Sorry My digital Cammera is on its way out. Picture are kind of crappy, but you can get the idea.

 

Sweet. You build the 'puter yourself?

 

 

That is freaking awesome dude. Wireless internet in a car = teh hotness

 

yeh, its not totaly finished tho, Those picture is from my laptop, I was testing it out.

 

Whats the point if you can't even read what it says on the screen though? Awesome Idea though.

 

you can deffinitly read it in the car, my digital camera sucks. you can see the text clearly. I am going to get GPS reciver hooked up to it, and I am all set.

 

That is awsome. Good job.

 

You can laso make the font large to see better.
Well done.
How much did the whole project ran you? And do you have internet as well?
Where is your carputer located?

 

I still don't get the concept of a carputer! I mean you have to take your eyes off the road much more to read whats on the screen since there's so many things on it. And how about being able to angle the screen like the ones on a dvd player.

 

that's so cool. need some write ups on this. don't dodge and hide how you get your gats.

this is a great contribution to the orgers...

 

Cool man, how much did it run you...i assume your gonna have a big hard drive in there for all your mp3....i mean legal songs, that you riped your self....

 

Great system! I really like carputers although I don't think I'd go through the whole process. Noisy power inverters and a lack of SOLID buttons kind of doesn't cut it for me. I'd at least need a real volume, next, previous, play, stop...

But good luck w/ it!

Friend of mine did a custom job in his GTi. Wireless mouse/keyboard tray under the passenger seat and a special remote which had all the functions of a "music player" (CD, mp3, DVD, etc...).
Had the Microsoft GPS system hooked up and a powered USB hub in the glove box. Built-in wifi card, Bluetooth, and a bunch of other crap... Until one day his HDD blew out b/c of his suspension setup - the car was on rails basically and it was more than the computer could handle - and the drive was mounted on a rubber isolator...

 

Oh yeah i do have couple of problems. One the altenator noise, Second i have find a solid place to mouth the casing. I have loud system in the back of my car. I don't want to mess up the HD. I will write a good detail about this. I am exiceted the wiring and all working. Also i am using FM modulator which realy sucks. I have to turn to chanel 88.3. The computer will cost me about 400 bucks. Hard drive size will be around 120 gb.

I might just use my laptop for this. I am still deciding, I have the case and the mobo, power supply. So i dont know yet.

I got the LCD from one of my good Friend for $80 Bucks.

 

In the pic I see you're keeping a H/U... why not run a "line out" (not speaker out) from the PC's sound card into the AUX input on the H/U? At first my friend took his H/U out but after realizing that he has no radio and ONLY a computer for his media, he popped it back in and did it that way. This way you still have a CD player in the front at least for audio CDs, mp3 CDs, and an actual radio...

 

Thank you to you all, for the support, I will have detail write up on this. It is not realy hard, I am computer techiction, i work on computers all the time. I understand computers very well. Still its not hard thing to do.
1. You need Touch Screen LCD with VGA Input. (Ebay great source to find them)
2. You can use your Laptop or Build a Micro ITX MOBO with a custom case.
3. Just running the wires.
4. Blue tooth Keyboard and a mouse.
5. Wireless Network Card. I would go with the one that supports A,G,B network types. Linksys makes one.
You can get most of the stuff from this site. http://www.mp3car.com/store/

 

why don't u put the HD under one of the seats and get a really long ATA cable (they sell them as long as 3ft) and hook it up to the MOBO in the trunk (unless yer speaker magnets could ruin something else) congrats

 

Mobo under the seat? I think it'd need some more room to vent, no?

 

Did I just completely misread that or did you make a type-o and edit it?
I could have SWORN you wrote "mobo under seat..."

Oh man I'm going crazy...

 

My head Unit does not have a Aux Input, that is the problem. That is why I use a FM modulator.

 

My mistake - I should have caught on when you said you're using the mod. the first time...

 

No the Serial ATA cables are not that long. Case needs to be in a area that does not over heat or the hard drive get hit with vibration from the subs. A HD can stand up to 350 Gs shock, when it is not spinning. HD failure is very common with Carputers. Heat is number one failure to the HD.

 

all i ask is does that screen say lilliput? like the oompah loompahs? Forgive me for my curiousity but im weird

 

The Don is proud of you too, Johnny.

 

Is everything going to go through the mod to the h/u and then to your speakers? Or will that be a secondary way? Meaning, are you possibly going to go from the sound card into an external multi-channel amp which you'd hood up to your existing car speakers. Basically, the carputer would be another h/u hookup. As well, are you stil going to keep your sub-out from your h/u for CD/radio purposes?

Sorry, for all the questions - I'm just curious how people do it and how it differs from my friend's setup since his was supposed to be a "pro job" (but who knows...)

 

No you are right, it is called Lilliput. That's the name

 

Awesome man, good job

 

Everything will go throught he H/U. as far as the sound for the Carputer, i am going to use one of these http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...65733?v=glance
Going to RCA Spliter and from there goes to the FM MOD. and i am getting a RCA switcher to take care of the that. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...ist&sku=159616

 

Wow, you're making me rethink this whole carputer thing!
The more you post about it, the more I want to try to do this!

Although, I would have to put in quite a bit of research into the different setups and units available.

Once again, good luck with your setup!

 

Thank very much, and thanks to everyone else for their comments. Just invest some money into a LCD the rest comes along, little by little. I definitely recommend EBay.

 

Start>Programs>Accessories>Accessibility>Magnifier

Good job

 

I have been looking into this. I was at a site that made car-specific cases and other stuff for these (you may have touched on that, not sure)
If I didn't have 100 other things to do i'd be trying this also.

On a side note, I used to play around in Linux, and they had a program called XMMS, or winamp basicly, there you could wire an IR and use any remote to program audio functions. Problem is, haven't come across anything like that for windows, it would be a nice tool to have in the car

 

... but only 30% there hehe



you might consider cutting that bar off... but the remote is good. I'll get some more pics but i don't want to hijaack ur thread.

I ended up using XPE

 

how are you dealing with the heat the carputer may face. I looked into this a lot and didnt think I would get enough cooling to the system to keep it from overheating unless I went in the water cooled direction especially on a day like today in NY.

 

depends on the processor and stuff u put in the casing of course ...

i ended up going the embedded way so my CPU is 1ghz but it is fanless ... but i put a fan in there anyways to help.

as far as temprature, any carpc won't be running in an environment where the driver would feel too hot or too cold anyways .. so it should be ok.

 

can never go wrong with too cold for a pc, but anyways I was just concerned because if the car has been sitting awhile in the sun say on a 90degree day the insides boil which in turn will cause the case to be near the temp. So when you first fire up the cpu its in an environment thats so hot to begin with and it will keep getting hotter when the cpu starts churning away.

I guess it depends on the cpu you would end up using and how high its load temperatures are. If you had a flip out lcd touch screen that was a headunit. the bottom 2 slots could be used for the mini case and for the water cooling reservoir I would put it in the ash tray possibly. Defintely something to think about if I wanted to showoff and had the cash.

 

berry berry nice! keep up that work and lets see a write up and some carshow trophies!

 

Well, it is a Pioneer and they make an item that plugs into the IP bus cable where a changer usually plugs in and it has rca ins on it (i think it is called cprb20 or something like that), it would be better than the fm mod and it should allow you to hit the source button and have an aux.

 

There are a few for Windows. I enjoy a nice 'legal' copy of UICE. It works well with many different IR setups.

I'm working on a carputer myself. I've got the mini computer and the Xenarc 7 inch is in the mail.....I'll definately post pictures when I finally get around to install it.

 

hey cystum,

does ur lilliput screen ever go white after a long use? I think i have some heating issues with mine. I never noticed it in my car, but i did when I had it on my desk testing a couple of times. Albeit it was on for a long time, but i was thinking of replacing the internal speaker with a fan.

The great thing about this screen is it fits SO perfect behind the dash. i don't want to open it up or play around with it anyways.

for sound, i bought an RB10 adapter for my pioneer and use the AUX source. This setup was surprisingly awesome .. no quality or sound difference.

any pics of ur system?