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few pics for you guys sorry about the quality were taken on my fone.

Hey, well done mate! Glad to hear that youve got it working.

How much does the screen stick out of the dash? From the pictures it lookes a bit unnatural when its folded away, but is that just cos youve not pushed it all the way in yet?

What are you doing about the PC. Ive found this site which sells computer bits pretty cheapley:

www.aria.co.uk

and I was going to use a power invertor to change 12v to 240vAC and than use a normal PSU as I recon this will be cheaper than buying a special car PSU. Only problem is that itll take up more space.

Good luck with your project, its looking good so far! Ill try to keep you updated with my project as and when I can find access to the internet

When in the dash it does stick out quite a bit but i'm having a look around the the hole to see what i can do to push it in a bit but yes it does stick out a fair bit but once i've got that problem sorted i'll update you on this.

On to the pc, now i'm still waitng about the options of this. However what i have considered is to purchase items for the company meshcomputers as they build comps/laptops to your own specs. Now I was pondering on the aspect of having half a laptop idea which was mentioned here. However building the laptop through Mesh with with my Specs. However i'm not entirely sure if they'll build me half a laptop but i'll be going over to them and see what i ca neogiate with them.

Now on to the issues of the power, what i'll be doing is connecting the Invertor that i have bought from maplins(thanks for the tip off Alex) £29:99 and then plugging in the power supply to the invertor which will take up a inci winci amount of space, however overall i would think this would be a better option for example you'd be able to plug something else in such as a ps2 and running that off the screen. whereas if you bought a powersupply that was speical to the car i dont think you'd be able to do that.

thanks mate, good luck with yours aswell and keep updating when you can!! we like updates

Like Alex I am thinking of doing this with a Mini Mac becuase
1 its a Mac so its just going to work better.
2 its got Front Row - which is apples answer to media center only it works much better.
3 the small form factor of the mini mac.
4 nice clean design with wirless and bluetooth built in.

all that makes me think the mini mac is the answer


Just need a screen with a decent resolution.

Also as a bit of a techy I wouldnt use Mesh computers personally they arnt that amazing or that reasonable price wise. Just build it yourself or be adventurous and get a mac haha. Also they're computers are loud. They use cheap maxter hard drives, noisey fans and crappy PSU's with another bunch of fans on.


and just one more thing. when you turn the car on will the computer automatically boot up? remember you dont want it to take ages to boot up! and how about when you turn your engine off will it automatically turn shut the pc down? because when your in a rush the last thing you want its to shut it down.

oh i didnt know that about mesh computers. Ye i think i may just have to build it myself. However on to the powering of the pc. The pc wont turn on or off automatically but can be turned on using the screen, as there is a button/control which is labeled pc/power so when the key is in, the screen will turn on and then i will be able to boot up to the comp or just leave it off and use the other functons on the screen. The same with turning it off just push the power pc control and the comp will turn off. So even when in a rush, i can just quickly push pc power and turn if off or on when in urgent need.

the apple comp is a good idea but i think that the best media centre to use would be centrafuse.

take a look at www.fluxmedia.net

centrafuse will do music dvd sat nav radio and engine managment all in one check it out folks!

Need an intel ViiV setup - instant on instant off

What im thinking about doing with power;

Having a separate battery in the boot which will run a normal PSU through a 240v invertor. This battery will also run the screen. When the engine is running it will charge the battery in the boot and therefore run the computer as well. This will allow me to watch a DVD play MP3s ect. in a traffic jam while the engine is off without the fear of running the car battery down.

As the computer will not be run from the car battery it is not essential that it will be turned off when the engine is, and if it did it would cause all sorts of problems (ill mention these in a sec). What im currentley thinking of doing it turning the PC on manually with a button. This will also be able to turn it off if I wish. I will then install a system which will automaticaly turn off the PC when I lock teh doors with remote centrall locking.

A few points for those whom are thinking of turning it on/off manually;

1/ What if you forget to turn it off when you leave the car? Flat battery?

2/ If the PC is running when you turn the engine over, I would have thought that the voltage drop would have been sufficiant to have turned off the invertor thus crasshing the PC. This wont do it any good!!!

Also, on the speed of booting it up, what about just hibernating it? It only takes about 15s to turn it on then and you dont have to waste time opening programs ect. Just a thought.

Anyway im of to the scrappies to pick up an old glove box to try and fit some old PC components into it. If I can fit a normal PC into it then ill do just that, as its a lot cheaper than micro motherboards ect. and a LOT cheaper than a mac mini (although wont run aswell )

Will keep you all updated about how its going, Nick

Some good ideas there about powering the pc.
Hibenating would be okay but evenetually it will get sluggish because it hasnt been restarted.

this is the other thing i like about the mac idea. Because they start up in a few seconds, well atleast mine does.

if you have room then a pleasure battery would be cool though.

Ive just bought a new battery for the car, so was thinking of putting the old one in the boot and using that. Only problem ive got is how to secure it properly. Charging might be an issue aswell, but i think ive found a way round that.

Any ideas about haw to securely mount a battery in the boot would be much appreciated

And hibernating, I do it with my laptop as it saves so much time! and I dont think it gets noticabley slower (which is surprising). I just do a restart on it every fortnight and it runs fine. But aggread, a mac would be a lot better, just too expensive for me at the mo. And also I quite enjoy being able to build a PC to my own specs rather than having someone else build it for me. But thats just me.

Just a tiny little update from me. Just wired up the invertor, using the DIY amp/ sub wiring route in the DIY section. Was pretty easy to get through but was a bit tight for space other than that was all fine. If anyone is getting the invertor from maplin dont worry the cable is just long enough to get to the battery. As it does look quite short.lol.

another little update. just thought id test the invertor to see if everything was all wried up correctly so i pluged the old xbox in and the quailty really is amazing guys you just have to belive me on this one.

Picutures!!

Looking good!!! Well done so far!

Are you going to leave the power invertor wired to the battery like that, or are you going to make a system to switch power to the invertor on and off? Even when turned off the PC will draw about 7W of power, which dosent sound like much, but it means the invertor will be running, which wont be that efficiant with such a low current flowing through it. I recon that it would flatten the battery if left on for a few days.

Im intending to make a system which hibernates the PC and then will turn of the invertor when the doors are locked. Just an idea.

Quick update on my system;

Went to the scrap yard on Fri and got a spare glovebox so I can hack it up! Ive done a bit of trawling of the internett over the W/E and come accross this website: www.aria.co.uk/

Ive now got my shopping list sorted out which I hope to purchase thisafternoon. It comes to £176 and includes every thing Ill need for the PC, except a few fans and mabey some cables ect. It will have an 2.4GHz AMD dual core prosessor and 2G of RAM. Not too bad for a car PC for that price. The motherboard is micro-ATX so should fit in the glovebox with minor alteration. The hard drive is a bit small, but I can always add on more later on, and im going to run the OS (probably Linux) off a seperate IDE harddrive which Ive already got. Anyway, the list;

ECS AMD690GM-M2 AMD 690G/SB600 AM2 Motherboard £ 28.55

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4600+ 2.40GHz (AM2) £ 54.95

SV 500w SilentLoad 20 & 24+SATA PSU £ 9.95

80GB Seagate Barracuda SATA2 8MB £ 22.75

2x 1GB Arianet PC5300 DDR2 667 SDRAM £16.95


So there we are! Hopefuly itll arive for next W/E!

As I mentioned before I think Ill use Linux as an OS as the system should run a lot better and smoother than with windows. Also I can modify the code to make a application specialy to controll the features I want.

Sorry for a long post and good luck with your projects guys!!!

Yee nickm i am just going to leave it like that as theres already a switch on the invertor it self to turn it on and off and i've moved the invertor to the golve box which i managed to chop up. So the invertor is pretty reachble to turn off you'll see what i mean in a min. BTW nickm by any chance, can i nick that spec of yours. Pretty Plzzzz and if you can tell me if everything arrives all okay i'll appricate that alot . and heres the pics of me chopping upthe glove box!!

All intact before i started removing.


once all lthe screws were removed and the glove box was taken out i was left with a big gaping hole lool


once removed i started marking up the holes. Marked up a hole for the wires to go through and for the back for ventialtion and room, but as me being a dufus i forgot to take a pic of the back markings but heres the wire ones



then i used a stanley/craft knife to cut the bit out




i then started on the back. A pic when it was intact


and now with a hole



and when put back in it's place you woulnt know i did a ting

BTW nickm kepps those updates coming !!

Bump: No updates to the the In-car-Comp at the mo. Everything is working in fine order. I've wired everything in and with a laptop that i have already i just had to test it and the sound quailty is amazing guys!!. Unlimited amount of tunes at the touch of your finger. DVD's playin amazingly with quailty .End less amount of fun, satnav, music, dvds, you name it and you could probally do it. . The reason being that everythings on a hault on at the mo is, that M.O.T is way on it's way soon and some plonka decided to take of my mirrors. They took of the passenger side first and then a few days later attempted to take of the drivers side but failed so just waiting to get my mirrors tomorrow and everything will be back on track. Nickm any news on the comp that your building??