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 In-dash Dual Core Car Pc With 7 Inch Touchscreen :d - just want to know if anyone else on here has done one of these.  

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My_ToyMota
  • My_ToyMota
  • CL33PA
  • Member No.: 47,370
  • Joined: 4-June 06
  • Posts: 446
  • From: bris Westside
Post #1 post 11th August 2009 - 02:52 PM
as the topic states, i have nearly finished my car pc build. took a week of planning gathering and building.

so here we go..
1. inspiration for this build came from an idea quite sometime back, but after seeing the one for sale here on these forums that was built by justin i thought to myself.. hey! that aint so hard! so after a little stuffin around with trying to buy the one for sale i started out by finding a bit of 6mm aluminium and cut it to 18cm x 18cm ( just as justins build thread stated )

2. i then made a list of the things i would need/ like to have on this car pc.
- dual core power = atom 330 cpu
- decent motherboard with good amount of connections = intel with built in atom 330 cpu
- touchscreen lcd = lilliput 7 inch touchscreen lcd eby701 np/c/t
- good psu to handle harsh auto environment = m2 mini itx psu
- bluetooth = mini bluetooth 2.0 dongle
- decnet ram = 2gb 800mhz ram
- decent HDD = WD 250 2.5" HDD
- all peripherals must be sata or usb connection
- gps receiver = gps usb receiver baud rate 9800
- factory looking = bybyte liliput 7 inch lcd double din mount.
- dvd burner slot load = dual layer dvd durner slot load 12.5mm sata connetion
- vga connectors male and female and 16 core ribbon cable from jaycar gotta love that 70% discount wink.gif

1st pic: here is the aluminium base cut and buffed with the motherboard already mounted. i cut the alum from the size stated in justins build 18cm x 18cm fits perfectly



2nd pic: to mount the board i simply placed the board on the aluminium and marked out the holes on the mobo with black marker and drilled them out with a 4.5mm drill bit. i then used some urethane nipples i had lying around. drilled them out with a 3mm bit and pushed them into the holes. i then used m3 screws and rubber grommets and washers and nuts to mount the board at the desired height.


3rd pic: 2 gb of ramming power!


4th pic: here is the base of the carpc next to the minidisc tv tuner that came out of the soarer.


5th pic: i got impatient waiting for all the other bits and pieces to arrive so i mounted the hdd on the cpu fan and heatsink using some heat proof resin lattice


6th pic: here is the little 60W psu i am no longer using. good little unit just not what i had in mind, came with the mobo and 2gb of ram and 250 gb hdd i bought


7th pic: all mounted ready to fire up and upload operating system and drivers and other softwares


8th pic: fired up running windows 7 build 7022 to start with 32 bit. ran the 1280 x 768 23 inch fine.


9th pic: base mounted under climate control total height of unit is 80mm so just under a double dn size.


10th pic: note where i had to cut out to allow all connections to be accessed.


11th pic: other side. note how the sata connections are easily accessed and the 20 pin power connector.


12th pic: dummy fitted into dash with usb hub connected,


13th pic: lilliput 7 inch touchscreen lcd vga input arrived


14th pic: touchscreen tested on carpc running 1024 x 768 resolution, milkdrop 2.0 at 50frames per second


15th pic: pulled apart after testing back view


16th pic: front view


17th pic: here is the lcd mounted into the 20 gauge steel frame with infrared led re wired to allow it to be located next to the lcd in the frame. allows me to have full use of the remote for switching to front and rear video inputs ( for future night vision front camera and colour rear parking camera) and on/off duties.


18th pic: the small profile vga connector i made up, we all know how big standard connectors are so there was no way in hell the standard plug was going to fit. ( cheers to justins build log for the heads up with clearances)


19th pic: here it is!! all wired up running windows 7 build 7600 32bit resolution is best left at 800 x 480 as it looks the best and is quite readable. i chose windows 7 as it has touchscreen input built into it, so onscreen keyboard and all that jazz.


i have also mounted the 150W m2 psu, wired a momentary action switch for manual on/off, tested the ignition switched positive, spliced the lcd into the 12V rail off the psu so its all internally powered. ran it all overnight with music pumping and milkdrop 2 stressin the cpu, woke up this morning and it was still runnin with no hiccups. also off the psu i have spliced the remote amplifier on ground into the psu 12v ground set the jumper settings on the psu to off delay 5 sec and hardoff 45 seconds (off delay = how long the psu waits to start shutdown procedure on carpc once ignition is turned off. hardoff = how long the psu waits until it cuts all power to all rails , 45 seconds is plenty of time for the carpc to shutdown. this feature ensures i wont come to a car with a dead battery )

i also have a little sony box that came with the soarer that takes rca inputs and plugs into the standard toyota harness so i can still use the factory sound system.. for now

im waiting on my spdif out connection to arrive and slot load dvd burner and also the refurbished climate control unit before i mount this in the car. once mounted in the car i will take more pics of it in action. i also have obd software for reading off the diagnostics port digital gauges ftw!!!! not game to try the tuning software yet.

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random_ben7
Post #2

Holy crap, that's a mad set up.

TwinCam16
Post #3

Not bad!

My_ToyMota
Post #4

cheers guys biggrin.gif its a perfect double din size too so any car with a double din can follow this guide roughly and have the same thing.

also i am not experienced in electronics at all, only knowledge is rippin apart toys as a kid! lol. i know how to use a multimeter and soldering is common sense really. so anyone with good hands can make something like this biggrin.gif (or i can possibly make one for you)

also with all the wiring done properly there are only three wires coming out of the whole unit to wire up ( apart from audio rca's and usb hubs ) i have used colour coded wires accordingly, yellow for ignition, red for battery and black for ground.

fpvdrif6
Post #5

About how much in parts and time? Looks very interesting, job very well done. Can't wait to see final pics. smile.gif

Andrew1au
Post #6

very nice. how much to build me one, lol.

John.
Post #7

Finish it off with a wireless keyboard with a built in mouse.

Looks tidy mate!

Top Job.

My_ToyMota
Post #8

cheers guys.

in parts it cost 830, time around 3 days as i dont have my car here at my place. still working on it in a shed at someone else's place. plus i have never done anything like this before so it was a learning curve. i rekon i could knock them up in a day each if i had all the parts in front of me.

to build one for someone probably would charge about 1100 depending on what components they want.

i was thinking of using a usb roll up silicon keyboard velcro tape it to the inside of the glove box lid in a roll. open glove box unroll and your set biggrin.gif wireless mouse would be in there too biggrin.gif but havent purchased those items yet. the touchscreen keyboard works a treat and tapping and double tapping has proven to be quite good. tap and hold for right click biggrin.gif

LUXPSI
Post #9

Fuck yes!!!

Croma
Post #10

awesome man,

where did you get your parts from? I'm interested in the GPS and PSU stuff like that..

also , what software are you using? will you use something like ROAD RUNNER or just the windows desktop?
also, GPS software? what do you use?

boot times? etc

Croma
Post #11

Been planning to make one of these when i go back to aus..

Where did you get your parts? Esp GPS and PSU ..

What software are you running for GPS?

Will you put incorporate tv/radio into it?

how have you reduced the boot time? I want it to be like a normal car radio boot time.. have you found a way?

DreamensioN
Post #12

Shit yeah - mad skills! Good job and well done!

My_ToyMota
Post #13

cheers mate biggrin.gif i can use midi controllers and such on it biggrin.gif runs serato no worries if i ever put the turntables in the boot. lol

RedruM
Post #14

that is awesome.. Well done matey. No doubt there will be some people willing to fork out that cash to have one made for them.

Kenwood
Post #15

Haha very nice setup

My_ToyMota
Post #16

cheers for the kind words everyone!

croma mate. the majority of the parts i gathered for this unit was from ebay. just hawk eyeing good deals. and a few little parts from jaycar.
psu is a 150W M2 psu can handle voltages from 8V to 28V and has off delay and hardoff timers.
desktop im running windows 7 build 7600 32 bit. i also have centrfuse 2.0 but holding back on using that until i find the need to (ie. windows 7 desktop becomes a pain to operate) load times dont bother me as i plan on warming up the car before driving it everytime. i like to look after my things biggrin.gif but boot times are about 1 min 20 secs or so. depending on what other junk i have loaded onto the hdd.

i have just installed NHL 09 and command and conquer kanes wrath and it handles those games perfectly! with less detail of course. as for tv jaycar came to the rescue with a usb HDTV tuner stick and as for radio i plan on using my nokia phone with bluetooth for radio duties. i dont listen to radio much anyways. but always good for news reports and such.

as for GPS again i have purchased a gps antenna off ebay. usb connection. baud rate of 9600 i think?? i will be using garmin software. still waiting on it to arrive so i can test it out. here is a link to the item on ebay, its a bluetooth one so completely wireless biggrin.gif (clicky)

i was thinking of maybe windows CE or good old XP SP2 to reduce load times but ive been using windows 7 for nearly over a year now and i just love it! plus the fact that touchscreen input is built into the OS biggrin.gif also you could try loading your OS onto a compact flash 4gb card and using a compact flash to ide converter card so you can mount it internally. i have heard this makes it pretty quick as the OS doesnt require the HDD to spin to look for the OS.
again my boot times arent the quickest but i put that down to the fact that my sata 2.5" 250gb HDD is spinning at only 5400 rpm's get one that spins around the 7000 rpm mark and that should cut boot times down significantly... at he moment im loading up the hard drive full of programs and media. such as ableton live, traktor 3, virtual dj, serato all mixin producing programs that load up the memory and cpu. so far so good biggrin.gif i will need another fan tho as i have noticed the cpu temp gettin up too around 50 deg C after a few games.


geezus startin to sound like a freakin nerd here. not bad for someone that had no idea what they were doing when they started this project biggrin.gif

Kenwood
Post #17

Haha looks good awesome idea biggrin.gif

Vanman-202
Post #18

wholley shit dude very clever i like i like allot

My_ToyMota
Post #19

ok fifa 09 works well, little bit of lag. nothing killer. nhl 09 smooth as silk, f.e.a.r. pretty smooth, comande and conquer kanes wrath works well, call of duty 4 wouldnt start as the vid card cant handle the shaders required. sad.gif, need for speed most wanted is saying i need to run directx 9c or higher, which i have so im thinking the file is corrupt. need for speed undercover installed no worries but gave me a white screen after the intro video. havent tried pro street yet. installing nba 2k9 now,

dont mean to bore you lot with all these things but im writing them up anyways so people can get an idea of the power of these little atom cpu's. and get an idea of what would suit their application. the zotac with built in nvidia ion graphics would have been sweet if this would be a purely games/ blue ray machine. i dont plan on keeping the games on here only a couple of them cause really gaming on a 7 inch screen just isnt good for the eyes. lol

eurekamad94
Post #20

if you dont mind me askin........ how much did this setup cost ?

My_ToyMota
Post #21

^^^^ read the posts further up mate, explains the cost of parts and stuff like that. bout $830 in total for all parts.

RUM46
Post #22

Where bouts did you get all the parts from mate?

Seen this now im keen on having it in my car.

My_ToyMota
Post #23

the base was just some aluminium i had. ebay and a few american websites for the rest. smile.gif

read the above posts people ^^^ there are questions that have already been answered. tongue.gif

My_ToyMota
Post #24

here are a couple more shots of it installed for fit in the soarer, the soarer has a 2.5 din space so the bottom bit will be for the 4 post usb hub and slot load dual layer dvd burner. and front panel audio line out (if i wanna listen to headphones for some unknown reason perhaps??) and mic in

also since i didnt have the car at my disposal for fitting and checking i thought that there might be a bit of a gap that i needed a trim bit to cover so i pushed the lcd back a couple of mm from being flush with the climate control face. doesnt need trim bits so i'll bring it back out flush biggrin.gif also with the soarer there the volume /on / off knob on the center garnish. that is of no use since there no standard stereo, but i have found the wires responsible for the momentary push on/ off action and will be using this to manually turn on/ off the car pc (auto on atm from ignition )




My_ToyMota
Post #25

just a little update on this. the gps software im using is google earth smile.gif and the software to convert gps raw stream data to kml data for google earth is called earthbridge. works very well so far provided you have a broadband internet stick hooked up. mostly for the search for directions fucnction. just for gps tracking no internet is required and google earth uses whatever is stored in the cache for trackin purposes.

so far after months of use it hasnt had a hiccup. oh except i blew my sub the other day :/
boot up time with windows 7 and all other startup programs is around a minute. and i like how winamp keeps the last playlist uploaded and starts on the last song that was played when shutting down. smile.gif

mixing live with a midi controller or just the touchscreen is lots of fun for the passenger! most other times while driving i have google earth up and running. if traffic is being ridiculous, emails can be checked and sent, and youtube always passes the time smile.gif

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