I'd like to give thanks to all the Computer Science Engineers and programmers that have assisted all of us with little or no codeing experience.

It takes special people who can help others work out their problems. If there's anything to be said from this experience it's read, read, read before attempting to make your changes. Be absolutely sure this is what you want to do. Anytime someone starts messing with what the say's is good, there's always a chance you wind up bricking the unit. There's nothing to be learned from just applying someones data zip to your unit. That takes away from your creativity. While I did not apply anyone's direct zip file to my unit, I did use quite a bit of the codes from several different postings as well try a couple of things I had not seen previously.

Once you start, it's addicting. I spent several days while I was vacation playing with it until I got it to look like I wanted. Just yesterday and this morning I spent about 16 hours just trying to get the bottom right section just right. If I can get the darn battery symbol moved to the spot above the altimeter, I'd be extremely happy . Another thing I want to do is have the Cancer Research Ribbon bmp transparent. I'll check with my son if he has a program to make one, otherwise I'll live with it.

I want to give special thanks to Boris. Boris you are genius. The explanations you gave were very informative. One of the best mods I have is the cameras. You provided all the files required to get it to work.

The background scheme I'm using in this picture is Monopoly Nite (posted by none other than Boris).

In case anyone is wondering, I have the portable unit, 500BT. We did not get a update so some of the zips posted won't work right.

Again thank you very much. I'm pretty certain you guys could have done this in a few hours time.

hey brotha, good job... but doesn't it seem a bit .... messy? different colors, things all over the place certain things catch the eye more than others...

That is some great work. It's all too "busy" for my tastes, but if it's what you like, then that's great!

03Aviator ya know I was about to say the same thing until I studied it for a minute and realized that in this pic everything is going all at the same time. he has the route function going as he is showing a redlight cam and the whole nine yards. I'll bet it looks alt cleaner without some of this stuff active.

if an ipod were plugged in the cover art would overlap with the time/date box

Thanks for the replies and thoughts. Kerosene - You're right the colors a bit all over the place, but as iamten7 pointed out I am showing alot in the picture. I very rarely show the co-ords. As you know the speed camera is not there all time. Bear in mind there's over 20 schemes on the unit so color co-ordinating is a bit of challenge. The compass is a pain as I don't have the right tools to fix it. I did enlarge it and choose the same color of the arrows. I needed to enlarge it as it the light gray-white was not visable from my viewing distance. Since it a 500BT it does sit further from me than most of the forum users here. What I did do though based on your your reply, I changed the color of the co-ord to white with black glow. Thanks for pointing it out. It's nice to have multiple perspectives.

iamten7 - Yep, it's a lot running. Below is my non-route view. Which is what's on most of the time. One thing I want to do sometime is have the compass slide down into the bottom left corner. There's plenty of code there already, so I need to give it tons of thought before attempting.

peterparker - Ipod is non-issue to me as I don't have one nor ever plan on owning one. I'm probably a bit older than most here as I'm approaching the big five-o. Radio and CD's serve my purpose just fine.

Please excuse the quality of the picture. If you want to get a better idea of the correct colors, you check out the day scheme - Monopoly.

N-S-E-W Have your kids show you the wondorous world of iPod. I'm not much younger than you and believe me once you go Podding you'll never go back. I actually do not even have an antenna on my car anymore since all I use is the Pod. Best thing I ever did was box up all those CD's and plug in the Pod. If you can operate the DVR you can master the iPod in less than an hour. You won't be sorry.

iamtim7 - I don't have the unit wired into my stereo system. Probably wouldn't sound sound too good out the 1/2 inch tweeter that Pioneer put on the portable unit. One thing that we portable owners have over the in-dash owners is we don't have our music interrupted by the beeps or the TTS gal.

nsew there is a white compass topic, use that... just an fyi... once you change all the things everyone is mentioning will make your version look the same as everyone elses... keep in mind this is how you want it and there is no need to change it if you dont want to...

Thanks for the kind word

You're welcome

nsew there is a white compass topic, use that... just an fyi... once you change all the things everyone is mentioning will make your version look the same as everyone elses... keep in mind this is how you want it and there is no need to change it if you dont want to...

As I mentioned earlier I was having difficulty reading the smaller compass with the gray background, so I enlarged it and changed the colors. All I had available was the Paint program from Microsoft on my P.C. I also moved it to an empty spot on the left side. Would be awesome if someone can create a transparent linear compass that's 70h x 431w for me.