I installed a tablet in the factory nav hood and today temps reached 100F. While driving the tablet disabled charging due to the battery over heating. I'm also transferring to San Diego in a couple weeks so things will only get hotter. I'm looking for ideas to keep it cool while in operation. So far all I've got is putting a 12v computer fan on the back and running some duct to the floorboard behind the dash.

Has anyone had problems with their tablet crashing due to the heat?

 

On a hot day I have to let mine cool off with a couple minutes direct air from the ac before it will boot up. This was part of my reasoning for going with a removable setup using the retractable JDM tray.

Wireless charging makes it even more convienent.

A PC fan and a little ducting should help quite a bit. Shame its overheating while driving.

 

Same here mine will overheat if I leave it in the car, so I made my factory nav hood top removable and used some brackets to hold the tablet in place while its in the hood.
Now when I want to take it with me say like at work. I just pop off the nav hood and slide out the tablet. It only takes a couple of seconds and it out.
Also I've never had a problem with it crashing due to the heat while driving here in Florida.

I'd try to tap into the a/c and run a small duct up to the nav hood and see if that helps out.
G/L

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That's a good idea and less intrusive. I'll have to look into that.

 

I cut a hole into my ac vent below the hood. Takes about 10mins to cool the tablet off.

 

Im having issues with this as well in texas temps, Im installing a cpu fan in there. There are enough holes in it to be able to circulate air. I have thought about tapping into the ac vent, it would be easy to patch up if it is ineffective.

 

I'm going to jump in here as a person who doesn't have an in dash navkit or tablet of any sort, but I do know allot about battery tech (the only problem you're really going to run into aside from LCD failure on LCD equipped devices).

First off, keeping a lithium type battery in the device was a bad idea. Shame on all of you for not knowing what you were doing before you did it. Lithium batteries aren't designed to take fluctuating temps of any sort. The car already has a battery which has a much more stable chemistry than most types of lithium batteries, and it's easily the safest method of powering any peripherals in a vehicle (why do you think radios don't have a separate battery?)

The lithium cell should have been removed, and replaced with an unswitched 4v switching regulator, directly connected to the devices battery connector. That way your tablet always works, and you never have overtemp issues.

I can't believe this is such a rare thing among dash tablets. It's really stupid and impractical to keep a lithium powered device in a dashboard. They're obnoxiously temperature sensitive, and a noteable fire hazard.

 

You do realize tablets have temp sensors that don't allow the battery to charge when it's too hot right?

With that said my battery in my tablet is fine and held a full charge while the car was down for 4 months. It's survived 2 Louisiana summers already and this car sits in the sun 24/7.

And if the car were to somehow catch on fire, that's what insurance is for.

 

Good luck with that. Once they see a custom Tablet installation in your dash, and figure out it was the source of the fire, you're probably going to be the proud owner of a pile of melted plastic with four pretty wheels attached.

 

I don't need luck. The adjuster would be my aunt.

 

That's why I made mine removable... I can slide it in/out in seconds.

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Well first off,GPS stay in cars and they have lithium batteries. Second off, lithium batteries are only an issue during thermal runaway, at which that time they can explode. This mainly happens when charging too much. Unless wired directly to the battery, this shouldn't be an issue. Also, tablets have a feature to shut down charging when too hot to prevent thermal runaway. We use lithium batteries in f/a-18, and require quarterly training on them. The batteries in the jets stay in the sun all day and never have issues.

 

At least someone here knows what the **** is going on...

 

As far as insurance would be concerned its the equivalent of a tablet sitting on the dash charging.

To say they wouldn't pay for that is absurd. If your company is that bad grow up and get a real policy.

 

I don't know about the insurance thing, but why would you have any reason to keep the lithium battery in? It's completely pointless and a liability, no matter how unlikely you think failure would be.

The better point I was trying to make is that if you took out the battery, you would never have to worry about thermal cutoff or having to wait for it start up because it ran of charge when you left your Miley Cyrus mix on all night.

Also, I'm sure the batteries in your jets aren't kept in a non climate controlled dashboard, if they are I'd seriously reconsider sending them up.

 

Because tablets are cheap. The inspiration for this thread was to gather ideas to keep the temp below the charging safety cut off. Installing an external 4v is a nice idea but im not going to crack open my tablet and remove its internal battery until it no longer holds a charge. Even then I'll probably just replace the tablet.

Fire is not a likelihood because the tablet is powered down when not in use. And i never forget to turn off miley cirus. There was no call to be snarky early. Lets keep things civil here gentlemen.

 

**** Miley, But I do have all my Britany Spears Albums loaded into it!

 

I'm pretty sure they sit in the New Orleans heat on the concrete flight line 24/7. So they get hot, hence the battery safety training we have to do quarterly. We have yet to have one explode. They also go to the desert in Nevada in the middle of summer also, and never have an issue. If you did remove the battery you would have to manually turn on the tablet everytime you wanted to use it. You aren't making many valid points. It works, it works well. I have no problems using it most days, but I park in a parking garage at work, and in my garage at home. But it gets 112+ here in Dallas, which is where I am stationed now. For ***** and giggles look up GPS explosion in car on google images, this was from charging all the time and the battery had thermal runaway.