# Can you control vehicle HVAC with a tablet?



## blickman12

Wondering if there was any way to incorporate a tablet in a vehicle to control your heating and air conditioning controls in a car. Why i ask this is because there is not a high quality dash kit for the 03-07 honda accords that have the odd shaped radio and air controls together. I wanting to put a tablet in my dash and thought that maybe it was possible. Any insight would be helpful. Maybe some kind of programmable control board such as audriuno or something similar?


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## Thumper26

Blickman, I feel your pain. I had an 05, and cursed the integrated HVAC every second. With this, you have a couple options. Metra re-released the kit for that car and it does now retain dual climate controls, and then lets you put a single din radio, but it's $300 or something ridiculous.

Or,

You can get the center dash piece and a radio from a car that came with nav, but look for one with a damaged or missing screen. The screen comes out and it's a standard double din opening, but you still have the hvac. On the nav cars, the hvac is on a separate display on the center dash piece I mentioned. Last time I looked, the expensive part was actually the little display. A lot of the trim pieces didn't come with them, and new they are over $200. Everything else can be had for $200 or less, depending on where you find it. Ebay and online junkyards were primarily my sources. Hondapartsdeals.com is a good place for replacement oem panels, like sails, pillars, etc.


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## blickman12

I've seen all those options and in my opinion still looks cheap. The AC retainment piece in the metra kit is also very cheaply made. No illumination on the keys. Difficult to navigate through. There must some way with a control board of some sort to emulate the hard button keys. Just wondering if anyone had some time technical insight on this matter.


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## SPLEclipse

Look into how people are using logic controls to operate remote control robots and stuff from their devices. The concept is the same. Probably the easiest way to do it would be to use bluetooth to control relays, or to connect to a logic board for stepper motors and the like. I'm not well versed in that kind of stuff though. If you go to the play store and search for "relay control" or "arduino control" there's tons of apps. Looks like a lot of work.


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## The Performer

Arduino is gonna be best bet. I'm sure with a pretty good knowledge of electronics one could tear into the stock controller and run wiring to all the "would be buttons and knobs" then from there out using another separate board based off of transistors getting digital feed from the Arduino. 

For someone like me, I could figure out the hardware side. Now creating the software and making the GUI... Oh hell Nah... Better start making friends with someone who builds apps for androids and I pads. 

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk


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