Sunday, September 11, 2005 - 03:15 pm, by: Jason Kingsmill(Jason_k)
Okay, me being fairly non-creative in terms of carpentry etc...I need help figuring out how I'm gonna mount my CarPC in the boot.
Attached is a picture of where I want to mount it...left hand side above the fuel tank. Circled in red.
I am going to be mounting the components (Mainboard, PSU and Hard drive) on a piece of treated wood (on standoffs). I just can't figure out how I'm going to keep the wood in place (keeping in mind that I want to be able to remove the whole lot fairly easily, so I can't just glue it to the tank - thought of that!)
Any suggestions for an imbecile like me?
That's the components there in testing. Once I get the VGA screen installed, it should be a great little setup. To give you an idea of just how small those MiniITX mainboards are, the bottom right is the Hard Drive. Not too much bigger than that. The PSU above it is an Opus 150W DC-DC PSU, which is about half the physical size of a standard ATX PSU.
Hi Jason. When they installed my sat/nav box, it was placed on top of the fuel tank with double sided tape! Never moved and no problems! With the hard drive remember to keep it away from the speaker magnets! The Sub has the biggest magnet as you will lose data!
Sunday, September 11, 2005 - 03:47 pm, by: Jason Kingsmill(Jason_k)
Hrmmmm.
Only problem with double-sided tape, it's not really re-useable. But it did give me an idea....velcro! Thanks!
Yeah, I had already thought of the magnet problem with the HDD...not so much of an issue just yet. I am only using this HDD(old 15Gb) temporarily for testing and whatnot. Once its working the way I want it, I'll be using a USB 2.5" hard drive mounted up front, probably in the glove-box for easy removel.
Sunday, September 11, 2005 - 05:38 pm, by: Chris Hanaghan(Chris)
Two of my mates have Car PCs. They are awesome. Running a program called map monkey for Sat Nav and another one that integrates map monkey with dvd movies and MP3s. You should have a look at mounting a trackpad as well as they found touch screens to be a bit of a pain in the ass as it is too hard to select a small area, such as closing a window (mind you they were aftermarket ones). Just a thought.
Sunday, September 11, 2005 - 05:45 pm, by: Jason Kingsmill(Jason_k)
Eventually, I will be using the touchscreen and a remote control.
My setup is mainly for audio/video at the moment, no GPS(yet).
I will be using a front-end as the shell, so no little (x) buttons to close windows etc..it's all embedded in the front-end application. Will also have support for pretty much any external applications, also embedded support for map-monkey/freedrive and a lot of other GPS apps.
The remote will be for when I'm driving along to skip tracks etc.., so I don't haveto look at the screen.
Sunday, September 11, 2005 - 05:57 pm, by: Alan Chow(Kfchow)
speaking of touch screens how do they work anyway? do you just plug it into a usb port in the computer and install it as a input device?? does it work on normal winxp?
Sunday, September 11, 2005 - 06:35 pm, by: Paul Newman(Legendsatlunch)
Jason wha are you using for your front end, I've tried media car and another can't remember name off hand. Where did you get the opus power supply. I've been looking at the open curciut board style, only 80w thouh, thought about running a relay and reg for harddrive and dvd to take the load off the p.s. I've currently been using a full atx m.b, will eventually get mini ipx style(spending money else where atm). was also thinking of touch pad, made enquiries about a laptop style, but no go, will use a ps2 style and hopefully get it to fit in the centre console cup holder.
Sunday, September 11, 2005 - 09:14 pm, by: Jason Kingsmill(Jason_k)
Alan - yeah, the touch-screen is basically just an LCD with a resistive style touch panel in front. It uses a standard USB interface to connect to the PC, and installs itself as an input device, yes.
Yep, works on normal XP, just need to install the driver/software for calibration. Where-ever you touch the screen, the cursor moves to and clicks.
Paul - I still haven't decided which front-end to use yet. I really like Frodo-player, but it lacks inbuilt IR remote support. Would need to use Girder to control, which is just another program to add to the running tasks list that I'd prefer not to do. I originally started testing in the house with MediaEngine. It's really buggy and crashes a lot. I like it's features, although all the mode buttons(audio, video, gps etc...) seem a little weird. Centrafuse is really good, although looks poor and can't be skinned in the same sense that most others can. Functionality and operating it though, is excellent. It's commercial now though, so you gotta pay for it.
I've tried pretty much every front-end, and there still isn't one that suits me 100%.
Once I get it all up, I'll do more testing with it in-car, and spend some time with it and see how each goes. I'll probably end up using FrodoPlayer though.
Sunday, September 11, 2005 - 09:25 pm, by: Paul Newman(Legendsatlunch)
You haven't considered a car p.c style case http://fortech.com.au/index.php?main_page=index made for mini itx (said ipx before whoops!). easy to mount in the spot you mentioned above, was thinking same spot myself, nice and easy access to a/v on tuner and routing for cables etc, make a nice hole in the boot back cover for access.
Sunday, September 11, 2005 - 09:29 pm, by: Paul Newman(Legendsatlunch)
side note: with the usb 2 drive, is the t/fer rate with them comparable with ide. cause thats a great idea! Nother thought on mounting you could use a jiffy box, that way you could put a fan on the side for extra cooling ( boot gets pretty hot). cheers
Sunday, September 11, 2005 - 09:52 pm, by: Jason Kingsmill(Jason_k)
Yeah, I did consider those Morex cases, but it seems that they don't sell them standalone without the PSU, which is a waste of money considering I already have one way better.
USB 2 is rated at max. 480MBit/s, compared with UATA133 133Mbit/s. Either way, it's the HDD that can't keep up.
I don't think heat will be much of an issue with this unit(excepting the HDD). While testing it, I had it running only it's own CPU fan, for a whole day encoding DVD's non stop. When I got home from work, the only thing that was above room temperature was the RAM. CPU, chipset etc...was perfectly cool. Hard drive was pretty warm though with that much data being written!
Oh, and to answer your previous question about where I got the Opus from: Got it from the states...not cheap, US$164. But certainly does the job.
Monday, September 12, 2005 - 02:51 am, by: Paul Newman(Legendsatlunch)
Alan, Mobile phone control, Link up to car diagnostics? not sure if soarer's are odbII compliant but with an apexi or such you can do alot of cool stuff, depends on how creative you want to get, sat radio? does this work in oz?
Monday, September 12, 2005 - 07:04 am, by: Jason Kingsmill(Jason_k)
Unfortunately, the Soarers (up until I think '97??) are not OBDII compliant, so that makes for very difficult OBD interfacing.
Alan - basically, anything you can do on a home PC you can do on a Car PC. A lot of people use them for bluetooth car connectivity (dial the phone from big buttons on PC, etc.), audio, video, games, reverse-cams, on-board diagnostics, ECU programming with compatible ECU, options are endless.
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