Carputer, aka Car-PC!!!!!

[maxentropy]

~ $850

Ouch $850?? What is $600 of that the touchscreen?\

Those pc parts you could scrounge around for about $150 or less.

[Sentientbydesign]

Ouch $850?? What is $600 of that the touchscreen?\

Those pc parts you could scrounge around for about $150 or less.

I believe the mini-components are pretty expensive.

$100 for a legit XP install$70-100 for the software$200 for the touchscreen

I assume the rest was hardware.

[Viper5000]

Ouch $850?? What is $600 of that the touchscreen?\

Those pc parts you could scrounge around for about $150 or less.

Touchscreen was about half of the total costs...... it is a daylight readable monitor.. then it was put in a custom double din holder

I should probably mention I didn't pay for any of the software.... A buddy of mine gave me the Centrafuse license that he wasn't using.... I will be buying the 3.0 release whenever they make that happen

[Viper5000]

the car is almost complete..... I still need to fill in the gap in the dash kit, but yesterday I got Wifi in the car, so I can get the internet at lunch or the weekend; the main reason I wanted Wifi was so I could sync my desktop music library with the car... what is awesome about that is if I want to get new music into my car I dont even have to get out of the car to do it..... once I connect to my router I can wake on LAN my desktop and start the sync

Also GPS is working awesomely.....

So far no problems with heat or vibrations with the PC being in the glovebox.... so it seems happy there

[marlin29311]

Looks pretty sweet!

A buddy of mine did this once - he also had it Wi-Fi sync up with his home computer when he was in his garage...I was like DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN

[TurboSauce]

So far no problems with heat or vibrations with the PC being in the glovebox.... so it seems happy there

Nice work. But to be on the save side and to ensue longevity. id make it so that was some way for proper ventilation to get to the pc. Maybe cut a hole in the passengers a/c vent from inside the glove box?Just throwin out the idea cuz it would suck to see that thing break man it is AWESOME.

[kruuth]

I figured I'd chime in on this one....

If you are looking to do a super-lightweight carputer and don't care what OS you're using look at SLAX. It's dinky and plays most if not all media. You can also use a CF->IDE adapter to save some $$ on a drive. It's smaller than SSD but should get the job done.

[Viper5000]

I figured I'd chime in on this one....

If you are looking to do a super-lightweight carputer and don't care what OS you're using look at SLAX. It's dinky and plays most if not all media. You can also use a CF->IDE adapter to save some $$ on a drive. It's smaller than SSD but should get the job done.

Thats cool, but I already have everything running very nicely with a slimmed version of XP and the Centrafuse software..... compatibility is the game here

[dangeris]

So pardon the noob question but after you get done with all of this, what exactly can you do with it? What are the benefits? Can you load s/w that will monitor vitals for the car, like ambient air intake temp, water temp, g force when racing, O2 monitor?... or is it just for the wow factor?

Not trying to dys you man..just trying to understand is all....

Just trying to understand the whole concept of the "carputer". Wouldn't using a lap top be the same thing if you could interface it with the computer's OBDII ?

[Viper5000]

So pardon the noob question but after you get done with all of this, what exactly can you do with it? What are the benefits? Can you load s/w that will monitor vitals for the car, like ambient air intake temp, water temp, g force when racing, O2 monitor?... or is it just for the wow factor?Not trying to dys you man..just trying to understand is all....

Just trying to understand the whole concept of the "carputer". Wouldn't using a lap top be the same thing if you could interface it with the computer's OBDII ?

Did you watch the video???

I chose to do this instead of getting a headunit for many reasons... when I started thinking months ago what I wanted to do with my stereo system, I initially thought about just getting one of those nice Alpine units that work well with Ipods and then getting an Ipod; not good enough....

I then thought about getting the double din navi type receiver.... some were very nice but always lacked with a certain feature set (mainly music library)

So then I ran into this little hobby of CarPC's.....

The more I read, the more ideas I got

After enough reading I decided to go for it, I work on computers for a living so that part was very familiar

The biggest reason to ME for doing the PC was I wanted to be able to stick a Giant Hard drive into my car and have it filled with videos and most importantly music and have a way to access it that worked fast and intuitively AND be cost effective! (unlike buying an expensive Ipod just to use it in the car)

*** To answer your question about using a laptop. You could use a laptop to do this. I chose not to because of size limitations ( I new I wanted the PC in the glove box), and most importantly POWER!

With using a desktop base instead of a laptop, it is much easier to control how the computer deals with its power functions... I am using a DC-DC power regulator that has a built in controller for on/off functions based off ignition (easy as pie)

** Additionally, yes when I get around to it, I can get a module that connects to the OBDII port and have access to any and all of the info that it can receive


Modified by Viper5000 at 4:45 PM 7/21/2009

[themlruts]

I hope you are still have your car compute installed. I just pulled mine out of my pathfinder and putting it into my 08 altima. Just want to ask you some questions. Is this your work?

[Viper5000]

indeed it is, I took the idea from another member though...

[alekdigital]

Interesting!

[tbird2340]

This image here:


Looks much different than this image here:


Are these the same car? Was the first image just unfinished?

Thanks!

[tbird2340]

Subscribing..

[Warped161]

wow 2 years later ad this thread pops up again. ^^^^^ check the date of the last post next time lol

[tbird2340]

Sorry but I don't get the humor.. I seen it was 2 years old but there is this thing called "subscribing" to a thread.. It works like this.. When someone replies to a thread you are subscribed to you get an email.. I thought perhaps the OP would get the email and then reply to his 2 year old thread..

Sorry if that is so dumb in my thinking..

[Warped161]

Relaxe, take a breath, and have a cookie. It's the internet try not to get so upset over the little things, you will live longer that way.