BlackBerry Playbook Arkon Car Mount

So being a car and gadget guy I wanted to integrate my BB Playbook and phone into my Scion tC. But being that I didn't want to go over board building a bracket and fiber glassing my car I looked at other alternative. Before I settled on the parts I used I looked at a few like Pro Clip USA which make vehicle specific car mounting solutions. Ideally this is the one I was looking at 

This would have been perfect with anyone of there mounting frames but putting the cost of that clip ($30) and there cheapest cradle ($50) it would have totaled around $100. Not bad for the price but my issue is that like many Scion owner I have a modification would prevent this from being ideal. I have a Perrin short throw shifter which in 5th gear would probably end up hitting the tablet. So the other thing I had to keep in mind was that when I travel with kids in the passenger seat they might want to play a game or something to keep them busy. 

After some digging I ended up buying an Arkon TAB-FSM Seat Bolt Mount on Amazon for about $30 shipped which I got in about 2-3 days. 

When I received it the package contained the hard ware about and a 4 short tabs and 4 long tabs. Here's the bad news, using the short short tabs and trying to mount the Playbook normally will not work (is your using a bigger tablet your fine). I forgot to take pictures of it with the short tabs and Playbook but there is another way to mount it. Here are some of the picture showing the tab that come with it. All the photos were taken with my BB Curve 9360 so they might be the greatest buy at least you get the idea.

So now with that being said you have to mount the bracket horizontally with the Playbook. I used the longer tabs for this. 

The Arkon bracket is spring loaded which is why I used the longer pieces to prevent unnecessary wear on the springs. As you can see below it's almost on the edge but it work. More information on how well it hold driving is explained later. 

Now to build the assembly is pretty easy. Also note that the end that goes to the tablet has a Swivel ball connection for 360 Degree rotation with tilt for portrait or landscape viewing" 

So this end will connect to the tablet mount pretty self explanatory. 

Like I said pretty straight forward on building. Now to put into the car. I just used the passenger side seat mount bolt closest to the center console. I had my impact so 10 second later I was all done. 

So there it is. My radio unfortunately does have bluetooth but it does have have an aux out which I connected to the Playbook for Slacker radio, SMS alerts, email alerts, Navigation through longitude if bridge is connected and so on. Hopefully I can make it a little more useful later down the road. 

As for how it holds up the shaft wobbles slightly when I drove but it hold the Playbook with no issue. I'm a pretty aggressive driver and haven't really had an issue other then the shaft wobble which I'm not really going to complain considering the price. The other added benefit is when I do have a passenger they can turn the tablet to them and use it if they want to for games video or I can listen to the radio while they plug in headphones and watch youtube or whatever. 

For people with Bluetooth enabled radios playing music or what have you would be easy. For people that don't I have been looking into an alternative route that would eliminate some of the extra wires. One that I'm not sure if I'm going to wait on is the Blackberry Music Gateway which on Crackberry should be shipping in November which would allow people with non-bluetooth radio's (like myself) the ability to connect through aux in but hide all the wires. Also being that it uses the standard BB charger cord I wouldn't have to compile some thing for this. The other option I looked into is using a Belkin F8Z492-P Bluetooth Music Receiver which is available at Walmart normally 35 to 50 buck and getting a Sprint car charger with on ebay or amazon can be relatively cheap. 

Well that's it for this install project. Simple $30 and a few minutes of work time if your not doing a write up and you have a tablet to run your in car entertainment. Hope this was helpful....

Update to Current Online Stuff

Inevitable I'm bound to write up some information for companies I work for or assist in the their efforts. The one I would like to speak about today is truck performance company. Strapt Performance deals mainly with heavy duty trucks like Dodge Ram and Ford F-Series offering suspension upgrades, steering upgrades, tuning, performance parts like intakes/exhausts and many other products for these vehicles. Now normally my preference is dealing with sport compact vehicle like Scions, Toyotas, Hondas, and other import vehicles. I really didn't have to much interest in the stuff but after seeing some of the trucks after the installs it's actually pretty cool. Like most who around my area we see insane lifted trucks which are only for show purposes. These serve no purpose, if any of these were hit an off road bump they would more that likely tip over. 

Suspension in any vehicle that runs either off road or track is a key component. The amount of suspension products on these trucks and the difference that they make I can see why people who own these diesel trucks choose to add or replace with suspension components from companies like Carli Suspension. Carli has almost everything for suspension from Ball Joints to Full Suspension Kits which makes a lot of difference when these trucks go off road. For more information on these kits you can visit www.straptperformance.com or straptperformanceblog.blogspot.com. 

Until Next Time 

Eddie Heng

Introduction

Hello my name is Eddie, I've been in the automotive field for quite a few years working various positions from Auto Tech, Sales, online marketing, social media, graphic design, to web management. The reason for creating this blog is help those who are in need with the knowledge I have gained and also providing review on sites I work with to cars I fix and many other things. 

Being an Automotive Tech for since 2006 in independent shop I have had my fair share of working on vehicles that no ones to work on. Working with small dealer lots there's a lot of things most people and even dealer mechanics don't realize. First and foremost is that most of these car that the small dealers buy are from auctions where the big dealer sell when they either don't want to bother with the vehicle or haven't been able to figure it out. These are the kind of vehicles I have the pleasure of working which is definitely not the easiest to diagnose being that a large corporation who has all the equipment gave up on it. Over time I will post tips and tricks for the more uncommon things that can be a burden.

Working with many e-commerce company since 2007, I start my position in customer service but when they found out I had a little more knowledge with Photoshop and Dream Weaver I started working on task like email blast. This slight change I started taking on other work loads like managing Adwords, Review Analytics, to product management. Now these things don't sound to complicated but for smaller companies these things can help your business or potentially break it. I have never officially taken any classes or been trained in these position, it was more or less "here's what we have try and work with it". In doing so this opened me open to a lot misleading information in an industry that is constantly changing. So when I come up with some related to SEO or SEM that helps me I'll write about it which I'm sure will be subject to alot of criticism but it will only help me understand it better or find a solution. 

Thanks for reading and I'll be posting more soon once I've finalized the design of this site.

Eddie Heng