Car PC

[Jerboa113]

ya know now that you mention it i'm not sure where mine is.

 

maybe its in the arm rest..

[Rishi]

Thats great news if it hasn't overheated or caused you difficulties. Armrest it is!

[NSFW]

I was really worried about my CarPC turning into a constant work-in-progress or a string of flaky annoyances but it's been pretty good so far. The only major annoyance has been USB drivers that hang the system intermittently.

 

I think it helped a lot that I used a laptop, power inverter, and Webmaster's power controller. It was all plug-and-play. Plus of course I am still using the stock head unit for music - I decided to stick with that until navigation and ECU monitoring are totally reliable, and I need to get the hangs fixed first.

[Jerboa113]

well, I'm a perfectionist thats very self critical of the work that I do.. so I wanted it to look 100% stock.. or not be there at all. I kept spending more and more money and time on trying to acheive this.. basically trying to do what subaru already did with a team of electrical engineers and design engineers with me and 2 friends.. and it simply was not working out.

 

So I took it out, sold the carputer to a guy here in ATL for $300. He was going to put it in his ride. I hope it worked out for him. Seemed like a pretty cool guy. I think he said he had a grand cherokee. Lots of room for a carputer in there.

 

The only thing left is broken pieces of xenarc screens, the factory nav bezel and a coiled up VGA cable in my trunk.. oh yea.. and the gps antenna is still in there.. but I never use it cos I have an iphone now.

[nemo]

Mine looks stock, I think.

 

My computer is sitting underneath the radio deck. So far I only have had 2 problems, really. The first is that the computer is giving off interference so it really lessens my radio reception. And the second is that sometimes the it doesn't always turn on right away. I think there's a problem with the PSU. I haven't had a chance to take it all apart to check yet.

 

As for the radio reception, I think it's either the +12v line running from the engine along the antenna wire (I think). I dunno

 

http://legacygt.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=65637&stc=1&d=1238418885

[Jerboa113]

only the stock bezel with the stock buttons looks stock. Because thast the only stock configuration that is offered.

 

I had an m1-atx on mine.. I was a little irritated that its jumpers were 15 seconds, 30 seconds, or 30 minutes.. you couldn't set it for like 2 minutes to shut down when remote was killed.

 

My other problem was where it was mounted it got kinda hot (on top of spare tire) so I had big fans on it which vibrated a tiny bit and annoyed rear passnegers.

 

ny other complaint was that it was simply too slow.. At the time I didnt have access to the program to strip unneeded crap out of windows so booting took a full minute.. and that was just too long.

 

Another problem I ran into was if it broke.. I was the only one who could fix it.. cos I was the one who built it. I suppose tahts been a hard lesson I've learned in many mods on this car.. I had the same problem when my HIDs went out.

 

"stay stock say happy" as Bosco says.

[NSFW]

only the stock bezel with the stock buttons looks stock. Because thast the only stock configuration that is offered.

 

You completely misunderstood what he was getting at.

 

One of the reasons I went with a laptop was the built-in power management. It's pretty flexible (IIRC, it sleeps after 5 minutes, hibernates after 10 or 15) and since it's built into the OS it's pretty reliable.

 

Since it has its own battery, I don't have to worry about draining the car's battery, and power wiring was simple - it just gets power from the cigarette lighter circuit. From the laptop's perspective, AC power comes and goes, and it knows how to deal with that.

 

Since everything in the laptop was chosen for good battery life, it doesn't waste energy getting hot. So even though the only fan I have is the little CPU fan in the laptop, I have not had any issues with heat. (Yet. Knock on wood. But I can add fans if I need to.)

 

And HP has tech support. But since they already did the integration testing for all the components in the laptop, I have never needed to call them. The only stuff I've added has been connected with USB, which is pretty easy to troubleshoot. If something does go wrong, I can pull it from the car and sit on my couch with it. (Only been necessary twice in the year+ I've been running it.)

 

My laptop came with Vista, and I was going to swap in XP until I saw how quickly it booted and recovered from sleep or hibernation. I haven't even bothered stripping anything out, and I don't plan to. I am planning to try Win7 from an SSD but that will be something I can swap in case I find a problem with it. I'm not real fond of running a beta OS, but I hear good things about Win7 on SSD so I want to give it a shot.

[Rishi]

I have to agree - the laptop is a very good solution. I actually got my carpc installed over the past couple of days. Managed to get the wiring done by simply pulling out the Cubby and vents and using a guide wire. So didn't have to dissasemble the centre console! Was very worried about breaking clips along the way otherwise. Located the P1900 power supply and laptop under the passenger seat and hid all the wire under the centre console by 'tucking' it under the plastic. Power is obtained by the centre cigarette lighter and wire is run under the seat by drilling a small hole in the armrest. Unfortunately, along the way I burnt out my original intended computer (see prev post), I think from an electrostatic discharge. So am now using an old laptop. I agree with NSFW regarding the benefits of the power management features on the laptop. The next step for me is to develop a remote on/ off switch I think which can be done by attaching a wired "momentary" switch. Will try this when I have the time. Also probably need a faster laptop.

[rtbrjason]

I'm in the process of replacing my mediagate with a laptop as well. I don't have any screen solution other than composite for now unfortunately. I've got a perfect laptop for this as it is a 2ghz duo core with 1gb of ram, 4 usb ports and built in bluetooth. It's also got tv out aside from vga so I'll be able to connect it right to the stock nav screen for now. It's got a card reader as well which is ideal for logging and storing logger profiles etc. I've done some testing and it mostly looks like crap. Itunes is too small to read. I'm going to install mediacenter OS (mce2005 or vista ultimate) as it displays largish clear text and is easy to navigate. My other main use will be romraider logger. As it is now, the paramaters aren't easy to see, but once you have what you want slected, the gauges are very readable.

 

Eventually I may replace the stock nav with the laptop only and get a gps antenna, sirius, fm/tv etc for it to replace the stock nav. Not sure I want to hack up the car that much though yet. If we could only get a double din headunit, I would just install it all in place of the stereo and throw and amp in the car for the speakers..

[rtbrjason]

The more I mess with this, the more I think about just pulling the cable from the nav unit, and hacking it into a vga input. I'm not convinced it will be that simple to get touch screen working with the stock screen and the pc, but I assume the main cable running from the nav to the screen is just vga? It looks like there is a separate cable running to the screen for the touch controls. Just having the pc run with vga vs composite is probably going to be worth it for me. Then I'll just need gps software and a gps antenna for the laptop. I think I will lose out on the voice prompts though unless maybe I'm in aux mode already. Anyway.. has anyone hacked their carpc into the oem screen yet via vga?

[Rishi]

If I were you, I would keep the stock screen. Unless you pay a lot of $ or are very artistic, it is very hard to get a result which will look as good. If you can find an easy way to hack into the stock screen with a PC, go for it, but I would not expend the stock NAV for this.

[rtbrjason]

The idea is to keep the stock screen and ditch the under seat nav so that I can get vga to the stock screen. I feel I need to keep the stock screen as it also controls car options. The under seat nav on the other hand isn't a very big deal and I'm betting the windows nav software is better.

 

As it stands now it's all working fine, but the pc is outputting via composite which pretty much looks like crap on the stock screen.

[NSFW]

I wouldn't bet on that connection being VGA. It might be, but there are also plenty of other ways to connect to an LCD.

[rtbrjason]

I wouldn't bet on that connection being VGA. It might be, but there are also plenty of other ways to connect to an LCD.

 

Like what? It's fairly old technology. Not sure what else it could be..

[NSFW]

VGA is an analog relic from the tube days.

LCDs generally use digital stuff, with their own weird signaling.

Here's a couple random examples:

 

http://lcdinterfacing.googlepages.com/colorlcd

http://www.scienceprog.com/controlling-graphical-128x64-lcd-based-on-ks0108/

 

Those are kinda small but LCDs in laptops are usually hooked up via ribbon cables that don't carry VGA signals. There might be VGA to the factory nav, but I think the odds are slim.

[dbrunone]

Se here's another question....The Intel Mini-ITX motherboard I'm looking at has a min operating temp spec of 32F. Up here near Canada, it gets wayyy colder than that (down to -20F). Anyone know if that will be a problem??

[NSFW]

It never occurred to me to check the temp range for my laptop... I bet it's nothing special though, and it's been fine in single-digit temps (Fahrenheit). I worry about the disk more than the motherboard, but that's been reliable too.

[dbrunone]

I worry about the disk more than the motherboard, but that's been reliable too.

 

On that note, is it worth it to go solid-state disk? Or does a laptop hard drive work ok?

[rtbrjason]

On that note, is it worth it to go solid-state disk? Or does a laptop hard drive work ok?

 

Had okay luck with laptop harddrives in a few laptops, but would definitely go ssd if I was shopping new.

[NSFW]

My regular hard drive has been fine so far. I bought an SSD but haven't tried it yet.

[Jerboa113]

I killed my 1st harddrive pretty quickly, however this was when it was mounted to the back of my seat passthrough.. apparently the stop mount came loose and the machine beat itself against the passthrough every time I stopped... so.. its understandable really.

 

The 2nd one was shock mounted in the spare tire well and lasted till I sold the unit.

[Rishi]

I'm using a hard drive in a laptop sitting under the rails of the front passenger seat. Gone about 1000 miles so far and no problems. I'll update if anything goes wrong, but currently like my setup a lot. Can't see the laptop the way its sitting unless the seat is move all the way forwards (can can just see about 2 inches of the laptop sticking out). Have added a USB hub to load data/ music to the laptop. Its an old laptop, so very cheap. Have added a remote switch to turn it off/on. Turning it off puts it into standby, so takes only seconds to re start. I'm still waiting for my GPS module to arrive to complete the setup along with MS streets. Only thing I wish my screen was birghter in sunlight, but its still useable.

[executor485]

Finally finished my full carputer install with bezel. Here's the link with updated pictures.

 

http://www.legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93487

[rtbrjason]

Here are a few pics of my setup. I'm mainly using this for data logging/on screen gauges, but having mediacenter with a ton of music, vids, and a tv tuner is a nice bonus.

 

It's hooked up via composite and I'm currently using a Gyration rf airmouse/remote to control it. I have a Logitech Dinovo mini bluetooth keyboard coming though as I want my mediacenter remote back in the house. It sleeps/wakes from sleep with the power button on the remote.

 

It's a gateway laptop (2ghz core duo with 1gb ram 80gb drive, 4 usb ports and bluetooth). I mounted it upside down into the foam piece that used to hold the spare tire down. It's wedged in there very nicely and isn't moving.

 

Stock nav is still in use which is handy since I mostly have romraider running while driving. Cell phone pics looks a bit crappy. While it isn't vga quality, it does look decent via composite on the small screen. I have vista set to display enlarged fonts etc so menus are actually usable.

[cseagle08]

Software Engineer here: On the temperature questions. If you're wanting to have a reliable system and you live in that sort of environment then a solid state drive is definitely going to be the way to go for (yet again) "reliable" performance in all conditions, as well as the constant vibration of driving. The temperature ranges are because electrical components could begin to condensate in that low of a temperature range (10 degree air, 140-ish degree processor) depending on the amount of moisture in the air, on surfaces, etc.

 

Now, with all that said whatever you put together could run for 10 years and never have an issue. There's no way of knowing for sure without lots of testing.

 

...Just some thoughts...