list is a replacement headlight system that will remove the pop-up mechanisms alltogether and save around 16 kilos. And the third thing is a "rear seat delete", which of course means removing the rear seats and fabricating a piece of carpet to cover the seat place.

Now of course I could not resist when I had the chance to get a chip for the engine. Especially when it is supposed to be a clone of the original Porsche racing chip that was used in the S2 cars that were sold directly to race teams and was actually designed by Porsche themselves for this car.
I say supposed to, because to be honest I have no way of confirming this. I am however going to take the car to a dyno, measure the power with the stock chip, change over the new one, and do a re-run to see the actual changes.

Erisin ES777A configuration and software

I've been fiddling around with the PAD part of the ES777A for a few days now and have the basic configuration pretty well in hand now, so I thought I'd give an update about the things I'll be using in it before I'll do a larger post about the installation and testing. Hopefully the unit will be operational in the car after this weekend, friday is a national holliday in Finland so I'll have a 3 day weekend to work on this!

Basics:
The first thing to do here is install the most crucial usability stuff. Here is the list of software / configurations that I believe make this unit far more usable than it is out of the box. There is also an explanation about each item and what they bring to the table.

GO Launcher Ex
This launcher provides much more customization options compared to the stock one. You can define the amount of screens, transitions between them, status bar options and much more. A free software and works extremely well with the landscape mode of the PAD. Free.


MultiPicture Live Wallpaper
One of the problems with using Android 2.3 on a tablet is that it is not designed for continuous landscape mode. This creates a few problems, one of which is that you cannot normally use a 800x480 pixel full screen wallpaper. The wallpaper you choose is stretched among the home screens and gets pixelated and ugly no matter what you do. This app removes that problem and lets you set a full resolution picture as the wallpaper and even select different images for each screen if you like. This is what I chose as my wallpaper:

Also a free app.


PowerAmp music player
There are a lot of options for a good music player for the android. I chose this one because of the really good 4x2/large widget player. This means I can have the player on one home screen with my normal wallpaper image and keep the look of the unit consistant. Free trial, full version 3,5€
I don't use this anymore, I switched over to Google Music. Free.


Adobe Flash player and Adobe reader
Basic usability stuff, nothing interesting here. Free.


RockPlayer Lite
Again, several options here such as MoboPlayer but I use this on my phone and like it because of its small size and good support for almost any video format. Free.


aDyno and aLaptimer
A pretty well featured performance monitor and logging software. Support for OBD2 data, GPS and accelerometer data. Can do lap profiles based on GPS data, performance runs to test modifications and a lot more. Free trial, 3,38€ for the full version.


ClockWork Auto Logger
A companion to the previous. Mainly for data logging and real time G-force measurement.


Better Keyboard
Like the name says. A better keyboard with the Finnish keyboard layout (lots of layouts available) and size adjustable so it makes the typing a lot easier when using the unit in the car. 2,5€.


Barcode Scanner
For QR code scanning. Makes software installing and other web related things simpler.


Spotify
I use spotify on my home computer and have the 9€ per month premium subscription which allows for offline caching of tracks. This means I can create playlists on the computer and then make them available on the PAD offline to allow listening in the car without an Internet connection. Free.


EDIT:
Forgot this important bit:
DSP Manager
A global DSP manager that controls the sound output of all programs. Pretty handy to have around and eliminates at least some need for an external equalizer for the car. Several others with more and better customization available, but this one is from Google themselves and free. Installs with no rooting neccessary to the ES777A, just download the APK and install.


Google Car Home
Google's official car home screen app. Big icons and a clean look. Free, needs root.

Erisin ES777A Unboxing

So the man from DHL rang my doorbell today and the ES777A arrived. I can't say "finally" since the delivery only took a couple of days - excellent work on that side then and a good start!

The box looks nice and there's even a Porsche on the cover :)

Everything was packed well. There are two separate user manuals - one for the Android PAD part and one for the actual car stereo part. The Android manual shows the basic functions of the 2.3 Android OS, such as connecting to a Wifi hot spot and the like. However you should really familiarize yourself with the OS in some other way if you are not using it your mobile phone since this is just a really short quick start guide.

The other manual appears to cover the functions of the car stereo part pretty well, but I'll get more into that when I install it into the car.

On the left is the actual car stereo part. There are two screws in place (presumably holding the DVD mechanism in place during shipping) that need to be taken out before installation. The wiring came in a large bag and is quite comprehensive. There is a standard ISO connector set, pre-outs for all four channels + a subwoofer, antenna adaptor, a custom steering wheel control wireset (this is going to be interesting! There are only a few leads and you could probably wire them up pretty easily to a few buttons) which can be customized in the car stereo OS to control different functions and finally a connecting cable for an iPod.
The smaller bag in the picture below the wiring bag contains the wall charger for the unit. I ordered this from the UK so there would be no customs taxes (Finland and UK both belong to the EU so no customs tax...) but the wall charger is the standard Euro type, what a nice surprise!
The PAD comes packaged inside the leather sleeve/pouch and there is a box with the gps antenna + lead and the IR remote control.

The pouch is feels like a quality product and fits the PAD perfectly. The PAD is quite heavy compared to some other (name brand) Android tablets. The battery is a 3000mAh unit so that most likely is the reason for the weight. There is a protective plastic on the touchscreen.

This is how the unit looks like when the PAD part is off and on.

The PAD was charged from the factory and turned on just like a brand new mobile phone with Android. So far everything seems pretty good and this feels to me like more of a quality product than some other "no brand" Chinese Android tablets that I have tested.
I'll install my normal Android "survival kit" to this and do the usual basic configuring and setup and come back with a new post about the PAD as a tablet next time.