I had the idea earlier today of putting a Small form factor pc into my car and having it run off the engine. and somehow hooking it up to my satnav http://www.pioneer.co.uk/uk/products/25/111/241/AVIC-X3-II/index.html. Using wireless from the car could i set it up so it synconised my media files from my home pc when i wanted it to when i was in range, I.e parked on my drive?
If all you are going to be using it for is music, you could consider a Microsoft Zune which has a wireless sync function. You can get car adaptors for them and it would be a lot simpler than a car PC and also use less power.
The only problem with the Zune is that it isn't quite as awesome as having a PC in your car just had a look at your sat-nav - it looks awesome!
Sweet Cheers, how much of a drain is a pc in a car on performance? it's 307bhp so hopefully it won't make much difference
Shouldn't affect performance at all as it will get 12voltz0rs from the battery. I know a few people with car PCs, they run at extra battery as it can be quite a drain on a single battery, especially an OEM cheapo one.
Same way as the first I think, some sort of splitter. I don't know the ins and outs of it though. But in parallel obviously, if you did them in a series you would have 24 volts.
a single decent battery will be fine as long as you don't want to run the computer for long periods with the car off. while running the alternator will have more than enough juice. google the M2-ATX power supply, its designed for car applications (car turn-over, voltage rise/drop)
You only really need a extra battery when you have huge audio installs A computer pc will have minimal drain.
You only really need an extra battery if you want to run a PC with the engine off. With the engine one, the alternator should be able to supply sufficient current to run a small-ish PC. The accessory 12V lines in my car are rated at something like 120W without the need for an extra battery. The M1/M2/M3-ATX is built to handle all of the various over- and under-voltage conditions found in a car, and turns itself off when the battery power gets too low.
