Has Anyone Put A Carpc Or Carputer Into A Stag?

[MISTER E]

Hi folks

I'm just awaiting my unit to sell till i set myself up with a SII RS4 S hopefully in yellow.

I have become completely over come by setting up a CarPC and the website www.mp3car.com is excellent help (if slightly hard for a n00b to navigate). Does anyone know of anyone who has setup a CarPC into a stagea?

There is a prebuilt pc on ebay that is mighty attractive ($ wise its not pretty on the eye at all) http://cgi.ebay.com.au/1-Din-1-1G-Laptop-P...1QQcmdZViewItem

and all you do is setup a touchscreen monitor and route the audio outputs into an amp and Bob's ya mums sister.

you can setup gps and bluetooth and heaps of other gear (real time diagnostics anyone?) sorry I think I'm gushing.

Anyhoo let me know.

Cheers

Aaron

Ps. anyone want to buy a 2bdrm unit in Klemzig (Adelaide)??

[ssshonky]

that looks SICK!

and for under $500 its not too bad hey?

[bubba]

I'm building one for my 32, I'll let you know how it goes. Using spare desktop parts I have lying around and a 7" single din monitor

[ant0ny]

yeah cool stuff...

If I where to build my own I would use Laptop hardware. This will last longer and is already low voltage efficient and you can get 12v power supply if it is not already built in... not to mention cpu design for energy and heat efficiency.

Laptop hardware is designed to withstand virbration/dropping and to some degree moisture. PC hardware although is a little better than it used to be is not designed for an environment where it is going to be moved... and face it roads in our country are not the best at times.

If you use PC hardware you need to look at mounting and shielding... and don't be tempted to go for huge CPU's they are using the 1.5gb or less for a reason... Laptop HHD for a start but look at DRAM Hard drives, Gigabyte I-Ram or Solid State HDD as a better alternative.

Antony

Edited January 15, 2008 by ant0ny

[DaveB]

This is the first thing I plan to do to/with my S2 RS4 when I get it, and has been my plan for several years. I have been pleasantly surprised of late to see how commercialised car PC setups have become (for instance a few years ago just a 12V PC power supply was harder to get and quite large & expensive). Needless to say, I will be taking pictures I believe there may be enough room in the side compartment of the boot to fit a small PC in place of the (optional) factory CD changer. Good luck with your install, I recommend the via mini, micro, nano and pico ITX form-factor motherboard/CPU combo's, because that's about the only thing a car battery might keep running for a reasonably long length of time I reckon (although purpose-built car power supplies will shutdown the PC when the volts drop ) See them here: VIA EPIA boards

[bubba]

I'm using an old XP1500+ cpu n stuff that I had in that box.

Will be rubber mounting the motherboard and making my own box to go in the passenger footwell.

Found a 180W DC-DC PSU, it's more of a regulator than a power supply.. takes in 6-18V and puts out a regulated 12V. Nice bit of kit, about the size of a video card. Also allows you soft-off the PC just by turning the car off and it won't reset the PC when going from ACC to START (like your stereo does). It was also around the $100 mark so not excessive.

I'm doing this purely for diagnostics as I run a remapped stock ecu and have a consult cable and Nissan Datascan, which means I don't need huge computing power and graphics power. Will probably hook it into my stereo further down the track.

Found a couple of indash monitors at Jaycar so will be checking them out when I get a chance in the next couple of weeks.

Edited January 15, 2008 by bubba

[ant0ny]

Bubba yeah will interesting to see how your hardware goes keep us upto date.

I did a search for Linux based install and software and they are coming along... Linux will give you a better system If you are linux savy. Also lower spec hardware will run heaps better than running XP then the car software.

Antony

[DaveB]

Found a 180W DC-DC PSU, it's more of a regulator than a power supply.. takes in 6-18V and puts out a regulated 12V. Nice bit of kit, about the size of a video card. Also allows you soft-off the PC just by turning the car off and it won't reset the PC when going from ACC to START (like your stereo does).

does that give you the 5v, -12v, 3.3v, etc. rails that you need too?

I'm doing this purely for diagnostics as I run a remapped stock ecu and have a consult cable and Nissan Datascan, which means I don't need huge computing power and graphics power. Will probably hook it into my stereo further down the track.

a member here has a cool project which is a consult display and port in one nifty little backlit LCD box that could even DIN mount... the website is I think www.ecutalk.com

Thanks for the tip about the in-dash monitors at Jaycar will have to check them out...

[Stagea_Neo]

Hi All,

Been investigating this for a while.

Enclosure & Motherboard

(http://www.mini-itx.com/store/)

Look up the voom pc2 enclosure.

There's links to the power supplies and jetaway/via motherboards to use with them and other add-ons.

7 Inch Touch screen with usb

not sure if this will work in a car or not but cant' see why not.

Seen some stuff on ebay with the same function but a little dubious on quality.

Thermaltake good pc brand for those not in the know.

http://www.pccasegear.com.au/prod6074.htm

USB GPS Receivers

Take a pick....no comment, havent used them, or heard of anyone using them.

http://www.gpsoz.com.au/global_sat_bu_353.htm

http://www.expansys.com.au/p.aspx?i=140985

http://www.ryda.com.au/GPS-Bluetooth-Receivers-s/313.htm

Hard Drives.

www.msy.com.au

Check out laptop hard drives they lasta while, go into the parts link and download the pdf.

Cheap pc parts, probably wont be beaten on price.

Antony mentioned the gigabyte iram dram drive, good option for full size enlosure but not fo car pc i recon.

It relies on it's own battery backup (16hrs?).

Desktop pc will usually leave (motherboard bios option) some volts running through the board for 'wake up/standby' functions and keep the iram pci board powered, car pc's will cut power immediately or a timed interval and leave no

volts running to the motherboard/enclosure to save your car battery.

So you would need to ensure the car is driven every 16hrs at least.

IDE Compact Flash Drive

http://www.pccasegear.com.au/prod4633.htm

There's another option with a flash drive instead of the i-ram, it doesnt need battery backup either.

Like the i-ram limited in capacity, but will load/run software very quickly.

I've been reading up on solid state drives, Samsung and Toshiba If i recall correctly are releasing some 64gb

drives soon, which is very ample storage space. Just do some google searches or look up IT Websites.

Hope this helps out

[DaveB]

Thanks for that info - interesting that other people/enthusiasts are starting to notice msy; indeed their prices are better than a lot of wholesalers here in Adelaide. A lot.

I would anticipate any solid state drive released in that capacity would be hugely expensive (thousands) but we can always hope... flash drives are great but they have their compromises also (slow as, and they wear out!) My advice would be a side-mounted (vertically mounted) 3.5" western digital server drive. Cheapest thing around (the form factor, not necessarily the brand) in cents per megabyte, and if you pack it nicely in some foam rubber (with adequate ventilation of course) should be fine for a couple of years... unless you like to drift or rally, then you could have a problem

Edited January 17, 2008 by DaveB

[jasevr4]

I intend on building one of these up.

Try a HP thin client.

About 800mhz, run laptop ram (I just upgraded mine to 512 GB), and if you buy a $10 cable, it converts it from the 32mb CF card that is in it, to a 44pin female connector so you can run a laptop HDD. Mine has a 100gb. The beauty is that they run on 12v already, so all that is needed to run it in a car is a 12v DC-DC regulator (preferably with a shutdown controller). On top of all that, it's fanless!

I wanted to create a double din unit with the PC, power supply and amp, with a touchscreen TV mounted to the front, but the only amps I can find are kit amps - I'm not confident enough to solder up something like that, so it looks like it might be a no go.

[Stagea_Neo]

Here's an ssd on the market already, only 8gb though, transcend not the best brand.

http://www.myshopping.com.au/PR--177807_Tr..._Disk_TS8GIFD25

[DaveB]

They're cool but they're only flash drives with a (comparatively slow) IDE interface. USB flash devices like the new corsair drives are faster. Still, it's an option... I think true solid-state though is dynamic. 8GB of flash will still let you store a few mp3's though.

[bubba]

Picked up the monitor and psu on wednesday, just going a cheap non motorised non touch screen monitor for now, will likely upgrade once everything is sorted.

Yes the powersupply has the different voltage rails but not an abundance of plugs which is fine.

Prefer to use my m-ATX board I've got here as I believe the extra PCI slots will come in handy when I decide to put some cameras in the car.

Have pretty much everything I need at the moment, going to butcher an old case to get the slot mounts and use some 16mm MDF I have lying around for the base, back and side and perspex for the top and front.

Using an old IDE 40Gb HDD so if it dies due to vibration then so be it and I'll invest in a solid state drive if it comes to that.

Looking at inputs now, need to find a small track ball and a USB mini-keyboard and likely a USB dvd drive that I will just plug in when needed.

Edit: if you've got a bit of cash and want a comprehensive walkthrough on how to build a particular DIN sized carpc with specific components, I have a book that tells you exactly how to do it. I bought it just to get an idea on how others have done it and while being a bit too basic for me and not entirely applicable, would likely be a benefit to someone willing to buy fancy new stuff to build theirs Also as mine will not be primarily a media centre, I wan't to retain my head unit in one of the three din slots I have so am not building an "in-dash" PC.

Edited January 18, 2008 by bubba

[Stagea_Neo]

Dave,

Have you set the motherboard bios primary drive boot option to be usb and tried

formatting/setting it up with a windows partition?

I know the usb drive normally will only allow fat32 not ntfs.

I've only booted of a usb key to load sata drivers in the past.

I'm curious, may try this myself on the weekend

Pete

[jasevr4]

Pete,

I run "Bart PE" off of a usb key and it works a treat. I just boot to it and it does it's thing no worries.

Bart is just a cut down version of XP, so in theory you should have no issues doing it.

[rubba]

I'm keen to see how long this lasts bubba...

The old socket A AMD chips were known fairly well for running quite hot unless you've got some decent cooling. Not really the best choice for the kind of application you are using it for.

A regular HDD, especially and old one I don't think will last terribly long at all. They aren't made to take any kind of movement/bumps while running and you are going to start getting bad sectors pretty quick. A notebook HDD would be a better choice, solid state being the ideal solution.

I work in IT with a lot to do with hardware repairs etc so I have a pretty good idea on this

[Stagea_Neo]

Ditto

I'm keen to see how long this lasts bubba...

The old socket A AMD chips were known fairly well for running quite hot unless you've got some decent cooling. Not really the best choice for the kind of application you are using it for.

A regular HDD, especially and old one I don't think will last terribly long at all. They aren't made to take any kind of movement/bumps while running and you are going to start getting bad sectors pretty quick. A notebook HDD would be a better choice, solid state being the ideal solution.

I work in IT with a lot to do with hardware repairs etc so I have a pretty good idea on this

[MISTER E]

My inner nerd just had a pants party when I saw on mp3car.com somone put a carpc into a DeLorean......stupid me didn't copy the link

[NewKleer]

for diagnostics give ecutalk a go also if you find the gauges too small in nissan datascan, as ecutalk will take up as much room as it can depending on how many gauges u select, and has full screen mode and works on widescreens also

of course as someone mentioned if you only want the diagnostics then next version of ecutalk display unit will be out in a few months