Car Pc Install Pics

[el_gencer]

Finally got round to taking pics of the car pc. its in a basic state at the moment regarding the screen. when its finished it will be an in-dash type with an after-market head unit for the sounds. however that could take me some time to do as with most things with me. so in the mean time here are some pics of what i've done. in case people are wondering how its powered. i've basically dasiy chained it off the cig lighter as there is a fair amount of amps going through that power route.

Glove Box

Power Button (nice and discrete, pc is not auto power on)

Screen (in temporary mode)

[Anees]

Well Done! That looks like a setup with great potential! :D :D

What are the specs of your PC?

[Fargo]

nice

[MrADeveci]

Cool similar to what I'm doing ....... where did you mount the power supply ?

[Brettster]

Nice one :) thats where i had mine, but i mounted my reset switch in the secret ninja posistion under the glove box handle, what psu are you using? I also mounted my hard drive to the glove box using some rubber tubes to offer a bit of anti shock protection as a bump would sometimes crash the pc.

(it never ends) hehe

[Geoffers]

Nice one. You won't stop after you've started.

Hope you are gathering all your parts together Mr Face.......

[MrADeveci]

Nice one. You won't stop after you've started.

Hope you are gathering all your parts together Mr Face.......

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I'll call you 2 morrow .......... ;)

[Geoffers]

Why not nip up to the Manc. meet and have a chat :P

[MrADeveci]

Why not nip up to the Manc. meet and have a chat  :P

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Would have loved to .... can't get time off work ! will call you .........

[el_gencer]

the specs are as follows :-

x1 epia via motherboard running at 1ghz

x1 512mb stick of ddr ram (dont know what speed though)

x1 hitachi travel star hdd 30gigs

x1 60watt dc to atx power supply

i'm currently running centrafuse as the interface, it nice and easy to use. the pc currently takes 1min to boot up from cold. 30 secs for the mb checks and 30sec for windows to load. i will be adding a second card soon purley for nav, unless centrafuse do a music pause feature when the nav talks. at the moment it talks at the same time as the music and get be confusing or not heard at all.

in answer to your question scarface, the psu is in the glove box as well. if you look carefull at pic 1 in front of the mb is the psu. i've mounted it on a piece of mdf wood and then glued that wood using nomore nails to the inside of the glove box. maybe solvite would be a better option ? and the hdd is just screw in tightly from the back.

i haven't noticed any problems with heat from the system as its all low voltage, even when the weather was in the high 20-30's. the cold is the next test, will the hdd power up when its been -2 in the night ? and will it get condensation ?

[Brettster]

how are you feeding power to your 60 watt psu? is it just direct from the cig lighter? or do you have an opus type psu?

reason is that the standard ATX psu requires 12V and you car could be feeding it as much as 14V :(

[el_gencer]

its fed direct to psu via the cig lighter feed. i created a daisy chain under the gear shift as it was just push on style clips. the psu its self has a regulator on it to counter voltage rises and dips. its tolerance level is 9v-16v. http://www.morexintl.com/product/psu_car_kit.php

thats the manufactures website which gives more specs. mines the 60watt version as i currently dont have the need for more power. i got the equipment from www.mini-itx.com . you can probably source the parts from somewhere else cheaper, but they seemed to be faster than usual with the delivery. also if power is lost like in stall then the pc is going off as well, so not as advanced as the opus.

the glove box is an altezza box in case anyone is wondering. it has no felt inside or key lock on it. perfect for monitoring heat when you've not put sensors in it yet.

[Geoffers]

You can set windows in horm mode. (Hibernate once, resume many) so a power cut will just resume it from the last proper hibernate.

You have to setup a protected partition and create an XPE image, with the hibernate info writing out to the second partition though.

[Brettster]

I had the 1 ghz mini itx board in my glove box with the opus psu and a laptop hdd, had it for almost a year in my IS and never had any problems with cold or heat, used it every day in fact, the only issue i had was sometimes the LCD would seem a little slow to respond if it was a very cold night. after a few mins it was fine again :), you'll be really happy with it im sure. and getting it to boot that quick is a bonus, mine would only boot up in about 1.5 to 2 mins :( so i used to put it in sleep mode when the ignition was off, then it booted up in around 2 seconds next time i started the car. power drain was so low that it didnt matter. I left it in sleep without starting the car for over a week once and it was fine, no problems at all.

I bet your chuffed with it, Im really wanting to get mine into the GS, just need to sortout the satnav inputs :)

[el_gencer]

pics of the final article will be on the site, as soon as i've sorted the issue of the stereo. not sure wether to do it myself or pay someone else to do it. in my head it seems like a simple job, however in reality we all know complications will arise.

Geoffers, could you expand on this hibernation thingy. i tried it before but everytime it came out of hibernation the gps wouldn't work.

[Geoffers]

Was it only the GPS that didn't work? Some badly written drivers can be funny when they come out of hibernation. What receiver/drivers do you have at the mo?

I'm sure you have, but go through the bios settings again as resume also triggers the irq lines as if it was just in power save. It's worth switching all irq's on.

[Anees]

I've not had many issues with resuming from Hibernation with my Car PC. The only issue has been GPS. If the PC had been running the GPS application when it was set to hibernate what usually happened was that on resume the GPS software would says "GPS Not Found" but after about 3 seconds it would reconnect fine. This was with Map Monkey.

I am currently using FreeDrive which I have not had much chance to play with but I did notice that it doesn't seem to reconnect the GPS when the PC comes out of hibernation as Map Monkey did. I have to close FreeDrive and then launch it again for it to reconnect. I think the latest version fixes this issue however.