Car Laptop Mounting

[britrb]

I am thinking of mounting a laptop in my LS400. Has anyone here done this yet? and do you have any advice, or products to look at?

I will be using it as a GPS mostly (I have a GPS receiver for my laptop), but want to look at using it to monitor engine data as well.

It needs to be mounted on the passenger side facing the driver. I wil be using a normal inverter for the power and would like to be able to remove the mount with the minimum fuss, maybe leaving a fixed bracket in place.

Thank you all for your time and effort,

Brian :) :mat:

[DJ Wozza]

Can't help with the mounting, but when I am using the laptop in my car, I bought a cigarette lighter universal laptop charger.

(various voltages to suit and several options for the socket as well)

I think this was about £10-15 including postage on E-Bay. Cheaper alternative to an invertor ?

[aaronabbott]

i dont know if this is the kind of thing your looking for

http://www.ram-mount-uk.com/ram-101u-ve1.htm

[lutonmatt]

when mine was on the road i had a carpc in mine i mounted it in the boot with a touch screen coming out of the cd player worked very well

and sid tryed to put his laptop in his and went to a carpc as well as it worked out better

[GoldfingerLS]

Agree with DJ Wozza re the power supply. no point going from 12v to 240v and back to 12v again. The correct 12v power supply should do the job, no ugly inverters and transformers to house and if you wanted minimal clutter you can conceal the wiring and take the power from under the centre console (or if you got a mk4 from under the centre armrest).

What will you use to monitor engine data ? Will it be something which plugs into the data connector inside the car and then into your USB port ? what sort of software ? would be interested to know.

Thanks.

[britrb]

What will you use to monitor engine data ? Will it be something which plugs into the data connector inside the car and then into your USB port ? what sort of software ? would be interested to know.

Thanks.

I have no idea at the moment, I have been looking around on the net, but not found the right software yet. I am hoping to pick up something like a data connector to USB lead from Lexus?

GoldfingerLS: I would prefer an inverter as - due to my job - I sometimes have nowhere to plug anything in for long periods of time, and would like to have the odd cup of tea now and again ;)

lutonmatt: Carpc, I'll check that out. Do you have any links at all?

aaronabbott: It looks like some kind of complicated torture device, but looks about the sort of thing, thanks :)

Thank you all for your advice and time,

Brian :)

[britrb]

I think I have decided on a CarPC build. I have looked around and found software for easily navigating through Windows XP and Vista.

I have also found ideas from this site: Car Cumputer.

The software is called Centrafuse: Centrafuse

I havnt found any engine managment software yet, or a way to get the information from the engine to the computer. I will build the computer myself (the easy part), but get help from Safe'N'Sound in Lake Industrial estate on the Isle Of Wight to install the whole thing into the car.

[lutonmatt]

when i got my power supply i got it from the states as it needs to be 12v dc 2 12v dc got mine a lot cheaper on eBay.com then i could any where over here and when i sold mine made a good bit of money on it as there are not many over here

i made my own carpc up as i got have it very powerfull was faster then my home pc at the time and that was fast

[britrb]

I found this little beauty to use instead of all that messing around with cables etc.

Eee PC

I could add more RAM, and get a bigger solid state HDD to store more music and programs, And I could build a docking station for it, so that I can take it out of the car when I need to. :D

I'll start saving my pennies now!! :winky:

[lutonmatt]

that is a little thing or that blokes hand is very big lol