[Mk2] [Generic] in car pc... i need help.. dont know where to start

[RyanRs]

i have alwayse wanted an ALPINE-TME-M790 Dvd screen and player, was seriously thinking of saving up for one.. but then i had a thought.. and i think its quite a sensible one too.. Who would actually sit down and watch TV in there car, asif there sittin in there house?? therefore, i think a car TV is a un-required luxary , nice to have ..but no way worth the money you pay for one, expecailly when you can get a 50" HI-DEF flat plazma screen TV for your house at the same price as the Alpine unit...


Sooo.. now i have decided to go the 'in car PC' route, as you get the same results as the in car DVD/Nav + more, for 1/4 the price!..

i want to make a reliable, compact 'in car pc' and mould a screen into the double din part of the dash. Problem is, altho i know PC's .. i dont know in car pc's ! i dont know where to start....

could someone list me all the parts and prices that i will need to build up a car pc, i would like a high quality screen.... poss touch screen if they can be used! i dont know what size screen to go for, but what ever will fit.

i will be using the pc for playin MP3's DVD's Nav software and occasional internet use.. (using wireless connection)

Also, how do you get around the power supply? and also voltage drops causing the PC to 'Switch on and off' ??

[toxo]

Hello Mate,

I'm making an in-car mini xbox at the moment, and there are plenty of 12V DC ATX power supplies you can get from suppliers of mini-itx kit, like linitx.com or itx-warehouse.co.uk. They do clever things like switching the pc on with the ignition etc, and you do away with having inverters and crap like that which would be a very inefficient way of powering it!

You will almost certainly want to make your car pc as low power as possible. Using itx kit, laptop hard drives etc (I just picked up a 160gb laptop drive for under £90) you can easily get a useable system in under 60W, which is what the PSU I have chosen is rated at. A far cry from my desktop PC's PSU which is 480W! You may find you need a bit more than that if you start bolting on USB devices as they can draw substantial power from the PC.



This is the kind of thing you're looking for, note this has a pcb attached to it which does the atx -> xbox conversion which you obviously wouldn't need. It has 3 power wires like a normal head unit does, battery +ve, battery -ve and ignition +ve. There's then a small cable that comes from that psu board to the 'on' switch on the PC motherboard. You can configure it to do things like turn the PC on when the car starts, then turn it off again when the ignition goes off, and then wait a configurable number of seconds before it actually cuts the power to it to give it time to shut down.

If you hunt around a bit you should find you can pick up 7" tft touchscreens, which have the standard vga input and a usb input as well, which basically makes the touchscreen appear as a mouse-esque input device to the PC. I know someone picked up a lilliput (?) one for not a lot a few months ago.

Hope that helps!

[RyanRs]

cheers toxo, is that power circuit board something you can buy in the shops? or have you made it yourself?

do you know anything about sources for parts to build the actual PC etc? and what parts to go for?

also, could running a 2nd battery in parallel to the 1st help combat power drops? or would it just put strain on the alternator?

[Ed]

Hi Ryan

Here's a couple of links that I have to get you started:

Good Blog on setting up Car PC
Good store for mini ITX systems
Good store for Car PC systems and power supplies

HTH Ed

[toxo]

Something I bought from linitx.com - it's the M1-ATX I think. My PCB skills only extend as far as the bit of stripboard that's hanging off the atx power plug

[rossdymond3352]

i have a proper dedicated in car PC setup designed from the ground up to be a car PC, if your interested drop me a PM

other than that, the above posts will give you all the info you need

Ross