Digital Dash - Revised and Available as a Tasker Project

I've revised my digital dash project (again) and made it available as a Tasker project for anyone who might like to fool around with it.

Most of the changes were behind the scenes: I put everything into one project, got rid of the deprecated code, used a better naming scheme, and generally simplified and cleaned up everything.  However, there were a few interface changes as well.

I recently added an iKross Ultra Compact 2in1 window mount holder to my setup, so now my phone is mounted to the driver’s side wing window.  That means it’s always in view, so I can more easily see and hear when I get calls and texts.  So, I eliminated the functions that push those types of notifications to the tablet.  I still send out an auto-reply to texts saying that I’m not going to respond, however.  With the phone always visible, I now have it starting up and running Waze so I always have a map visible.  I still use Google Maps on the tablet for navigation, though.  I just like Waze’s road hazard notifications.

As part of simplifying the system, I re-did the top menu bar.  Where before it had been a single scene with lots of elements that I turned on and off, it’s now three individual scenes that I show and hide as needed.  With that, I decided that the EQ settings shouldn’t really be a top level function since they only affect PowerAmp.  Accordingly, I moved their access.  They are now called up by a long-tap on the PowerAmp button.  A long-tap on the main screen (which is what used to call up the EQ) now brings up the favorite songs menu (previously done by swiping).  The swipe function was removed.

The only other interface change has to do with the favorite songs and destinations menu.  Before, if you called one of those up and decided you didn’t want to do anything, you tapped the BMW logo to cancel.  Now, you can tap anywhere on the screen (except the menu itself, of course) to cancel the function.  That also works if you accidentally call up the audio sources panel.

If you do decide to load up the project and take a look, you’ll find a few things that don’t seem to make much sense.  For example, the way I handle choosing a destination or playing a favorite song seems unnecessarily complex, and there are some variable and elements that don’t seem to be used at all.  That’s because I’m planning for some future enhancements and those things will make those a lot easier.

The zip file, which you can download from: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10986031/V3_Dash.zip

Contains the Tasker project and the graphics I used.  You’ll need to relink the graphics in the scenes, but everything should be there.  However, this zip doesn't have the phone side of things.  I’m working on that and will make it available later.  In the meantime, all you’ll be missing really is the routine that sends phone temp to the tablet.  You can easily replace that with something like the WeatherAce plugin to get local temps.

It will take some fooling around to get this working since it is tightly tied to my specific hardware and software.

I intend to do a few posts documenting the system in detail.  Not that I think anyone is really that interested in this, but I know that sooner or later I’m going to have a bad crash, a failed system update, or even a new device and I might not be able to restore from a backup.  And if I need to recreate this system, I want to have more than my memory to go on.