Website to make background pictures for Clarity

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RedClarity

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I hope it's ok to post this, but I made a simple website for myself to make it easy to move pictures from my phone/computer to the car's infotainment system to use as backgrounds, and thought I'd make it available to all: hondabox.net. You upload a picture to the site and it crops and scales it for the Clarity (also added some other Hondas) and makes it available in the car via a private webpage (or you can download with a USB key if you don't want to use the web in the car). If this garners any interest, I'm happy to take suggestions on things to add.
 
Thanks for sharing, I will definitely try your website out.
I noticed you need to tunr Wifi "on". Before you do so, you get a warning saying that having that option on will decrease your battery life as well as affect the audio and image quality. Is this true at all?
 
I noticed this morning that my car did not remember having the Android function unlocked, meaning the browser and all the additional apps were gone. Is this normal? In the youtube video it mentioned that the settings will be remembered but it seems like this is not the case anymore?
 
Olimpia said:
I noticed this morning that my car did not remember having the Android function unlocked, meaning the browser and all the additional apps were gone. Is this normal? In the youtube video it mentioned that the settings will be remembered but it seems like this is not the case anymore?
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I'm so sorry for missing your question until now. The answer is you have to create a bookmark to the website and put it on one of your home screens. This will survive a restart of the car and make it easy to always get to the site. There are instructions in a YouTuje video linked on the hondabox.net site.

Also, I've found that I can get to sites without even having to be connected to Wifi! I think the car always has an internet connection (though slow) via HondaLink.
 
RedClarity said:
I hope it's ok to post this, but I made a simple website for myself to make it easy to move pictures from my phone/computer to the car's infotainment system to use as backgrounds, and thought I'd make it available to all: hondabox.net. You upload a picture to the site and it crops and scales it for the Clarity (also added some other Hondas) and makes it available in the car via a private webpage (or you can download with a USB key if you don't want to use the web in the car). If this garners any interest, I'm happy to take suggestions on things to add.
Click to expand...

Has hondabox.net gone offline?
 
There are other websites (here's one) that let you drop an image to be converted for display on a Honda screen, but I haven't tried them. I'm not sure if the aspect ratios of the wallpaper images they produce will match the Clarity's screen, however. The one I linked says the image must be exactly 840 x 468 pixels, which is a very strange 70:39 aspect ratio, that is probably applicable to older Honda displays (and the wallpaper would be distorted on the Clarity's display).

The Clarity Owners Manual (page 223) says that the minimum image size that will fill the screen is 800 x 480 pixels, but it can accommodate images as large as 4096 x 4096 pixels (with a 5MB limit). I would easily believe that the resolution of the Clarity's display is 800 x 480 and it downgrades any higher-res images to that level.

The Clarity accepts both BMP and JPEG image formats. However, if 800 x 480 fills the screen without black bars at any edges, then the aspect ratio would be a unique 5:3 (as opposed to SDTV's 4:3 or HDTV's 16:9). You want to match the display's aspect ratio to avoid distorting the image.

All you need is a computer with a basic image editor program that can crop the photo and set the resolution of the wallpaper image you want to upload. Then you use a USB drive to load it into your Clarity. I just looked on my Windows 7 computer at Windows Live Photo Gallery and I couldn't find a cropping option, so perhaps that old program is too basic. The equally ancient, but very capable, Photoshop CS2 is now a free download, however.
 
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insightman said:
There are other websites (here's one) that let you drop an image to be converted for display on a Honda screen, but I haven't tried them. I'm not sure if the aspect ratios of the wallpaper images they produce will match the Clarity's screen, however. The one I linked says the image must be exactly 840 x 468 pixels, which is a very strange 70:39 aspect ratio, that is probably applicable to older Honda displays.

The Clarity Owners Manual (page 223) says that the minimum image size that will fill the screen is 800 x 480 pixels, but it can accommodate images as large as 4096 x 4096 pixels (with a 5MB limit). Both BMP and JPEG image formats are supported. However, if 800 x 480 fills the screen without black bars at any edges, then the aspect ratio would be 5:3 (as opposed to SDTV's 4:3 or HDTV's 16:9). You want to match the display's aspect ratio to avoid distorting the image.

All you need is a computer with a basic image editor program that can crop the photo and set the resolution of the wallpaper image you want to upload. Then you use a USB drive to load it into your Clarity. I just looked on my Windows 7 computer at Windows Live Photo Gallery and I couldn't find a cropping option, so perhaps that old program is too basic. Equally ancient Photoshop CS2 is now a free download, however.
Click to expand...

You can do it in Paint. That's how I got the image set for my car display, which BTW is the same you can see on my profile.
 
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