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Some-time lurker on these boards, and big time searcher... you guys have already answered most of my Q's by the time I have them. Thanks a TON for that!
Anyway...
Back in July I finally was able to buy my first Porsche and got a CPO '13 958 Base-Tiptronic. Love the thing, but hate the PCM's software something fierce. To get around my sincere disdain w/ Porsche's software, I've soft-mounted (velcro) a Nexus 7 LTE over the PCM screen and re-routed the USB and Aux-in ports from the center console so that they come out either side of the PCM screen. This solution allows me power/hard-Aux-in (using the mini-stereo cable, not the USB... Bluetooth Aux on the Porsche also sucks something fierce) the tablet without cables running around all over the place. Set up like this, I now use the tablet for playing Pandora/GoogleMusic, Waze, Google Maps, Voice Texting (mighty text), etc... anything you can do in Android, all w/ full car-style controls (CarHome Ultra) to boot. The velcro also lets me remove it quickly for charging and/or to use the built-in back up camera. (Or, to hide it from thieves if I'm in a shady area). But I shouldn't have to remove it to charge.
The trouble is that the USB port is switched... so if I leave my tablet in there for a more than a day, with the car off, the battery on the tab slowly drains and eventually dies. The problem is worse when I forget to turn off Pandora / Google Play Music when I get to work on the morning and the battery is dead by the time I get back out to the car.
Right now, I'm pulling it out every night, charging it, then putting it back in in the morning. Ideally, I'd like to just leave it in there, because there's really no reason at all I should ever have to take it out of the car completely (save thwarting thievery).
So, I'd like to set it up so that it pulls power constantly off the battery. I don't think that pulling the 1 or 2 amps (~4000 mAh to full) is going to drain the battery enough to not be able to start. This is especially true of a smart-charging tablet that moves internally into "sustain" mode once the battery is full.
The question is then: Is there an unswitched outlet on the 958? One that stays on 24/7 regardless of the car's battery state? There are a friggin' half-dozen sockets, but the manuals seem to say that they ALL "automatically disable after 30 minutes to minimize battery drain".
I'm not an electrician, so I'd really rather not have to hack into the fuse box or something complicated like that. I'm hoping there's one that's unswitchedand I just don't know about it yet. That would let me stick USB converter in there and pull it back through the center console. Sort of poor-man's-wiring like I'm doing now w/ the USB port.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Thanks!
-SM
P.S. I looked for an answer for this question, too. My google-fu is failing me today.
Instead of wiring the nexus straight it the 12v power in the car,have you thought about adding a portable Usb charger inbetween the 12v power and the nexus.
This way when you use the car it automatically charges the Usb power store, and if you forget to turn off the tablet off it can draw the power automatically from the USB store. You can get fairly large capacity USB chargers too.
I've definitely thought of that as a stop-gap solution, but that's all it'd be. I drive in 5-20 minute spurts with 4-16 hours of downtime between the drives. In other words, the car is only on when I commute or go to lunch so the USB Charger would eventually die, too, on an switched model.
Unswitched is definitely the solution I'm looking for. If there isn't an unswitched outlet that exists I'll find a fuse map somewhere, find an unswitched fuse, and wire in something like this:
Instead of wiring the nexus straight it the 12v power in the car,have you thought about adding a portable Usb charger inbetween the 12v power and the nexus.
This way when you use the car it automatically charges the Usb power store, and if you forget to turn off the tablet off it can draw the power automatically from the USB store. You can get fairly large capacity USB chargers too.
As an update to anyone who happens to be trying to do the same thing, I did wind up tapping a fuse and using the thing I mentioned in my 2nd post here.
As it turns out, simply by tapping the fuse, I no longer suffer a net-power loss when I have the tablet on and doing it's thing.
