Scratch Build – In Progress Project: CarPC Audi A3 Updated 23/09/07

See post for update

Update 23/09/07

Update 02/08/07

Update 28/08/06

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Original Post
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Ok guys, this is my thread on my project, i will be installing a PC in my car.

Anyway....

PLAN
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Right the plan is to have a carputer which replaces my current Mp3 kenwood HU, have no moddifcation to the dash or the car, in terms of cutting, drilling, or guleing. I want to be able to remove the carputer with ease, and sell the car in about June or July next year. And place the carputer in the new car.

I also want the install to be clean and simple, not have too much on show, and be hidden away. I live in a bad area, and the car is parked on the street over night.

I would also like to install wi-fi, so i can browse the net, where ever a hot-spot is found, and transer files, from my PC to the car.

Also would like to install TV and radio (both digital)


CAR
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Astra Mk3 1.4i Limited addition Arizona (Which mean same spec as a GLS, alloy wheels, sunroof, electric front windows, but in a lower insurance group-5)
Changed!! See update on 02/08/07

CURRENT - Audio Setup
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kENWOOD Mp3 player
JBL 2 channel 400W amp
JBL 1000W 12" Sub
Everything else is stock.

PARTS NEEDED
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Main board: Vai SP 13000
Power: M2-ATX
Case: VoomPc (too lazy to make my own)

So far the above cost me £210 (shipped from america) Arravied

HHD: Fujitsu 80GB 2.5" 5200rpm £45
Screen: Not Motorized In-Dash VGA + Vide
Which arravied today, only orderd a few days ago. Excellent. Thanks customcarcomputers! Best thing about it is the big square polystyrene which keeps it *warm*, and the screen ofcourse, cant wait to power it up.

RAM: 512 DDR Swaped with PC. (PC now gets a 1GB DDR)
GPS: Bluethooth Not bought yet. No idea at the moment.
Wi-FI: Doogle Not bought yet. No idea at the moment.
Video: DAB-TV & Radio Not bought yet. No idea at the moment.
EXtra control: Voice control?? Last thing on my mind.
2.5" to 2.5 Adapter

SOFTWARE
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O/S: WIN XP
Front: Road runner
Sat Nav: Tomtom


Not sure what else i need as of yet. Maybe a minikey board. Also after some posts it looks like i might need another amp, of some sort. Also if am removing the HU, how would i control the volume. I did see this but is there another alternative.


OK...so it has begain...*in a deep voice*HA HA HA HA HA HA

!Let the battle begin!

 

Finally got my board, power and case.

I installed what i could (Hdd, wires, screws)
Read the guide from cartft.com (really good guide)

I found out that i gota have a 2.5" HDD adapter. So just orderd one of ebay.
I still gota order some RAM.

I tidied up the cables a bit with some cable ties.

Here are some pics:

 

Ok, after about a few hours of fafing around, i got it all sorted. Just need to hook up a CD drive, so i can install OS.

Here are some pictures:



This one shows that the IDE adapter was too big!



This image shows how i used terminal blocks, and switches taken from old faulty PSU to simulate the power hard reset, and the IGN key.

This method would help me keep the orignal cable as they were, so when it comes to installing in the car, it will only take a few minutes dismentalling the test rig.

I have wired the 12+ve for both the IGN and power into one terminal end, then on the opposite end, i have connect the car battery +ve.

So now, i have two switches .




This image shows the connections from the VGA screen.


This image shows how they were wired. Even though i have wired 12+ve, GND, GND, and +5v of the molex into the terminal block, i am only using the 12 +ve and GND.

12+v [Power] (Red wire)
ACC [Key] (Blue wire)

These two go to the yellow molex [12+ve]

GND [Ground] (Black wire)
GND [Ground] (Green wire)

This two go the black molex (the one next to the yellow)


the other end of the terminal block, were the molex was attached.

In order for the molex to work, i had buy a male molex, and crimp the wires my self. I have also piggy backd another female molex, this means that no molex connections were lost, and i can use this one for the CD drive.



This is a image of the screen. At the moment as nothing is installed, it just shows the BIOS.
(Took me ages to figure out, that once the board starts, that i had to press the power button on the screen inorder to see the image, even when i do, the power button stay red, naturaly thought it would change green, oh well)


This shows my messy room, you can see the battary charger that i was using. The CarPc is just behind it. (of-topic, i dont normally that laptop, am waiting for my new 19" TFT widescreen to arraive. )


Another image of my messy room, you can see the screen, and my collection of wires, which i have hacked from old pc, PSUs, and anything else really. Came in good use

Anyway will update once i get the software installed. Yeppeeeeeeee

 

Ok, today i hooked up the CD-drive. But for some reason it would no open, i could see the status LED. Also on the screen i could see a error messag "Disconnector". I tried different IDE cable, and a different CD-Drive.

Then when i disconnected the CD-Drive, i would see the normall BIOS again.

Then i found out that you get the Disconnector message when there is no signal.

So i tried one thing, instead of using the car battary to power the CD-ROM, and the HDD, i powerd these two with my PC. And used the car battary to power the screen and the baord.

And hey it worked.

 

Well well, nice idea...
BUT...
A HDD in a car is a bad idea. Many people who built themselves a carpc had issues with the harddrive. Although it are Laptop HDDs which endure more shocks, the operation in a car seems to be too hard for most of them. Some sort of flash memory for the OS would have been better. But maybe you're lucky and your HDD will survive.

Second, I hope your power supply for the mainboard has sufficient power output, as you can't run any of your components (except for the LCD maybe) from the car's 12V line. As a matter of fact, the in car power line is seldom at 12V, mostly somewhere between 11,x to 14,8V (when the car engine is running), and that's pretty bad for computer parts.

But it seems like you use a normal CD-ROM drive. that's bad... mini-itx power supplys generally don't give off much power (around 60-120W, depends on the model you've bought) and normal drives (like 3,5" HDDs and 5,25" CD-ROMs) consume way too much power... I think that might be the problem why your system didn't run after you plugged the CD-ROM in (without sufficient power the board won't do anything, which means there won't be a signal for the Screen).

I wonder why you ordered from the US, as you live in UK and there's an excellent mini-itx vendor there. http://www.mini-itx.com
That store has everything for the needs of a mini-itx modder (including newest mini and nano-itx boards with the proper peripherals)

 

Arrgggg, yea great idea, i started work on a carputer today aswell, altho mine is a diagnostic tool aswell...

Looks pretty good, u got any pictures of your case?

 

The M2-ATX was designed for in-car use, it will maintain a constant 12v.
You are right about the CD-Rom, but i am using it to install the software, and will not be used in the car.

I ordered from the use becasue i thought it would be cheaper, but then i got hit with customs chargers. I will order from UK now on.

http://www.mini-itx.com can be expencive,

here are a few more sites,
http://www.cartft.com/
http://www.linitx.com
http://www.customcarcomputers.co.uk/

 

It is this one but in black

 

Is your Power supply the 160w version?

 

Yes it is.

See here for more info.

 

Ok, i was trying to install the software today, was going fine, but then....i started to see white lines appering across the screen. Then the screen went all funny, saw wired horzintal and vertical bluely white lines, like the refresh rate was wrong or something similar.

It was not the VGA signal, because if you dont have a signal you get a "Disconnector" message on the screen, i was not even get that. Using a multi meter to check the power i found that it was 12.40v, which was good.

So i contacted the supplier, and he said he will test it for me, and send a new one, if need be.

So i just go to wait now.

 

Id love to have and install a PC in my car, but I would also love to have a car and a license, but im working on the car and the license, but they are great to have in a car... you really need it if you have a comprehensive music libary or videos and movies..... this looks like a great install and a great project

 

Thank mate,

Good luck with the driving. Oh yeah...it took me a few years, before i started this, i have always wanted to do this, but never had the money or the time. (Money is more like it )

 

did you have any bluetooth device installed at the moment you booted windows?
A friend of mine had a similar problem. He needed W-LAN capability on his mini-itx PC (multimedia PC for a plasma TV).
But when he booted up with the stick (it was a USB W-LAN stick) inserted, he got all kinds of fency errors. It was actually a driver issue. I don't know about issues with other USB devices (maybe keyboard?) but you might want to check on that. In the mean time I would try to set things up with a normal >350W PSU from the PC, maybe it's another power issue, or you have a faulty power supply.

Oh, thanks for the links

Hope I have been helpful...

 

Hi MiT.
Nice work so far. I'm looking forward to seeing how this one turns out.

Don't worry too much about the hard drive longevity. Most of the car PC hard drive problems came from people who were basically running ATX cases in their boots from inverters! Proper 2.5" laptop drives have operational shock ratings way above anything that a car suspension would ever allow through.

I've been running my car PC (see the project log in my sig) daily for over 18 months now, and the hard drive is still running as well as the day I installed it.

Good luck with the project. I'll keep watching with interest.

 

your description is very vague

but usb devices these days work absolutly fine (on the whole) having them plugged in at startup is not a problem

there are no issues with USB keyboards (how would they sell any if there were) and ive never had anyone complain of a problem with any USB device

 

May be you didn't read my post...
You say you never had anyone complain of a problem... but I DID!!!
And I didn't say there are problems with any USB devices on normal PCs, but mini-itx is a little different, as I said before. As I said, I have a friend with that kind of problem...

So please do me a favor and read the posts, then think, and if you still have something to say, then think again and post.
Anyway, they're always selling stuff that won't work as described. The user is only another beta-tester, otherwise there wouldn't be something like a servicepack for windows (it's not all about fixing security issues, but also about fixing driver issues). And hardware, of course, won't work if the software can't handle it. In the case of mini-itx boards you'll need to install some drivers in order to make everything work properly!

 

somtimes drivers do get corrupt, and somtimes they dont work properly, but the way you describe it it sounds like its crashing at the bios

is a very vague description of when the problem occurs

if it occurs at the bios, i would be very very suprised, and if it occurs at the OS, well it is windows (i assume)

Thats true lol

thats a load of b*llks tbh, mini-itx boards are identicle in the way they work as a normal ATX board, their just alot smaller, just like a E-ATX is the same as atx, and micro-ATX is also the same

all that changes is the size of the board, well ok the compoents are different, but its all very similar (before you become a pedant)

Finally, if you dont install the drivers for your motherboard, your a very foolish person, as often things dont work properly, or they dont work as well as they could

 

After all you can't deny the truth of experience...
Of course it's a very vague description, because it didn't hapen to me, but to a friend of mine. It was a driver issue, as a proper installation procedure of the proper drivers solved the issue.

mini-itx boards are based on standard x86 designs, yes. But every board is different in a way (thats true for normal PC based boards... or how else can you explain how a graphics card won't work on one board but will work on another board from another vendor -of course for the same type of processor...- that happend to me a few years ago and is the reason why I'll never buy any **** from ASUS again...).

mini-itx boards differ from normal PC boards not only in size, but also in chipsets and processors... while in most cases it is true that you can make a PC work properly WITHOUT installing motherboard software that isn't (according to the experience of my friend) not true with mini-itx boards.
and mini-itx boards are more than just small x86 boards. The prozessors are quiet different to normal CPU's, they are designed like notebook CPU's for low power consumption. Their chipset has many built in functions you'll never find in standard desktops such as hardware acceleration for video decoding (older ones only have MPEG1/2, newer ones also have DiVx...). Most of these features require a special bios of course. But Windows isn't made for this. So there are issues without the proper drivers installed.

You might say a forest has a set of many identical trees, but that's only true if you look at the whole picture... but fact is, every tree is different.
think of the Computer industry as a very big forest...

 

No blue tooth installed.

The thing is it worked for a while. I booted up serval times.
So its not a driver issue, or software related.

Its defo a power issue, or faulty montior.

Thanks for the intrest, and your help.