http://www.autoblog.com/2008/09/11/f...ate-car-puter/

Check out the gallery:
http://www.autoblog.com/photos/toyota-mr2-carputer/

 

wow. i've building a fairly ultimate carputer myself but i'm sooo putting in a larger monitor rotated vertical like that in place of the acc now.

 

That is insane!!

 

That **** is HAWT!!!!!!!

 

Anyway, yeah that is pretty impressive. Wish I had it in my car.

 

The installation doesn't seem that rough with the exception of the wiring and integration. What I'm really curious about is the programming.

 

So am I. Did they have to program the A/C unit controls, or are there already programs for that? More than likely pre-programmed huh.

 

Definitely need to wire up some sort of serial interface. Front-end display and controls is all programmed, then the back-end to interface wired to the car.

Either way, that's all I've got. The rest is over my head, unless there's some sort of interface kit.

 

True. Sounds like a beyatch to do. I wonder how many man hours that took? Removal, fabrication, installation, and functional checks, to make sure everything works. Looks like a PITA!! But excellent work!!

 

yea i saw this on engadget.com earlier, sick. Odometer and everything changed up. I believe he asking for 10k for the car

 

That is insanely awesome. Looks like something from star trek. Does all of that stuff work? It seems like interfacing with some of those systems such as climate control would be a royal PITA. First, you'd have to know what pretty much every wire running to the old climate buttons/***** did (not too hard if you've got the FSM or something). Then, you'd have to program the carputer to take input from the touchscreen (ie, "turn fan on") and send a signal (perhaps through the serial port) to a custom circuit that would set the appropriate voltages on the various climate control wires. That could get complicated quickly when you consider all the permutations (vent open, fan on; vent closed, fan on; vent open, fan off; vent closed, fan off, etc.) I don't know how he did it but off the top of my head, one idea would be to use an external microprocessor with a bunch of custom code to accept various commands over serial and output the appropriate voltages to the appropriate wires, with all kinds of fancy switching. This is a LOT of work for a one-man show.

anyway, very impressive! wish i had that kinda time on my hands.

 

yea, i wish I could find the website posted, he gave a lot of pictures and details on what each screen does. Everything works and gives great detail on whatever you want to know about the car. He mentioned one thing not being hooked up though but it wasnt something big. Hopefully this is the wave of the future. Cars are now coming about standard with some type of screen, I can see technology slowly advancing, though, it also means more things that can go wrong and break.

 

More things can go wrong? You think? It's just changing from mechanical ***** to control boards, I'd imagine it would stay the same, just be more expensive.

 

yea that is true.