Yay just finished my carputer

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raytaylor

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Topic # 57364 11-Feb-2010 02:18

I just finished installing my carputer into the dash of my legacy
Rather than splash out on a proper in-dash screen, i took my old eee 701 netbook, pulled the shell off around the 7" screen and it fits nice and tightly into the spare din spaces on the dash. I spraypainted the aluminuim black to try and blend it in.

There is a small gap on the left and right of the screen but its hardly noticable and i will be getting some black imitation velvet or something similar and making a plastic border to put around the screen.

The power supply cable had been cut and wired up to the back of the 12v cigarette / power socket so it runs directly off of the car with the eee's battery acting as a ups giving an hour or so of playback without the engine running. When the key is turned on it starts charging just like being plugged into the wall.

To control it, i am using a usb numeric keypad which also has a built in usb hub so i can easily plug in a vodem or usb stick to load on more music. A batch file can be run using the keypad controller to turn on its wifi, connect to the home network, download any new songs off my file server then turn the wifi back off.

The software is called media engine and i have designed a custom subaru skin, windows xp boot screen and i believe it also can integrate with some popular gps mapping software which i have not yet looked into. Media engine can also start winamp visualizations and play avi movie files

This system replaces a standard laptop under the passenger seat that was hooked up to a vga to composite converter, which ran into the stock standard japanese ntsc-only screen that had less than 640x480 of resolution. It got its power supply through an inverter and was very inefficient on battery life without the engine running

Heres some pics and a video for anyone that is interested
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SQsSzQyst8

The white thing next to the can of redbull is the usb keypad
Sorry the camera lens is very speckly on this 5 year old camera

Now i gotta find a new place for my cb radio / cop scanner

Ray Taylor
Taylor Broadband (rural hawkes bay)
www.ruralkiwi.com

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Reply # 297842 11-Feb-2010 02:26

This is awesome. :)

Creator of Tallowmere.

NZCoderGuy

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Reply # 297843 11-Feb-2010 02:37

wow.. same dash as my subaru.. i have thought about doing something like this myself.. :) just don't have a spare puter to pull-a-part..

Care to explain the wiring to power it? how did you wire up the EEE Pc? are you still using an inverter?

--
Stephen
twitter/ NZCoderGuy / KiwiDevStudios

rvangelder

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Reply # 297894 11-Feb-2010 11:11

most impressive thing i've seen today.

nzpat

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Reply # 297916 11-Feb-2010 12:43

but why?

xpd

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Reply # 297932 11-Feb-2010 13:12

Why ? Why not ?
ICE - In Car Entertainment

Might as well say "why" to having a radio in the car..... :)

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robjg63

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Reply # 297934 11-Feb-2010 13:25

patznz: but why?

Probably because he can?

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself - A. H. Weiler

xcon

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Reply # 297940 11-Feb-2010 13:39

nice work,very smart

does the pc shut down when engine is turned off or run off its internal battery?
do need to manually shut down/hibernate the PC when you switch off the car and lock it up for the night ?

bonkiebonks

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Reply # 297942 11-Feb-2010 13:41

I think the Apple iPad would make a perfect in-car computer.

johnr

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Reply # 297943 11-Feb-2010 13:43

bonkiebonks: I think the Apple iPad would make a perfect in-car computer.

Does your car get PMS?

paradoxsm

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Reply # 297944 11-Feb-2010 13:44

I think it's a good job and an excellent donor unit, EEEpc's are great for that and you have done a great job customizing the windows to give it a unique look. I might have to keep my eyes out for an old 700 series EEEpc, you could always look t adding the touch screen mod to it too, that would make it utterly superb.

friedCrumpet

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Reply # 297945 11-Feb-2010 13:46

Have you looked at all into those touchscreens you can buy that fit over the top of the 7" screens? They would be perfect for a project like this.

raytaylor

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Reply # 298008 11-Feb-2010 16:12

Touchscreens - expensive. Would be good but i cant be bothered otherwise i would have just bought a standard double din 7" touchscreen lcd with vga input. I was doing this on the cheap

Further on the power.
Basically i chopped the eee's power cable. The transformer is now in the garage. The end that plugs into the eee is directly wired up to the back side + and - of the cigarette lighter. This is so i didnt have to do any extra soldering on the motherboard.

There is also no inverter. The eee 701 power transformers are horrible with brownouts caused by having them running when you start the engine. They just dont seem to like them. Had about 5 from client last year that runs eee's in their vehicle fleet fail. thats 5 out of 22 all running on inverters.
Inverters also waste alot of power when you are running on the car battery without the engine running. The eee itself will use up to something like 25 watts but when you add an inverter that probably goes up to something like 35 watts for the cheap inefficient ones. Thats up to 3 amps of power running a glorified mp3 player. The eee will happily run off 12 volts directly although it hasnt been running long enough for me to know how it will work with voltage drops itself from starting the engine.

When the car turns off, the power to the cigarette lighter is cut and so the eee thinks it is no longer running on ac power. It will then continue to run on the eee battey untill it gets to 30% and then the windows power options tell it to shut down. I am going to put in a relay and wire it up to a usb keyboard so that when the cigarette lighters power is cut, then it will press a button or hotkey that launches a batch script. It will say something like press 1 to continue and beep a couple of times or shutdown after 10 seconds.

I have wired up a push button into one of the dash button blanks and soldered the leads to the power button on the eee motherboard so at this stage, if i dont want to run the eee battery flat (i never like using laptops on their batterys) then i just push the button to turn it on, and push it again when i get out of the car and it just shuts down.

But why - Because I have the usb lead going down under the seat, i can install a usb hub and hook up things like
- external dvd drive
- vodem for google maps or google earth and internet
- internet would be great for looking up addresses phone numbers and maps when i am out of town
- gps reciever
- tv tuner
- wireless keyboard dongle
- wifi dongle or ap with a nice big 8dbi antenna on the roof

Ray Taylor
Taylor Broadband (rural hawkes bay)
www.ruralkiwi.com

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For my general guide to extending your wireless network Click Here

friedCrumpet

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Reply # 298020 11-Feb-2010 16:43

I was thinking of something more like this:

http://www.dealextreme.com/det...

It's not that expensive, and fits over your current screen.

b0untypure1

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Reply # 298053 11-Feb-2010 18:05

mean , you can do driveby's and steal internet from peeps :O !!!

raytaylor

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Reply # 298204 12-Feb-2010 02:30

Yea
Often i come across an open home network when i am out and about setting up wireless equipment for our clients so i usually log on, find out their details and send them an email with contact info for one of us to go out and secure it for them.

Its more common to find open networks in the richer / higher socioeconomic areas of town than the lower which is interesting because its the business owners computers that become at risk of an open network.

Here is some more pics i took today with better lighting
Power button:

I have now changed it so this puts the eee into hibernate instead of shutdown when the power button is pressed. It is much faster at booting up like this. The shutdown option within media engine will shutdown as per normal.

Ray Taylor
Taylor Broadband (rural hawkes bay)
www.ruralkiwi.com

There is no place like localhost
For my general guide to extending your wireless network Click Here

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