I've got a new build rolling around in my head - a car PC. I ordered an AsRock E350M1, along with 4GB of RAM. The plan is fairly simple - small plexi and aluminum case wired to a 7" Lilliput touchscreen. The Lilliput also has wiring for a backup camera, and given how cheap they've become, seems a natural fit (also I'm terrible about reversing - I've had the car 3 years and still can't judge how much space I have behind me.) Since the box my last E350 board came in was still around the house, I took it out to the car and shoved it various places to see where it might fit. The dimensions of the box itself aren't terribly larger than what I have planned, so it worked well enough. My original plan to stick it under the front passenger seat is dead - the floor is odd-shaped and seems to have some sort of vent. The driver's seat is no good, as well - too many springs and seat-adjustment bits under there. Out of curiosity, I tried the glove box - nearly a perfect fit. So, the options seem to be the glove box or the trunk, where it will be sharing space with a ported 10" box and the amp that drives it. Given that the box has made the trunk nearly unusable anyway, that's not bad. I just don't know that running a VGA cable from the trunk to the dash is particularly desirable. On the other hand, there is the issue of a lack of ventilation in the glove box. the E350s don't run particularly hot, but I don't know that being in the glove box next to the firewall would be the ideal situation. There is a chance I could maybe open a bit of space underneath, but I'll have to get under the dash and have a look around. As to the screen itself, I've got an idea to stealth it. Given that I had my previous car stolen twice, and the stereo from this car once, seems a good idea to have it hidden. What I've got planned there is to put the screen on a sliding, hinged bracket and put the face from the OEM stereo on the bottom of the screen. When I get in, slide the original fascia out and lo and behold, a touch screen swings into view. When I park it, slide it back into place and it will seem to be nothing more than the crap Delco AM/FM/Cassette deck. I went and raided the cutoff bin at the local TAP Plastics today. $7 and some change got me all the plexi I should need for this endeavor (gotta love ITX builds.) I'll head to a hardware store tomorrow for aluminum angle and bar. I'm considering making the sides alu, as well. The plan at the moment is to use 1/2" angle as the frame, bolted to the panels. A little over the top for ITX, but I don't want it rattling apart while I drive. I still need to order the PSU (a pico-ITX smart power supply intended for car PCs), an SSD (watching to catch a stupid deal like I did last time - $85 for a 128GB Samsung 830), and the touchscreen, but I've got a bit of a start. So, bit-tech people, thoughts or ideas? I haven't found a lot of people doing something relatively simple like this. A lot of car PCs I've found are full-blown, replace the dash type things. Given that this is going in a '98 Pontiac Sunfire, that's a bit much for me. The OEM stereo is 1.5 DIN, so I can't do an integrated build with the whole build replacing the OEM stereo, which I wouldn't anyway, given that I don't have a garage, hence the screen-stealthing plan.
Given my love for my own car pc, I fully support your idea! I have a 15 feet vga cable from my pc in the trunk, to my motorized touch screen in the dash. I've had no problems with the signal. Just don't buy a cheap cable, make sure it's thick and well shielded. And don't run it paralel with the power cable for your amp! I have power cables running on the left side of the car, and signal/usb/vga down the right side. My 15 feet usb extension cable for the touch screen is also double shielded. Never run power cables and signal cables paralel to each other. If they meet, make sure to cross over at a 90 degree angle. That will minimize interference. Good luck on the project, I'll definately be following this!
Thanks, Angel. Just knowing a modder of your caliber will follow this makes me squeeee a little. Good to know on the VGA cable, too, and not mixing power/signal cables in the same run - I discovered recently that I had done it right, inadvertently, when I put the amp in the trunk. Battery cable was a natural fit to come down the driver side, since that's where the battery's mounted. Similarly, the RCAs from the deck had an easy path behind the glove box and into the passenger door sill. I just hope I have enough space in the door sills to run all the cables! Incidentally, how many power cables are you running off the battery? Since I'm apparently stuck with mounting everything in the trunk, I'm questioning if I really need to run separate cables, or if I can just splice into the existing cable to power the PC and the other amp I'll be wiring in. Gotta say, too - it's a damn shame you couldn't have that PC on display, as it is stunning. Given the quality of my modding/building, I won't feel badly that mine is hidden Given the amount of car thefts and such in my neighborhood, though, I sympathize with not feeling it terribly safe.
I kind of got the non-friendly neighbourhood idea from your first post. It's just a damn shame. And although we don't have anything bad as that in this neighbourhood, I just don't feel like taking the chance with my CarPc. I only have 1 power cable. It's then split into 2, 1 for each of my amps. I also ran a small wire to the PSU for my CarPc. It's not really thick as such, I think it converts to an 8 AWG cable for you damn non-metric infidels! This depends on how powerful your amps are though. I got a 4 channel for my speakers, and a 2 channel in mono for the sub. I would by NO means recommend to splice into anything. Run a seperate wire for the amps, straight from the battery! And be damn sure that you put a fuse on that line. Preferably as close to the battery as possible. I think I use a 30 amp fuse on that seperate line. About 10 inches from the battery. Buy a "fusebox" that is designed for car stereo. Car stereo is no joke. I've never seen it in real life, but there have been incidents where cars have caught on fire because the owner decided to NOT spend $20 on a decend water proof fusebox under the hood. I'm not sure how many feet of wire I've put in the volvo, when you count it all up... Speaker wire, power wire, signal cables, usb... But I had to re-do all the wires for the speakers, since I have the amps. But... 4x 15 feet phono cables @ $60 a piece. (bought some cheapos for my first car, and they gave alternator whine.. So since then I just decided to never buy cheap cables again. When I bought the expensive ones, the whine disappeared) 15 feet double shielded usb cable. 15 feet double shielded VGA cable. 15-20 feet of 2AWG for powering the subs. Speakers.. ~40 feet. And I've probably forgot something..
Actually, I wasn't talking about splicing into the existing factory wiring. What I meant sounds like exactly what you're doing - a single cable off the battery, then split that to the amps and PC in the trunk. And yes, I do have a fuse ~8" back from the terminal - in a proper, sealed, waterproof glass fuseholder. And good news - the board and RAM came today. I have a really hard time in Sketchup, and I can't do good 3D with pencil and paper, so I prefer to just have the parts in hand and go from there. I'm thinking of passively venting one side of the case, and mounting a modded PCI-blower on the other side, just under the roof of the case. This way, I can keep the case a little shorter while still getting fairly decent airflow. The alternative likely would be 60mm fans, and decent ones are a little pricey and likely noisy (although I guess the noisy part won't matter once it's in the trunk.) The power supply and a whole lot of fasteners are on the way. I just need to get the SSD and I'll have all the hardware for the PC itself taken care of. Now that the board is here, I'll do cardboard mockups of the SSD and blower to see if my idea will work - I'm planning on putting the SSD on aluminum rails. They'll be bent in a C shape, mounted on the floor of the case and coming up and over, so the SSD is directly above the motherboard. I'm still debating mounting springs at the ends of the rails, pushing on the roof of the case. Guess I'll have to see how springy the alu arms are first. So, hopefully some real progress tomorrow, and maybe even pictures
Oh, and good lord, I was hardly thinking about all the cables too Ah, well, I'm also working on a software frontend, so the whole setup might not be ready to go for a bit anyway. I like the look of Centrafuse, but I have a hell of a hard time paying for software. Hopefully I can frankenstein together something that will work - who knows, this might be what finally gets me off my ass and learning Python (which I've been meaning to do for the past ten years or so.)
Some progress As mentioned the board and RAM showed up Thursday, so I've gotten down to work a bit. Here's a terribly exciting shot of the plexi marked to be cut: I'm going with 1/4" gray smoked plexi for the floor and roof. Between what I had around the house and what I picked up the other day, I had enough of the 1/4 to do it. Here's the first one cut: And the cute l'il board that will be mounted on it: I hope I don't end up feeling stupid for getting the RipJaws memory. The heatsinks on the regular GSkill sticks would be almost exactly the same height as the CPU/chipset heatsinks on the board. The board has an impressive amount of display options: It'd be really nice to find a 7" touchscreen with HDMI input that didn't cost an arm and a leg. But, I can still get a VGA model for ~$150, and that should work just fine. I got the edges of the floor and roof sanded flat. The Dremel's large enough that I cut at a tilt, and rather than do a rough cut and a final, flat cut, I cut once and sand. I sanded with 150 grit, and I realized I don't need to sand these edges down to 2000 and polish like I did my last plexi project. The edges won't be exposed at all, so I might leave them at 150. By this time, the sun was creeping down, and I wanted to get a head start on the frame. So, busting out my ruler and pencil: I marked it out for the front piece: Apparently that was the last picture I took. At any rate, a few shriekingly loud minutes later, I had the top front and bottom front pieces cut. The still need to be filed to length and sanded down, so I hope to get an earlier start tomorrow.
2012-10-07 more small progress Yesterday and today I made a bit more progress. While I was cutting the rest of the alu for the frame, the strap on my poor googles gave out. Now being wiser than to cut anything without my goggles on, I had to improvise a fix: That's right, hair bands and a shoelace. Ghetto, yes, but so far it works better than the old strap did anyway, so I think I'll keep it. I finished cutting most of the pieces for the frame: It got too dark too quickly for pictures, but I've got one and a half of the 'setbacks' cut for the side rails. Since I'm not mitering the corners, I need to cut reliefs into the side rails to allow the front rails to be full-width while still covering the corners. For once, I appear to have done the math correctly the first time, so it appears the rails will all fit together. I got all the rough cuts for the rest of the reliefs cut just before it got dark today, which just leaves filing left to be done on two full rails, and one end of the 3rd. From there, I should have a whole lot of bolts showing up this week so I can mark the rails to be drilled. I'll need to cut reliefs into the floor and ceiling of the case for the bolts, since the plexi will take up half the width of the rail faces. I'm hoping the weather holds out for another week so I can paint the frame. I picked up a can of flat black engine enamel the other day. In my head, the silver frame and the smoked plexi together might look a little corny. Aside from that, since I'm not exactly working with precision engineering, having the frame painted black will help hide the small gaps where the rails meet. Last night, having done all I could outside, I decided it was finally time to see if I could get the fan and SSD laid out: I've decided against the blower idea - they're just too big to fit in this design, and I've got a bit of concern over having the HSF fan blowing down on the heatsink while the blower immediately above is pushing air out. So, here's an 80mm fan that will be mounted on the roof in roughly the position in the picture, which will be used as an intake. Meanwhile, the tape and cardboard contraption below is a rough mockup of the Samsung 830 that I ordered this morning. It was only $5 more than I paid for my first one, so I pulled the trigger. I think I might go with mounting the SSD to the floor of the case directly. I still like the c-arm idea I had originally, but it would put it at least partially very close to the HSF, and I don't know that I want to block any potential airflow there. It's small enough that it will fit easily under the motherboard, and mounting it will be very simple. Had a bit of a panic when I looked in my screw box and couldn't find any standoffs. So I went digging through my junk drawers, and made a pleasant discovery. A plastic bag with a matched set of standoffs with the screws, along with the ODD-size screws that are also used for SSDs - woohoo! My packrat ways pay off again!
I know what you mean about paying for software. I was so lucky I got mine sponsored. But one must remember that there is more to it. There are maps for the navigation, software for the ODB2 if you want to use that, and also for controlling your phone via bluetooth in case that should be usefull. My centrafuse is just amazing. Wouldn't use anything else, even if I had to pay for it! Nice start on the build!
2012/10/09 The first of what's sure to be many mistakes I called in sick to work yesterday (I literally didn't sleep at all Sunday night, so it was legit, more or less.) After sleeping for 4-ish hours, I got back down to it. I finished filing the side rail reliefs out, and they came out well...so well I forgot to get pics, apparently. Then I sanded them all down with 400-grit to a sexy, lickable satin finish: The top stack is what it looks like straight from the hardware store. Then, busting out my pencil, ruler, Dremel, and 3 in 1 oil, I set about drilling the bolt holes. Quick, somebody tell me what's wrong with this picture: (Aside from being...bad. I don't know proper photographic terminology, but it's a bad, bad picture. One thing my house is sorely lacking is decent light sources.) Here's maybe a better candidate for 'spot the mistake': If you said the center holes don't line up, you win...jack. But good on you for spotting it faster than I did. It didn't get to me until I was measuring the 4th rail and started wondering why my measurements were off 1/8". Since the middle holes were to be off center, I didn't take into account going from the opposite edge for the bottom rails That's when I remembered the other blessing of painting the aluminum - I can **** it up all day long, and as long as I get it patched well enough, you won't know, once it's been painted. So, I busted out the best friend of the ****up, JB Weld. Originally, I was just thinking to patch the holes on the two rails that would be upside down. Deciding that maybe even having a center bolt was a bad idea to begin with, I patched all the holes instead: As you can possibly see, I nearly managed to hose that, as well. I went on a bit of a job hunt while I waited for the JBW to get tacky, and nearly waited too long. No matter, though - a bit of sanding and likely another, smaller round of patching, and it'll be good as new. JB Weld is funny stuff, apparently. Nearly too tacky to get it laid nicely in there, but as I type this, I can see it starting to run, very slowly Actually, there was another mistake, as well. I got all my fasteners in, and found that yes, what Ace sold me as M3s are not, as what I got are quite a bit smaller. I trust Fastener Express to sell me the correct size better than Ace. So, glad I did not drill the holes based on what I thought were M3s, as that would have been a complete cock-up. However, the mistake was forgetting to measure the shanks. I forgot the issue I had on FluxNAS with the itty-bitty M2 bolts - the 10mm aren't really long enough to go through both the alu and 1/4" plexi and still get the locknuts on So, the 8mm I got will be fine, if slightly too long, for the 1/8" walls, but I need to order more M3s, but with 12mm or so shanks (come to think of it, maybe I should actually measure it this time...if I can find a metric ruler around the house.) But, a small bright spot, too - after cursing the very soul of UPS when my PSU still hadn't gotten to me by 6:30pm, I pulled tracking again to find it showed delivered, at 11am...to work. I'd forgotten to switch the address after the last PSU I'd ordered from them. Since I had to actually go back to work, it was waiting for me on my desk. Tomorrow night I'll at least hook all that up to check that what I've got all works (and thank god I already have one Pico PSU - I'd be feeling like an even bigger dumbass if not, since I don't have any other AC adapters that will work with them.)
Thanks I just checked on Centrafuse...and now I'm up in the air again. Centrafuse costs about half what I thought (and I can at least sympathize with the Europeans and Australians that they stick you for an extra $20 for navigation.) On the one hand, I can do everything on the software side for free. However, integration will be lacking (all right, non-existent), and I don't know how well the open-source GPS software will work...or the radio software (it's vitally important that I have my NPR, being the hippie liberal douchebag that I am ) Aside from that, it hit me that what I really need from either XBMC or MPlayer, depending on how I decide to roll, is a GUI. I absolutely suck at GUI design. When it was just simple little AutoIt GUIs, it didn't matter that it was ass-ugly, since it only had as much interface as it needed to function. The same is technically true here, too...but I don't want ass-ugly software soiling my (ahem) lovely Car PC. And, to top it off, skinning XBMC is hard. It makes sense, since there's so much to it, but damn...I don't want to spend 2 years developing a skin for it. I've looked around, it all the touch-screen builds of XBMC I can find are so dead there aren't even d/l links anymore. Same with MPlayer, if I want to do a Qt interface - Qt is just a wee bit different from the languages I know...that is, not at all the same. I'm having a bit of a hard time even knowing where to start there. But, I've got some time - Aside from the SSD that will show up this week, the rest of the hardware is a little ways away, maybe the beginning of December or so. So, I'll continue debating what I'm going to do software-wise for a bit longer.
2012-10-16 more mistakes, more work I got a bit more done over the weekend. Not nearly as much as I'd hoped, but I slept until 17:30 Saturday. Now that it gets too dark to work by about 18:30, Saturday was pretty well useless. Sunday, though, I got in a couple decent hours. I got the front and back frame rails drilled, along with the corresponding holes in the roof of the case: Notice I was at least smart enough to mark which end is which now that I've got pieces matched to other pieces. The rails are marked on the inside, as well. Nothing quite like putting a case together like a puzzle, not marking anything, and then not being able to put it back together later Also notice something handy about plexi - the protective paper is perfect for a little quick-n-dirty math. Once I'd bolted the front and back rails on, I grabbed the side to find...they didn't fit. But, no tragedy. I grabbed my ******* file and trimmed them up: Not precise engineering, but it'll do. (Incidentally, I worked my way back through most of Atilla's Cor Leonis log last night - holy god, what a project. As an aside, we've never seen Atilla, have we? I present to you that we're being trolled, ladies and gentlemen, by a clever industrial robot! ) Also, remember what I said about the first of many mistakes? Note that I've filled the rest of the holes on those rails, as well. I'd forgotten to account for the thickness of the walls, and so the original holes were way too far to the outside But, in better news, I do have the fasteners in hand: I think I've come up with a good way to hold the case together and still allow it to be fairly easily disassembled. Hopefully I won't be such an idiot next weekend staying up until 07:00 playing TF2, and so have time to see if my idea will work. I've also got the PSU in, and all the hardware tested. Kicking myself for going with the free saver shipping from n'egg on the SSD, though - their tracking seems to show it's been sitting in Seattle since Thursday, while the USPS tracking finally works today...to say they received the manifest information Thursday I'll be patient, though, I'm not in that big a hurry. I got the alu bits that the motherboard standoffs will screw into cut, as well. It was around this time my camera freaked out and I didn't want to waste daylight getting it working again. I got it working after dark, though, so I don't have to resort to the older, much worse camera. I'm already kicking myself for starting this project in October. I'm going to very much dislike working on this when it's 40 degrees outside and raining. The late Indian summer tricked me - I thought it might hold out a few more weeks and I could get nearly done. Now I'll be lucky if it gets nice enough to paint before June. If that gets down to the last thing left, though, I'll call it good 'til spring.
2013-05-06 A fresh start I didn't abandon this project. A week or so after the last post, I realized I had screwed up so badly I was better off just starting over. And waiting until it was warm again. I actually got started a couple weeks ago, but it was pretty unexciting stuff. Speaking of unexciting stuff, I went to Harbor Freight around the time I restarted. $40 got me a heat gun, metric tap and die set, new safety glasses, and some diamond wheels for the Dremel. In entertaining news, they tried to sell me an extended warranty on the heat gun. Dude, if I'm paying $12 for a heat gun, I think I know exactly what I can expect. Yay, no more shoelaces and hairbands holding together some ancient lab goggles together And a sexy, sexy diamond wheel. They're quite a bit smaller than the real Dremel wheels. Small enough, in fact, that they won't cut 1/4" plexi in one pass. It's got to be flipped and cut from the other side, which is a bit of a drag. On the upside, it cuts 1/8" like a dream. The kerf on these wheels takes a bit of getting used to, after spending so much time with the Dremel 420 Heavy-Duty wheels. Incidentally, that's the bit that will be holding the SSD. Apparently I didn't get a shot of it after I'd finished it, but I'll post one up later. Also, let that serve as a bit of a tease for the secondary color (not hot pink, although that might not have been a bad idea.) Sorry for the crap quality on that pic - yes, camera, please focus on the pants that are in the bottom right corner of the shot. That's exactly what I wanted. The new body panels, and to the left, me making a stupid, stupid decision. Part of what I badly hosed last fall was the frame. I thought I was working all carefully and slow so I wouldn't screw it up, but I did anyway. In the hands of someone more skillful than I, this wouldn't be a bad idea. However, I'm an idiot that's lucky not to have lost an eye to my Dremel. After cutting two new frame pieces with setbacks, it came back to me that this was a bad idea from the start. I wish I had realized that upfront, as I thought my left arm was going to fall off from holding the pieces so tightly while I was cutting them. Also, those diamond wheels don't cut aluminum for crap. I was yay close to going out to pick up a pack of resin wheels until I remembered the aluminum frame wasn't going to work anyway. So, today I got started on the the new idea (along with a mostly-formed Plan B in case this goes sideways on me, too.) Here's my reliable and totally safe method for bending short bits of plexi: The heat gun's clenched between my legs. Then I can use my right hand to hold down the piece, and my left to grab another bit of alu angle to bend the piece down to 90 degrees. After swinging the heat gun out of the way (by turning at the waist) and shutting it off. Didn't work too badly, either - I only burned myself once, a minor first-degree on my thumb (along with all the hair.) Stupid thing was, it was the very last piece, and I got it too hot and it bubbled a bit, so I had to toss it So, cutting, bending, drilling and tapping done (of which I managed to get no decent pictures), here's the rough cut for the new idea: Yes, I can screw into the 1/8" through the 1/4" (and yes, that is the propaganda sticker from my motherboard in the background, stuck to the desk.) The bits aren't cut to length or sanded down yet - I wanted to see if this would even work before I spent hours doing that. That's a minor miracle itself - I'm easily distracted and I like sanding, so I could have easily spent hours getting these bits just so, only to find the whole idea is a failure. A bit later, though, I had this: That's shot from the back - the back panel might be a bit different. I got far enough last time to know it's a bit of a tight fit with the I/O panel, so I'll have to see what I can fit where. Plus I need to cut a new back panel - somehow the one I have is 1/8" short...which was the exact problem I had last time. Above is actually upside-down - I wanted to start with the roof. I started the floor, but it got a bit too dark to see well enough to drill. I got the front panel on and everything seems to fit for now. I spent the last bit of daylight resanding the mounts for the motherboard standoffs. Too dark to get any pictures, but hopefully next weekend will be nice again and I can show the polished bits I've got so far, along with what I hope is a brilliant idea for the power connection. And maybe show off the sexy little touchscreen I got a few weeks ago.
Just out of interest, whats wrong with the default 'confluence' skin for XBMC. It works fairly well on my 9.7" ipad.
Centrafuse is designed specifically for car PCs - if nothing else, there's a single-touch shortcut to the GPS application.
2013-07-07 Started over again and nearly finished this time I had a few weekends without a camera, and one or two where I didn't even think to take pictures, but I started over on the case once again, and decided maybe heat-bending would the way to go. In short order, I had this: Yes, the corners aren't symmetrical. Given how much plexi I've blown through on this project, though, I'm going to ignore that. What I'm not showing was a fourth iteration that was worse. Having cut new brackets to hold the whole thing together, this time out of the same translucent bronze, bolted together it looks like so: The front corner has what was going to be the power LED mounting: But it didn't work . Next weekend I'll have what I did instead. Here it is with the roof on and a bit of a peek at the fan guard: Bit of a tight fit on some of these pieces, too: The completed SSD mount: Back panel on - notice what's above the HDMI port - that is indeed a standard 1/4" stereo plug. I'm using it for the power connections. The stereo connector works well, since there is a third wire that runs to the car's ACC switch. I've got another 1/4" plug that I've wired to the original barrel connector so I can plug it into the usual AC/DC adapter so I can power it up in the house. Here I go rewiring the original connectors from the PSU - the original configuration has a single SATA, Molex, and a floppy connector. I only need the SATA, so off with their heads: I don't know how y'all strip wires, but here's how I do it: I have yet to make myself bleed stripping wires this way, amazingly. I sometimes like to use wire-wrapping wire to hold wires like this together when I solder - makes for a more solid connection, I think: Soldered and with heat-shrink on (and I only had to de-solder one because I forgot to slip the heatshrink on first ) And sleeved with 1/4" paracord: At the other end, stock SATA connector replaced: Turns out these aren't the best SATA connectors, since I have very little room beneath the board where the SSD mounts. I think I can make it work, though. While I was about it, I resleeved the CPU fan: The little white bits on the corners of the connectors serve as a lesson to use the heat gun to shrink near those connectors, rather than my Bic. Just about the last thing left is are a couple bits for routing the power cables under the board. Busting out the heat gun again, I put together a super-fancy bending jig: It didn't work, though. I ended up just heating the plexi 'til it got soft and bent it between my fingers. After sanding the bottom flat, and the sides even again, I had this: I don't think that will work either, though. It won't hold three of the sleeved cables, so I'm still kicking around other ideas. The next update will have what little is left, and what's done that I forgot to take pictures of.
