My Carputer setup, lots of pics

[conozo]

ok, so here is my carputer.

Power supply mounted on junked computer case.





I used wood because im not familiar with fiberglass yet and i wanted it carpeted.



The holes in the wood are for future switches.

Each piece of wood is securely connected to eachother and to the car.

Carpeting, you can see i have a cd player in this picture but i couldnt get it to fit while having the

motherboard under it, so i dont have a cd player right now.

[conozo]

Testing it out in the engine bay, the original power supply was DOA and i was making sure it was just the
power supply that was bad and nothing else.


Its guts


This is not an upto date picture but its now the motherboard and the power supply behind it toward the
firewall and the hard drive is on the left in a vertial position. All these components are just laying in
there, nothing is secured at all but it doesnt move around because the sharp edges stick to the carpet.

These fans blow inward. There are screws in the wood that keep this metal piece from falling on the computer,
it fits in there perfectly, i have to take out the ash tray then i can just pull it out if i need to do
anything to the computer.

[conozo]

Wireless keyboard is velcroed to the dash. I used outdoor velcroe and it hasnt fallen off from the heat or

anything.








So i dont have a screen yet, but i plan on getting one eventually. When i get a screen the whole setup will

change and hopefully i can convert it to be like this photochop i did.

Heres a detailed description of my entire audio system.


Next post in a few minutes will have more details.

[Cheeseburger]

wow, looks like something out of pimp my ride lol.... looks hella cool man! wish i new how to do stuff like that

[reanimator420]

now you can drive down the street like x2thaz

[ghettogeddy]

so what are u using as a screen

[conozo]

Ive had this carputer for a little over a year now. It was installed last summer as a really basic and cheap carputer. At first i had the M1 power supply, VIA ML8000A motherboard and used a 20 GB hard drive i had laying around along with a regualar wire multimedia emachines keyboard that was huge. Since then i have upgraded to wireless keyboard, 80GB hard drive, and griffin power mate.

Now a detailed description of each component for all those who want to add a carputer.

Motherboard
VIA ML8000A
800mhz, onboard audio and video. I have a 128MB of Ram. At the time i got this it cost me $160 from www.iboxpc.com and an 800mHz ITX motherboard will play dvds just fine but i wouldnt go any slower if you want to play dvds. If i were to buy a new motherboard i would get a faster one, more USBs, more audio inputs outputs, and Svideo output.

Hard Drive
Im using a Western digial desktop 80GB hard drive. Western Digital is not my favorite brand but its what i had and 80 GB fits my 12,000 songs easily. I prefer seagate but this WD has served me well. For a year it has worked beyond its specifications in temperatures 0-110 degree weather for months without a hickup. You want to mount hard drives vertically so that if you hit a big bump the needle will just slide along the platter as it normally does instead of slamming into the platter and scraping it up. Also i would get a desktop hard drive instead of a laptop hard drive for a carputer. Desktops HDs are way more sturdy because they dont have to worry about being lightweight.

Input
-Gyration 30ft wireless keyboard. These keyboards are expensive but its the only small keyboard thats not cheaply made and has multimedia controls ontop. This keyboard did stop working one day after 8 months of working fine so i had to get a new one and i bought the 2 year warranty for 10$ from amazon.
-Griffin power mate, this is another really expensive part, but i wanted a rotary volume knob and i needed something hardwired via USB just incase my batteries died in the keyboard. You can set it up to do anything. Mine currently controls the volume, stop, play, previous and next song. It does that by either turning it, short click, long click, or click hold and turn.

Wireless
-Netgear 108mbps wireless adapter, i use this to upload new songs and tweak the computer if i need to. The wireless connected is currently setup so that i just drive into my garage and leave the radio on go to my computer in my room and connect to the carputer by networking or Tight-VNc (its like remote desktop).

Power supply
-M1 ATX DC-DC power supply 80watts. The frist power supply i bought was a morex car power supply and it was DOA. It turnes out that most of the morex power supplies are DOA and they require more work to install. I would not get a Morex power supply. The M1s are great, its simple to install and it has many features such was a connection that will turn on your computer when you turn on your car and it will shut your computer off either instantly or up a couple seconds later when you turn your car off. If you need a power supply make sure you get a good one like the M1, it survives engine starts, low voltage, and regulates the voltages very well so that your motherboard doesnt get fried. M1 also makes higher power supplies than the 80w, i would recommend those if you are hooking up a lot of usb items and a desktop cd drive and hard drive.

Software
It runs windows 2000, i recommend windows 2000 or xp because they are stable compared to win98 or something. Linux is also good if you know how to use it. My music player is winamp 5. Remote desktop is tight vnc since i dont have a screen yet.

How it works.
When i turn my key to turn on the radio, the radio turns "on" but i dont use it so it says off. The power supply is connected to the power button on the motherboard to turn it on and off with the radio and key. I have it setup so that when you press the power button it will hibernate so that it doesnt use any power and it saves its place in a song. It takes about 15 seconds from turning the key to have music playing. When i turn the car off, its goes into hibernation automatically. When i turn off the radio and start it again the music playes from where it was when you turned the car off, so it works just like a normal cd player.
If i want to get to a song i just hit the letter "j" (for, jump to) it opens a search box in winamp so i can search for my song then i hit enter and im at that song. Other than that i can use the griffin power mate or the keyboards multimedia keys to navigate around. "s" turns off/on shuffle. So basically i can do anything without a screen, you really dont need a screen if you just plan on listening to music with your carputer.
Another important thing to have is a reset button for the computer, once in a while it will mess up, mine will need to be restared about once every two monts, and i have the playlist in the startup folder so it will start playing when i restart. Its not the best idea to have to turn off then on the car while your driving down the highway to restart the computer.lol
The tape players outputs go into the computer so if i want to listen to the radio or a tape i just stop the mp3 and turn on the radio. I can esentially have both playing at the same time but that would kinda be pointles. And i control the volume with the computers volume controls like normal.

The entire system setup.
The tape player output goes into the computer then the computers output goes to the amps. You cant have a carputer without amps powering your speakers. So set that up first.

Future add ons
Im pretty slow when adding stuff like this to my car i take my time and do it when i have extra money to spend. But the next thing to add is a screen in the dash like the photochop picture i had. When i add the screen ill also add a cd player to the computer. I also plan on adding bluetooth so i can talk through my cars microphone and speakers instead of my cellphone, that will also include voice activation commands for the computer. Also i will be connecting my phone to the computer so that it has internet, then i will get a wireless router and share my internet. We always take my car on road trips and sometimes we have several cars. So the people in my car and the other cars can have wireless high speed internet while were driving down the highway. I also have power outlets built in under the seats for laptops or anything else.

I know this post is long, but i hope this info will help you if you decide to build a carputer. I know what im doing with computer since i have my own computer business but its pretty simple to install that a lot of people could do this same thing.

[3G Jester]

your PSU must be an older model..i have the M1-ATX and its 90 w and doesnt have the heat sink..i see you have the power mate!!! i wanna get teh new 250 w opus psu they are just comming out with. its pretty hot. either that or the M2 -ATX. welcome to the carputer club
whats your user name on mp3car.com?
<--same

[Cheeseburger]

your PSU must be an older model..i have the M1-ATX and its 90 w and doesnt have the heat sink..i see you have the power mate!!! i wanna get teh new 250 w opus psu they are just comming out with. its pretty hot. either that or the M2 -ATX. welcome to the carputer club
whats your user name on mp3car.com?
<--same

dam nerd...

[conozo]

your PSU must be an older model..i have the M1-ATX and its 90 w and doesnt have the heat sink..i see you have the power mate!!! i wanna get teh new 250 w opus psu they are just comming out with. its pretty hot. either that or the M2 -ATX. welcome to the carputer club
whats your user name on mp3car.com?
<--same

Im not on mp3car.com but i did get some info from there. That first picture is a pic of the morex psu not the M1, but mine is 80w, thats what it says on it. They might not sell what i have anymore, cause ive had this carputer for a year and i bought some of the suff a year before that like right when it first came out. The opus psu's ones are good they were just huge at the time so it wouldnt work for my application.

I forgot to mention something about monitors.

I plan on getting a Lilliput touch screen. Lilliput and Xenarc are both good brands to choose from and ebay is probably the cheapest place to get them.
Be careful when looking at resolution, dots do not equal pixels also displaying a computer resolutioin of either 800x600 or 1024x768 will be blurry on a tv monitor or screen. Resolution on TV monitors are not as high as computer monitors.

[drago742]

whtt that shit iz crazy nice work

[HostileJava]

Looks good, you can still fiberglass it if you want instead of the carpeting. Most people use wood as a shell anway and just use fiberglass to finish it off. One of these days I'll get around to finishing my carputer project. Time and money, time and money

[Cheeseburger]

that would look better then the carpet

[MessyHonda]

well i like the way you did it...expt the fans since you need like fan grills to make it look better...so yeah are you going to add like a LCD screen? if so can you run windows or linix...i can see you already have a Wireless card...so that means if you find a hot spot you can get free internet....well i think i would benefit from one of thoes also....san francisco won like the less wired city since it has hella hot spots....the company google gives free internet for ppl in the town of mountain view(where the company started) that is only like 12 miles from me.....well yeah looks cool....you ever think of geting bigger anttena to get a good singal quality?

[frantik]

awesome job with you epia mini itx board i have a bedside computer that i use for surfing and watching downloaded tv and movies that uses an M10000 board... i'm using it to post this actually

one thing i'd recommend that you don't have on your "to do" list is adding a real sound card to the system.. the output on the epia boards is acceptable but if you're going to be plugging it into a bunch of amps and stuff you should get a cheap M-Audio brand sound card like the audiophile 2496 (under $100) or the delta 44 (under $150). You can get pci adapters that allow the card to lay flat as opposed to perpendicular to the board as well.

[FyreDaug]

Not bad at all, when I had mine system in my last 3g I used a 15" monitor and it was mounted right infront of the shifter and up under the controls for fan speed etc. If fit perfect and wasnt too wide to get in the way of the feet and stuff. Mine wasnt as clean as yours, but my specs were as follows (dont mean to jack the thread)
Asrock motherboard, amd 2600+ chip with 768mb ddr. Ran a 9600xt video card (1024x768 resolution on that monitor) and 2x200gb drives full of music, movies and tv shows. As for sound I ran an audigy 2zs platinum with the front optical bay. That optical line went to a Yamaha RXV450 reciever and powered some MB Quart component speakers. Sub out went to the RF amp.
The video was simply VGA, but the screen had a 12ms refresh rate and it looked pretty damn good. The angle was perfect too, if I sat a little closer I would get the dark distortion of LCD screens but it was good. I had to get a shorter shifter because of the monitor being so big the stick would take up a good chunk of it.
Power was all AC, I used a 800w inverter, and powered the system with a 350W coolermaster and had the whole thing in the trunk. The receiver was also AC off the inverter too. 350W computer and 500W amp, but the digital read out never went over 400W when I was using it.
Words cannot describe how good it sounded, it was a quality component set, a quality amp from a quality system giving an optical signal. The whole car was dynamatted and it was the tightest system ive ever heard to this day.
Unfortunately the car was scrapped and the system removed and mostly sold, and the car looks like this now:




But yeah man, mad props on the clean install, I build and sell these systems around here and ive never seen a wood install like that. I use fiberglass, and its usually in the trunk.

[Cheeseburger]

nice! can i have a pizza?

[conozo]

I have started a phase 2 carputer project. The wood structure i had earlier worked for a long time but it was a pain to get the computer in and out if i wanted to upgrade it a little. Also that design and setup doesn't allow for a touch screen. So i have decided to make it fiberglass. I have been working on this for a while and i finally found the time today to show you guys my progress.

First step was removing the heater/air controls out of their current location so that i could put them down in front of the shifter so that the screen can be higher just under the air vents and not behind the shifter.




I had to take the dash out to get the heater/air controls out.

As you can see i cut out the area you mount the heater/air and stereo to. I will be making my own mounts for everything out of metal and fiberglass.




I decided to carpet my glove box since the factory spray on carpet didn't stop things from rattling. Its very quiet now.


Here is the mold i made out of insulation foam from lowes.

I glued layers of the foam together then just cut it to shape.

Here i have already coated my mold with a layer of duck tape and put one layer of fiberglass on it.

The top flat area that is next to the e-brake is wide because i will cut holes in there to put one long narrow pocket on each side. The pockets will be carpeted. As you also notice that is a cup holder. I may put two more cup holders in the other fiberglass piece that will go around the shifter.


I am putting a much thicker layer on today with more hardener in the mix. This is my first time dealing with fiberglass and my first mix didn't have enough hardener otherwise i think i would not have to put another layer on.

The next steps are to make it strong with fiberglass, smooth it out with bondo, then paint if flat black to match the black parts in the car already.

[Cheeseburger]

Oh Shit Nice!

[Civic Accord Honda]

pimp

[BITESIZE]

We do that with model training (styrofoam). Anyways keep up the hardwork. That takes alot of patience and time. Keep us updated and be sure to make me a set too.

[race12001]

damn i wished i had the time money and patiance to do that its awsome man and i like the console setup

[plasmadis]

Awesome project. Ah, brings back the memories...

Your pics inclined me to dig out my old backup CDs, and find these:









Back in the day (god I'm getting old) I had a 2000 Chevy Astro van. I really miss it. I don't miss the gas mileage tho. I also miss my ex. Sometimes we'd take out the rear seats, and lay out a fold out futon. So much action...

Anyway, back to the carputer. I had one of those "mini cube" barebones pcs, put an Athlon 2000+ in there with 512 MB ram, 120 gb hd, and a DVD reader. Took out the stock power supply, and installed a DC-DC similar to the one you have, to run off 12 volts. Also had a wireless NIC card, with an external plug running to a magnetic roof mount antenna. As I'd drive around, my ex would man the keyboard and "war drive", looking for open access points. Then if we found a really fast one, we park on the street and leech off it for a bit. Good times, good times...

I got pissed with my LCD mounting options, so one day I just took the "cut a big ass hole in the dash" route. I had managed to find an industrial 8" metal cased LCD, it was hella kewl. Then I took off the useless glove box, and mounted my head unit there. Then I had to run wires for power, audio, and video, under panels and carpeting, to get to the appropriate spots. It was a real bitch.

I don't think I'd have the patience to do something like this again. Coming out of China are some pretty neat looking self-contained 2 DIN carputers. I'd probably go this route if I was to consider doing a carputer again.

But to guys like yourself that are still going the DIY route from scratch, major props.

plasmadis

[frantik]

damn dude.. looking forward to seeing how phase 2 turns out

[3rdgenhatchDX]

damn dude.. looking forward to seeing how phase 2 turns out

x2!