My super-duper car computer

[marshallh]

With the new car I got a while ago, it had a crappy Jensen stereo and I was fudging around with a $8 mp3 player, which just wasn't gonna cut it anymore. I needed something to store all my music, and let me get to it quickly. iPods and the like were out of the question - too expensive.

The solution was to spend as little as possible and still have a decent result.


There's a USB hub under there, and a power switch.

1024x768 VGA LCD non-touchscreen (only $30 off ebay, same as triton's)
800MHz EPIA C3 mini-itx board
384MB ram
20gb HDD
80W Morex car PSU

The frontend you see is something I wrote myself. After looking at roadrunner, I figured it would probably take less time to code my own instead of dorking around with the config files for the former.
- it has to boot fast
- show all my music and let me get through it quickly
- be configurable for whatever crazy input scheemes I come up with
- stop world hunger
- cure cancer



The end result is a compact VB app that takes music info from Windows Media Player, so your library is there the first time you start the program, no config needed.
Likewise, every single aspect of the UI, from the buttons down to the colors, is entirely not customizable.



Runs Windows XP fine - boots in about 35 seconds with the minlogon hack. No need to shutdown - just turn the key off.

I bought a small wireless USB media remote - it's hardcoded for CyberDVD. I had to trap all keypresses to my program and remap them. What a mess.



The screen frame itself I built using a dremel and model glue. I cut up an old floppy case, and spent quality time with a file. Bondoed, spot puttyed, sanded, sprayed with adhesion promoter and finally textured Rustoleum rattle paint. My first venture with body filler, and I liked it.

The frame is mounted via piano hinge on some sheet metal that reaches up, and back where it's screwed into the old stereo mounting bracket.

Sound? Good enough for me. There's a 52Wx4 Sony stereo in there, works fine with my Kenwood speakers. I'm not looking to wake the dead, though it does have a nice kick. There's a bit of noise from the mobo, but inaudible at anything above silence.



Shutting down..


My friend and I had some fun playing NES and SNES games using usb gamepads. I can get online almost anywhere by using my cell phone as a high-speed modem. Awesome!

All in all, $120 for everything.

[Shadeslayer]

Dude thats awesome! Very nice work.

[bicostp]

Nice and clean! Are you going to release the frontend you wrote?

Maybe you could add game launching functionality. All it really has to do is read where the emulator (for example, ZSNES) is and what directory to load the ROMs from out of a config file. Then it could dump the file names onto the screen like music (replace the artist list with console, and tracks with files) and launch it through the command line. Simple in theory, but I don't remember much about VB.

Any plans on making it detachable so you can hide it in the glove box or take it with you? That's almost PCp-size...

Have you tried disabling unnecessary services like Themes and System Restore to make it boot faster? There's a good guide <a href="http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm">here</a>.

If you get your program to launch other programs, you might even be able to skip Windows Explorer entirely...

Good job! I wish I could do something like this. (The only car project I'll do soon is fixing the interior and replacing the headlight bulbs. The people I bought it from replaced the head unit themselves and obviously had lots of parts left over, and my 5+ year old Halogens are getting pretty dim...)

Mid-late 90s Accord?

[theelk]

That's freaking awesome. My brother would totally want to do something like that for his car.

[khaag]

You've inspired me Marshall! What model car did you put it in? Where did you stash the motherboard, and what size screen is that?

[nightwheel]

LOL, simple and effective.

But man, Thats frickin sweet. How many hours did it take you to make that?

[SZF2001]

I'm diggin' the anti-theft device myself. So simple and effective, why didn't I think of this?

[Dr. KillGood]

I love the hide stuff under the bag anti-theft trick! I do it all the time!

[Electric Rain]

Nice work. It's pretty friggin' hardcore that you wrote your own app for it, but I've come to expect nothing less from you. By the way, I am currently using the EXACT same trackball you have sitting there in the passengers seat. Don't you LOVE trackballs? I have actually have 3 of them. ...Wow... someone's going to 'sig that and slash out "track"...

Also, SNES9X? I'm disappointed in you, Marshal. ZSNES is so much better.

I'm working on a PCp that will use... hmm... I don't wanna tell anyone else yet. Check your PMs.

[Kyo]

nice device. See what I did there? I made a comeback for your rhyme.

But seriously, that's very sweet, loving it. I'd totally want a car computer if I had a car.

Well some of the german busses (in hamburg anyway) have TFT screens showing the station and stuff. I once saw one with a windows XP error

[vb_master]

Are you using XP Embedded?

[Black Six]

Mid-late 90s Accord?

No, more like 90-92. Five speed for the win!

Very nice job. It looks well done and if it fits your needs, then that's what matters. How do you add new songs and such, plug in a thumb drive I'm guessing?

[marshallh]

Yea, it's a 1992 Accord LX. I find stick to be much more fun to drive. The cables from the stereo, USB hub, screen, and power go under the console to the passenger's seat which the computer is under.

To add songs I just plug in a flash drive and start up WMP, which updates the library. I'm running regular XP, but the logon manager is copied from Embedded, and it speeds things up. I'll probably be adding onto the frontend some more over time.

[dudex77]

That is really cool! Man I can't wait until I can drive. I'm going to get a van and soup up that crap to the nth degree.

[Electric Rain]

Hmm... flash drive? Seems low-tech for you. ^-^ Why not have a built-in Wi-Fi adapter so you can network it to your laptop (if you have one) or your home computer(s) when the car's parked in your garage (if you have one... )? You could also take advantage of Wi-Fi hotspots, of course. Hmm... looks like I'm trying to turn it into a full-fledged computer... almost kinda defeats the purpose. By the way, I don't see IE; any chance you're running XPlite? I'm using 98SElite on my old PII, and I love it. It's so much faster. ^-^ I plan to use XPlite on my PPC I told you about, too.