Carputer Project

[dean.ryan]

Where did you get that screen from? Im keen to do the same with a laptop.

[viperguy]

update? no dramas, just chugs along really....as good as you can expect for freeware in a fringe computer field

99% of usage is playing music...with GPS features thrown in which was handy for new years travelling....gave up on voice recognition...car is too loud and voice recognition is buggy at the best of times....I replaced the speech recognition button with intercooler water spray activation

shutdown controller got sorted in the end....

i got the screen from MP3car.com, they have an e-store ~$450 kiwi dollars I think? maybe less

If i was going to do the project again, i would use an intel i-something uATX mobo and use a dedicated carpc power supply....much better power control handling...and based on what I've experienced a faster cpu would be of benefit in general usability rather than the nettop im currently using with a 1.6GHz atom cpu, and an SSD would have massive speed (since the system is constantly being hibernated and resumed) and shockproof advantages...and not too expensive nowadays...and all your music could happily live on a 64GB usb stick for the same reasons

But to be fair it takes a pretty decent pothole to make the track skip from the PC...about the same needed to make a CD skip but i think my buffering settings need looking at

[Swindog]

Fuckin over my head

[viperguy]

yeah its all a little unnecessary but a fun little side project nonetheless, another usefull feature is the fact that you can run an appletv emulator, so anyone with an ipod can stream music over the cars wifi network to the audio system because the ipod thinks it can airplay

[ODB]

are you using this as a security system in any way?

Chuck on one of those usb plugin modems and you are go for GPS.

This has almost unlimited possiblities!

[viperguy]

nah not for security...too much of a drain on the battery to have it running all the time...will kill the battery dead after sitting for a few hours....although when you put it like that its great for security

[subieboy]

 Swindog said:

f***in over my head

+1

[94 Leone]

I was thinking of epicly lasy version of this.

get desktop computer, get power inverter, get aux cable, get lcd tv to mount wherever. wireless keyboard and mouse. plug in to car all of the above= done, bogan carputer

[viperguy]

thoughts for future are active RFID tage on keychain, so proximity to car will unlock the doors and unset the alarm...and vice versa when leaving the car....active rfid is expensive though and the tags arent that small

[suubyduuby]

 viperguy said:

thoughts for future are active RFID tage on keychain, so proximity to car will unlock the doors and unset the alarm...and vice versa when leaving the car....active rfid is expensive though and the tags arent that small

Few years back I built a home-built RFID car alarm using passive tags.

Had the reader positioned underneath the front window in the corner - worked a treat. Was fun breaking into the car to test it. ;D

[viperguy]

Update:

Replaced hard drive with an SSD, cuts boot and hibernation times by 23% as well as being shock proof and making general usability a lot snappier

$120 for 60GB which just holds my OS, music, and various support files for the software I run (map data for the gps etc) with a few gig to spare (the drive it replaced was a 320GB)

The SSD is kind of wasted on such a low spec machine but due to it being hibernated and resumed so much, a drive that can do this hard-drive intensive operation as quickly as possible is desireable. The benchmarking I did was just timing restarts, there may be further speed gains to be had by actually reinstalling the OS and reinstall all software onto the fresh build rather than just writing the backup of the old drive straight onto the SSD, but i really couldnt be bothered.

My little benchmarking table is below for anyone interested

[table]

[tr]

[td]Pre SSD (Time in seconds)

Restart 1 Restart 2 Restart 3 Restart 4 Restart 5 Average

87 79 76 77 82 80.2

Post SSD (Time in seconds)

Restart 1 Restart 2 Restart 3 Restart 4 Restart 5 Average

63 62 61 60 62 61.6

% Difference

Restart 1 Restart 2 Restart 3 Restart 4 Restart 5 Average

27.59 21.52 19.74 22.08 24.39 23.19

[/td]

[/tr]

[/table]

[Timmah]

Just read the thread and watched the videos. Am really impressed! Got me tempted to do something similar. But wouldn't know where to start.

How did you get the carputer to be able to activate the intercooler water sprayer? And to be able to control the wing mirrors?? That's awesome stuff right there!

[D-Style]

Ever throught about using a small PLC or Micro controller instead?

[viperguy]

 Timmah said:

Just read the thread and watched the videos. Am really impressed! Got me tempted to do something similar. But wouldn't know where to start.

How did you get the carputer to be able to activate the intercooler water sprayer? And to be able to control the wing mirrors?? That's awesome stuff right there!

The carputer just has a usb connected input/output unit, which can directly drive the relay which powers the sprayer pump, so theres nothing automatic about the watersprayer at the momment (although there could be if i wanted to) its just a button on the screen to give it a momentary squirt or a continuous feed.

The wing mirror control works the other way, I use a wing mirror control as a joystick for the carputer (track skipping primarily, as its easier to feel for the knob, than take ur eyes off the road to touch the screen)

PLC? Not all that capable as far as I'm aware, my windows based pc runs wifi-scanning software, gps, video and music playback, anything you can imagine really including native support for streaming any passengers iphone/ipod music library wirelessly to the audio system

[viperguy]

Real world experience with the SSD was found to be lacking, really not a dramatic difference with such a slow system so the SSD will be re-purposed into my new silent home theatre pc build which will have the hardware to actually make use of the SSD speed.

[suubyduuby]

Been following this topic for a while as very interesting...also work in the field of elec engineering, so naturally interested!

Any ideas on what kind of application you are going to use this for?

- Alarm

- OBDII logger

- Software 'dash'

Often toyed around with the idea of creating some nice 'digital' gauges running in a single/double DIN mounted LCD display, feeding from data from the OBDII port. However with work and many other things, always ended up getting shelved.

[viperguy]

alarm = no go due to drain on battery, better dedicated options out there already

obdII logger = old subies (pre 98 i think) have pretty poor OBD support, I think my MY97 wrx gives me most parameters (injector on time, battery, throttle position etc) quite slow update speed though, somewhere around 2Hz per parameter maybe less? Open to correction on that though. Modern cars have great support though and plenty of interface options (bluetooth etc)

software dash generally comes with the OBDII side of things, again ready to roll options out there already...http://evoscan.limitless.co.nz/ is a great resource

My system is really just targeted towards music playback and gps, also could be handy as a trackday tool...webcams plastered around the car with gps/obdII logging etc etc

[viperguy]

finallly getting around to doing something new with this project...power control was always a little buggy because I was using the built-in features of the carputer front-end to do some of the power control...which is a little "special" and turned out to be not so reliable with setting a particular flag before it went into hibernation, so a little too much maintenance anyways.

So here comes Mr Arduino to save the day, and provide me with a dedicated microprocessor for power control, along with nifty features like blinking power LED\'s when the pc is warming up and shutting down etc. (if I choose to program them in) which should provide for much improved reliability with start-up and shutdown. As well as any number of custom features that wont rely on a power hungry PC being on to implement.

Info here for anyone wanting a heads-up http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/arduinoBoardUno

[DRFVDR]

http://www.erisin.com/Supply-2-din-car-dvd-player_c4

[viperguy]

those things have certainly come along in the last few years, a little hardcoded with respect to media playback though, probably pretty good, but with a PC just install a new codec and away you go...

Plus with the PC touch screen you can interface with hardware control devices, relays/lighting/temperature sensors to do nifty things

[crispy]

nice set up bro, I,ve been playing with carputers for the last year or 2 and love it.

how did you get mobile pc working? i was looking for nz maps for months.

Also what media center software is that, looks mint.

Edit- just watched your second vid and saw your using cetrafuse now, what was the first software called and why did you change?

[viperguy]

gone away from centrafuse, prefer the open source stuff so I run Riderunner with the DFX skin...the garmin side of things is a bit shifty*, can PM you a link to my ftp server if you wanna grab it

but theres open source alternatives out there which use the open map project...just not as polished on the interface side of things

probably time for an updated video, cant even remember what I was showing off back then

*actually probably not shifty as I dont think they even sell or support it any more

[crispy]

Yeah i herd of that riderunner, couldn\'t find it tho.

Is the open source turn buy turn?

no they don\'t sell the mobile pc anymore, bit sad really as it looked good to me.

[viperguy]

can get the latest riderunner here, need to register for an online store to download it but not too much of a hassle, its still free

http://www.mp3car.com/road-runner/

can find the DFX skin in the skin section

yeah the open source is turn by turn, its called Navigator Free and just uses the open map project, can get maps from here: http://nzopengps.org/

[crispy]

Thanks viperguy, just got the navigator free all set up and took it for a test, works awesome. I\'ve been looking for turn by turn for pc for so long so thanks heaps.

Riderunner works well to but navigator doesnt work that well when opened threw RR, its weird. Might just need to do a bit more work in the settings.

Thanks again