Turn Your iPhone into a Heads Up Display (HUD) for your Car

People have been using iPhones in their cars since day one. The obvious use is to make/receive calls. After that people found various ways to use the iPod feature to listen to their favorite tunes during the commute. When the iPhone 3G hit the scene people used the integrated GPS chip with the GPS turn-by-turn navigation Apps that were hitting the scene. Fast forward to today and things are better than ever. Now your favorite GPS app can run in the background while you take calls or use other Apps.

GPS everyWhere turns your iPhone into a beautiful Heads-Up-Display (HUD)

If you’re using a Navigation App then you’re probably going to occasionally glance at the map while you listen the voice directions. However, what about the regular commute day to day? In most cases you know the route and you’re not using your GPS Turn-by-Turn App. At that point your iPhone display is a lot less interesting. This is where GPS everyWhere comes in. Just fire up the App and drive. You’ll be presented with your current speed, weather info, time, compass, humidity and more. You have your choice between 8 different themes. The App works in both portrait and landscape and presents the info in °C °F °K or MPH or km/h. You even slide open the Google Map display.

It’s a real HUD too

Please excuse the image above which looks like a serious case of double exposure, but that’s just how it photographs off the windshield as a reflection.

One of the things that got me excited about testing this App was the promise of a using the iPhone as a “HUD”. I had a car once with a built-in HUD and I do miss it. While it does work as advertised you have to realize that the iPhone display is just not bright enough to compete against the sun! You’ll barely be able to see the display reflected off your windshield in daylight if at all. In the evening or at night you should be fine though. Even then you’d have to weigh the value (geek factor) of reflecting the image off your windshield vs. just using a mount that displays the iPhone at eye level. Neat idea though!

You can get the GPS everyWhere for $0.99 (on sale) here from the

http://www.InklngBooks.com/ Michael W. Perry

Wedging a small mirror in the window might make the reflection easier to read in the daytime. Some enterprising soul might even want to make a combination mirror, sunshade, and slide-in iPhone mount to go with this sort of app. That might create enough stimulus to get the developers of various navigation apps to create a mirrored display for their product.

Come to think of it, there’s no reason for the mirror. There’s probably a market for a slide-under the windshield holder that would position an iPhone on top of the dash in easy view of the driver with the screen shielded from sunlight.
darnell

this would work even better with an iPAD …
or how about putting this down on the dash were the spedometer/tach dials are… my speedometer went out on my old corolla back in the day….
Stan Burman

Terry, This is way cool. You just gave me the dimensions I need to crop the photo for Timeline with Photoshop. Thanks!

Turn Your iPhone into a Heads Up Display (HUD) for your Car

GPS everyWhere turns your iPhone into a beautiful Heads-Up-Display (HUD)

It’s a real HUD too

Please excuse the image above which looks like a serious case of double exposure, but that’s just how it photographs off the windshield as a reflection.

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