Summer head unit project

[D0gg94]

Recently finished my little summer project.

 

Interested to see if there are others who have gotten sick of standard head units and hooked up a tablet or pc in their vehicle.

 

THE SCREEN:

 

This is a 7" touchscreen w/case for a raspberry pi (bought from jaycar) running off my Microsoft surface 3 that sits pretty in my glovebox.

 

Above the surface, I attached a powered usb hub (purchased from officeworks) that is powered by an inverter (jaycar). This is because the surface only has one usb port and that wasn't enough for my application.

 

The inverter is powered by the cigarette lighter socket. It also charges the surface tablet when the car is on IGN. It is mounted in the passenger footwell (hopefully far away from getting kicked, so far so good)

 

The screen requires a hdmi signal and a usb signal for touchscreen. I purchased an adapter (jbhifi) that converts the mini display port in the tablet to a female hdmi port. The micro usb output on the screen goes straight to the usb hub.

 

The tablet plugs into the hub via it's single usb port.

 

I have a VI-PEC ecu that plugs into the hub via the LINK tuning cable and the tuning software installed on the surface to get a live feed from the ECU.

 

The screen is mounted to a second head unit surround I purchased incase i wrecked it or it didn't fit. Minimal mods were required to get it sitting nice.

 

The other usb cable goes into the sound system.

 

 

THE SOUND SYSTEM:

 

My car already has an aftermarket sound system (amps and sub). My amps power the speakers so all i needed was something that was capable of accepting multiple RCA leads, and was usb powered/ usb audio. The ASUS XONAR U7 MKii external sound card fits these criteria. It's capable of 7.1 surround and is usb audio and powered. A couple of adapters were required for some of the plugs as they are 3.5mm jacks, not RCA. No biggie, jaycar has the goods.

 

The card is mounted behind the screen and plugs into the usb hub in the glovebox.

 

Utilising the ASUS software, the sound system could be tuned to a degree. I've found I'm now at the mercy of the quality of sound files I use for music on the tablet (mp3 etc etc) so the quality differs.

 

The main effort was the screen setup, music was just a bonus for me anyway.

 

 

CONCLUSION:

 

The setup as a whole is way better the my old single DIN headunit. I no longer have radio (what a shame) and have to make sure I turn the tablet on after starting the car and turn it off before switching the car off (just like you would a pc I guess) otherwise it has a s#$% fit).

 

My ability to view and even modify ECU settings is very useful when the car gets tracked. Live temps and values etc.

(I'm far from a tuner so I just peek)

 

I have all normal windows pc functions like Wi-Fi and internet browsing, bluetooth etc (obviously not while driving........)

 

I'm pretty sure you could even get Google maps to work as a navigator if you have the surface 3 with gps. Mine does not.

 

No r34 interiors were drilled into or hacked up in the making of this project. It's all removable and reversible incase it all goes to s%$^ lol.

 

The whole project cost me a few hundred bucks because I already owned the surface 3... I'm pretty sure all the newer surfaces are too big to fit in an r34 glovebox anyway. Smaller laptops may work.

 

 

Thanks for reading if you got this far!

[ianjb]

looks awesome.

I myself would get the cranks at the lighter plug as i use it all the time.

I'd have chopped the connector off and hard wired it onto the lighter cables behind the dash. 

[D0gg94]

Yea I think that's my next move with it, I didn't wanna do anything too hacky-slashy before I reliability tested it as is. Deff wanna get it out of sight!

[Guilt-Toy]

I did this about 10 years ago,  i used a Thermaltake 7" lcd motorised touchscreen that was made for servers that can sit in a pc case,  i mounted that in the dash,  and used a amd mini pc and a 12v power supply from jaycar.

I am thinking of doing another setup now,  where did you get the screen from?  how much was it?  I think i paid $600 for mine back in then.

 

i think i got a video somewhere of it working

 

[Guilt-Toy]

 

 

Cant see much,  but it was a awesome setup.  It eventually died because I used a conventional 2.5" laptop hdd in it and all the bumps and pot holes in The Republic of Georgia destroyed it...  I never made a new hdd for it as i moved engine from one car to another when the car got to the UAE

[D0gg94]

I did this about 10 years ago,  i used a Thermaltake 7" lcd motorised touchscreen that was made for servers that can sit in a pc case,  i mounted that in the dash,  and used a amd mini pc and a 12v power supply from jaycar.
I am thinking of doing another setup now,  where did you get the screen from?  how much was it?  I think i paid $600 for mine back in then.
 
i think i got a video somewhere of it working
 

Screen was from my local jaycar, it was $160
https://www.jaycar.com.au/1024x600-hdmi-7-screen-with-usb-capacitive-touch/p/XC9026

Very cool to see that this stuff was still do-able 10 years ago ! Although I suppose that was only 2008 now.

[Guilt-Toy]

yeah it was far more expensive 10 years ago as well...  took me months to save up for everything to how i wanted it.