In Car Computer :d

[Pulp]

There's a little circuit board you can get, microprocessor Controlled 12-volt automotive personal computer shutdown/startup controller, (mouth full), which basically after you swith off will hold power to unit in order for it to shut down fully, so you don't have to wait etc. Also detects if power is getting too low. Don't think is very expensive.

A guy in Vic Park Perth, Brian from Car Stereo City, is full bottle on these things and does them every day. Give him a call and say Dave from Rycom gave you his name.

[Pulp]

Centrafuse: http://www.fluxmedia.net/

Thanks mate, will check now! I think I've heard someone speak of it somewhere down the track!

[parish]

Pulp, that little power unit i got does that... cost under $100 on ebay...

[Rekin]

I have a GPS receiver for my pda, and it doesnt pick up jack through the window, have to mount the receiver on the roof with the magnetic base. Guess it comes down to quality. Usually pick up about 7 satellites before Destinator works.

Edited June 13, 2006 by Rekin

[Primordial]

yeah depends on the gain of antenna in the unit. I imagine that PDA GPS cards arent able to draw too much power so therefore may not have enough power to boost the antenna signal

[parish]

Primordial, I have to agree that the configuration of RR wasn't the easiest to do... especially to get freedrive to load up in the correct window for that RR skin... but suits me fine for the moment

[Medium Dave]

Nice work parish, looks like a factory option - see how many people you can bs

A quick word on the hdd, I am a computer tech (please dont hold it against me) and have seen plenty of those external hdd's give up because of the movement, they were really only designed to sit on a bench - I havnt found the pic of the way you have mounted it, but I would reccommend lots of shock absorbtion - if you havnt already.

Anyhow, good work, you have done spectacularly well!

[syx]

I noticed you have a power fc, you gotta get this fc watch (if hes released it yet)

http://www.rx7club.com/showthread.php?t=533202

!!

[Primordial]

Yeah ditto on the hard drives.. I've got two of those 2.5" USB external hard drives and one of them died just recently. As I said previously, expect to have to replace the hard drive yearly

I expect though that cheaper Flash memory based HDD's will be available in the next 5 years or so..

[Primordial]

I noticed you have a power fc, you gotta get this fc watch (if hes released it yet)

http://www.rx7club.com/showthread.php?t=533202

!!

I am absolutely HANGING for this to be released.. it looks the bomb!!!

[parish]

Medium Dave, Thanks for the heads up on the HDD situation... I'm still sorting out the sound issues, and as soon as I have done all the setup, I'm going to take an image of the disk so that when this does happen I won't have too much grief in replacing HDD making it all work again...

SVX, Thanks for that link, I'll definately keep a close eye on that one...

[SuAvE-1]

top set up man. good to see a few more people getting carputers. looks very stock and secure.

I took the easy way and just got the in-dash motorised unit. Using a compaq micro unit mounted underneath the drivers seat with a usb connection to one of newkleer's ECU diagnostic/consult read-out black boxes permanently. There are two things that annoy me, 1 is that I have to turn the computer on and off manually, if i don't then the batter will die. The second is as i'm running a cable from the headphone output on the computer to the rca aux in on the head unit and cop interference.

The interference isn't too bad, but how did you hook up the power? i'm using a power inverted which I have to turn on and off manually, then the computer goes along with it. problem is, if i turn the inverter off, the computer just turns off. So yeah, how do you have yours running?

[parish]

SuAvE-1, Thanks... For power i'm using a 12V DC-DC power supply, which is pretty much built for car pcs... it has a constant power and ignition, very similar to a head unit... also has a set of jumpers for switching off procedures (5 seconds, 30seconds etc after ign cut), when you cut the ignition, it shuts down the PC... you can also put an override switch on the power unit so you can still switch it on/off without ignition...

Finially sorted out the sound issues (different sound levels for MP3s)... there are a couple of plugins for winamp which normalise the sound so now all songs come out at the same level, no need to mess around with the volume control all the time!

[Beauie]

Great work, Love the factory look - Anyone done anything like this with the r34??

[MANWHOR3]

I've had my eye on doing this for a while. I've done the exact same thing as you regarding the screen.

I've only got a dvd player hooked up to it atm though.

The only issue i've been thinking about is the hdd. My car has rock hard suspensions in it. When I say hard, I mean if a chick was sitting in the car, it's orgasmically hard. excuse the pun.

I reckon a hd would last about a week.

See, one method I was thinking about is whether it's possible to load an os onto a usb flash drive. I.e. can you boot from usb? Doesn't appear to be possible imo, because you'd need drivers in the bios or somethign for the usb key.

Is there such thing as a flash hdd?

1 gig would be plenty for a shrunken version of windows. or maybe even linux.

Then I could install and run all my other software off a dvd or something.

Even my dvds skip becacuse of the suspensions.

[MANWHOR3]

I've been reading on mp3 car for a while now.

cAn I ask, where did you buy all your stuff from?

[Medium Dave]

You can boot from a flash drive, there is a bit of software I cant remember the name, but I can dig it out tomorrow - it will format the drive ready for you to install windows to it. You need at least 2 gig to install xp, although i guess you could get away with less if you used win2000 or linux or something. Oh, and you need a motherboard which will allow booting from the usb, if you look in the bios > boot order you will be able to see if it supports that

[MANWHOR3]

I'd be really interested if you could help me find that software.

I can't remember the program, but it is possible to shrink windows xp.

There is also a smaller version of xp too. I haven't been on mp3 car for a while. uni work is keeping me busy.

Sighs... my exams finish on the 22nd. i'll have 4 weeks to do the project.

[MANWHOR3]

the harddrive is the only thing that is turning me away from the car computer, so i f I can overcome this....

HDD have never been my friend. even my home ones start clicking after a few years. you know the drill, click click click. you whack it, then it starts working again. but don't rely on whacking it for too long, because it will eventually die...

[parish]

MANWHOR3, I have a friend who is setting up the USB boot up for me to test, will get the link to the info and post when he gives it to me... my issue with that is even if you load OS on USB, you still need storage for MP3, movies, gps (lets say you could prob get away with having the maps etc on the usb key) but for other sotorage what you gonna use? I guess my suspension prob isn't as hard as yr coz mines has been in for just over a week now , if/when the HHD sh#%s itself then I'll look into something else, but for the moment, its all working fine...

Power unit/GPS receiver/Screen - eBay

mother board - http://eyo.com.au

HDD/RAM - local computer shop

Persplex - Bunnings