Full Electronic Setup: sPOD, Hondo Garage, and Off-Grid Engineering Dual Battery Setup

Just thought I'd share my full electronic setup now that I've finally made some progress on wiring everything and getting the interior setup for expedition navigation. After a ton of research and deliberation, I'm using the following products which I am EXTREMELY satisfied with thus far. I've included my initial impressions and 6-month review thoughts as well below.


Hondo Garage
Un-Holey Dash Mount (3x), Big Squeeze Tablet Mount, Perfect Squeeze Phone Mount


sPod
8 Circuit SE System w\Touchscreen


Off-Grid Engineering
2005-2017 Toyota Tacoma Complete Dual Battery System - "Side-by-Side"


Hondo Garage Impressions and Full Interior Setup Including sPod Touchscreen Mounting.
Hondo Garage: Awesome, Awesome, Awesome. That's all I can say. I have purchased basically everyone of their Tacoma products. My only gripe is the fact that you can't move the vents but it really doesn't matter to me anymore given the powerful A/C in the 3rd Gen and the following advantages:
I'm using 3 of the Hondo Garage Un-Holey Dash Mounts that clamp inside the vent rings. The leftmost vent houses the sPod Touchscreen which conveniently has a RAM ball on the back of the screen, and easily attaches with a short arm Ram mount to the Hondo Vent Mount. I ran the sPod network cable through the firewall and high enough between the door and dash so that it would not get squeezed when the door was shut. The other two vent mounts are being used for Hondo Perfect Squeeze Phone Mount (for my smartphone) and the Hondo Big Squeeze tablet mount for navigating with Gaia GPS and/or Avenza Maps, both of which have proven to be extremely useful as well when out of network service areas. By the way, these vent mounts combined with the 3rd Gen OE vents are a STOUT combo - this is truly the most robust way to mount some weight from the Tacoma dash without modifying the dash or feeling like the dash is going to rip apart on rough-roads at higher speeds.





sPod Impressions.
Also awesome. I really liked the fact that I only had to squeeze one cable through the firewall, and all other accessories are just plug and play into the circuit board under the hood. The customization of the button text is nice as well, and there are a lot of extra feature that aren't often talked about: Battery Voltage indicator, low voltage cut-off, screen brightness, etc.

There are is a nice instructional available online that shows some of the features in more detail.
http://www.4x4spod.com/v/vspfiles/assets/PDF_Files/Touchscreen_Instructions.pdf

A lot of people prefer the positive feel of "actual switches," and I would probably agree if I had front/rear air lockers on my rig in which case I was flipping switches on and off often, but I am perfectly happy with the Touchscreen for my application, especially given the convenient location of where I mounted the screen: it's so easy to see the buttons without taking your eyes off of the road (and most of the time I'm not using the buttons on the sPod while on the road, the compressor and Fridge are occasional-use accessories).

Also I was hesitant about the sPod at first as it was seemingly a "Jeep" thing, but I ran into Josh Carter from sPod at a couple of events and actually had a few email exchanges with him before I pulled the trigger, I think his submarine / engineering background and the fact that he was a Tacoma-owner himself re-assured me this was a legit modern piece of electronic equipment that I "needed" to match my "modern looking" 3rd Gen Tacoma.


Off-Grid Engineering Impressions:
Under the Hood Setup Including Off-Grid Engineering side-by-side battery setup.
I drilled a few holes in the lid of the OEM fuse box to mount the sPod per the instructions, I was hesitant but this really was the best/only place for me with the ARB twin compressor and 1-Gal air tank in the passenger firewall corner, and the twin Optima's in the driver front corner. The off-grid engineering dual battery kit is 100% complete and robust. I also emailed Matt Carter at Off-Grid a few times before the purchase, and he was extremely helpful as well with the wiring setup. I went with two Optima Yellow Top D35's despite some public knowledge of Optima quality degradation, I have always run Optima battery's in all of my off-road rigs and my daily drivers without an issue, so I stayed true, and so far they have been great. Note contrary to many other setups in my picture below I actually have the battery on the left powering everything in the entire vehicle; it is the starting battery and the accessory battery. The main reason I wanted two batteries was for emergency starting, so the battery on the right is always isolated and protected in the case of emergencies, yet it sees a charge from the alternator to keep the battery healthy thanks to the Blue Sea Automatic Charging Relay.



The Off-Grid Install was easy with the right tools.




Hope this thread is helpful to to the 3rd Gen Tacoma owners contemplating the many new products on the market.

Cheers,
-Drew

 

Awesome setup man, thanks for posting!

 

How did you mount your twin compressor with the 1 gallon tank?

 

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...r-the-hood-of-a-3rd-gen.492398/#post-15280452

 

Do you actually have the vents facing forward after mounting the hondo unholey dash mounts?

 

Nice write up, how did the tablet fare while off-roading? Any Vibes?

 

Yea be interested to understand how your running the google maps app on the tablet, is that via cellular service thru the tablet or is it plugged into the tacoma somehow ?

 

Google Maps doesn't do satellite off-line

 

GPS itself doesn't require cellular service to work. Google Maps has an offline mode, where you can download a particular area (i.e. your home city) and use it to navigate on a tablet with no data.

https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6291838?co=GENIE.Platform=Android&hl=en