Steve Goodman’s Blog

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted on here - life really has taken over and the Car and the Car PC have had to take a back seat!

I’ve been a lot busier with work over the last year - working on a lot of big IT projects (including implementing a SAN, rolling out Exchange 2007 in place of legacy Unix email systems - you name it I’ve done it!). Also home life has been a lot busier too, as we’ve been trying for a baby along with having a lot of work done to the house. All this has meant no time in the day to post on the various forums, and when I have a moment to wind down at home it’s the Xbox 360 that takes up most of my time!

Also the Car PC has become a lot less relevant to me these days - as nowadays I usually take the train to work - which means I have a Dell latitude D630 laptop and 3G HSDPA broadband at 100 miles an hour into Birmingham City Centre catching up on the days work; for in car navigation I rely on my T-Mobile Vario II with Tom Tom! All very pedestrian really.

What’s next for my Car PC then? Well, I’m occasionally working on code for Terran/CCSNet (from www.letscommunicate.co.uk and www.digital-car.co.uk) and I’m still of course interested in the Car PC scene. However my Car PC was over two and half years ago - and started over four and a half years ago - and I’m really only interested in doing something original and cutting edge. Every car these days seems to play MP3s, tell you about the engine, pull traffic from the internet, have voice control, and do sat nav so whatever I do needs to be a lot, lot better and do a lot lot more!

I’m still interested to here from people, so feel free to email me. Don’t be offended if it takes me a little while to answer though!

Steve

My wonderful brother Peter passed his test a month ago - a good year after he’d finished buying all the bits for his Car PC. Now he has got a car at last, he has got his Car PC installed and working!

If you’re looking a for an easy install what he’s done might be of interest to you. A while back I was sent a Karputer KCU (which I have used myself when testing my setup) which is a unit that combines power control, power supply and an amplifier into one unit that is certified for plugging into your Car’s ISO connector.

Unfortunately it wasn’t the perfect solution for me as I was looking for a higher level of integration but I knew it would be perfect for him, and he’s had it since then along with the other parts of the Car PC he bought over a year ago!

I’m pleased to say with the help of the KCU he managed to get the unit installed by himself and (after I told him where to find ther right information) got RoadRunner and Freedrive setup and he popped round this evening to show me. Here’s the photos…

Pete’s Car - Vauxhall Corsa

There it is! Next to my wonderful focus on my drive. It’s not the flashiest car but he’s just 18 and insurance is very very expensive. It’s certainly a *lot* better than my first car!

The Install

It’s a fairly basic install but it’s fully functional. As you can see the screen is mounted where the radio normally would be and it’s removable for security reasons.

The system unit is stored under the seat, and uses a standard Mini-ITX Case:

And the Karputer KCU is fitted into the dashboard. The reset/on switch (It is controlled by ignition, but the button is there in case you want to override it - like a normal stereo) and volume control is mounted under the screen, as you can see with the blue LED attached to it…

And the KCU unit itself is stored under the glovebox:

So well done to my brother pete! I hope you have a lot of fun with it! Next up we’ll have to link them by GPRS so we can see where each other is on the map You think I’m kidding?

Last year around April, I completely finished my Car PC. Well - finished in as far as it actually did the things I wanted it to do, and worked reliably.

A few things happened though after getting married in June 2005 that made me lose interest in the Car PC and it"s "scene" - my wife went back to college, which means I now have to catch the train while she has the car, and I got a lot busier at work too, meaning I was far too tired in the evenings to be interested in computers! Then after months of the car PC just "working", the GPS device broke, and I didn"t want to buy another.

So in October I ripped out the Car PC - it took 15 minutes to remove the motherboard, and screen, and replace it with the original stereo - leaving the rest of the Car PC in, but inactive waiting for when I got my interest back.

Over Christmas the Car PC hardware has been hard at work, encoding DVDs, playing music etc sitting undert the telly as the home media centre. It"s just not right!

Well - it"s about time the day came that the car PC went back where it belongs, and the Car PC is being re-setup. Nothing is changing with the hardware (apart from moving to 2.5" HDDs that I"ve aquired since) but the software will be changing.

This time round, now the hardware is done, all the software will be custom written. Why, when there are so many car PC front ends around? Well, the longer the system was in, the less I felt It was "mine". The hardware itself (motherboard, hdd, psu, amp, screen) is built by manufacturers, the screen housing was built by Car Tech, the software was written by someone else too. The main parts that I had actually done myself were the woodwork and wiring, and "in the middle" software for my custom buttons, sensors etc.

I"m hoping to have the system back in before the next Car PC meet

After March, I moved my blog over to Dashboard Monkey. Unfortunately this proved to be a bad idea, as the pages have went missing somehow.

So - my blog from March until the end of 2005 is now missing, but wasn"t a massive loss, as since the Car PC was installed, I hadn"t done much to it.

The main event in Car PCs was the Car PC show in April which you might want to take a look at. I got married in June and after about September I lost interest temporarily as things were getting quite hectic at work!

Hopefully 2006 will be a better year for the Car PC!

Well after a lot of preperation, I finally installed the new version.. And it worked first time! It"s been in a day now and survived all tests

It"s all gonna be done and dusted before Wednesday, as on Friday it"s the second UK car PC meet and It"s got to be ready to show off, so including software everything need to be working!

I"m working on updating the build section and of course the install section to have more info so you"ll see the completed pictures there over the next few days.

Well, I"ve finally got EVERYTHING I need to do the proper, final install. I raided B&Q and now have enough wood to make anything for the boot install and starting to feel old… I now have a workbench, bunch of power tools, hammer etc… It"s going to mean the missus wants some DIY done!
Karputer.co.uk sent me one of their "KCU" units, and this has made the testing phase easy (full review to come soon) but the final install will still be based around the Opus/Sony amplifier as I"ve decided not to use any of the original car audio system wiring. It does mean I do have the basic setup installed and working…

I"ve also been designing the wiring for the new setup, and started running the cabling. So at the moment I"m driving around with plastic panels removed, cabling on display everywhere, and the unfinished system uncovered (motherboard exposed!) in the boot. This did cause a little problem last night when we went shopping, and on arriving back at the car with the trolley I opened the boot to put the bag in.. and rememered that it would have to go on the back seats. Luckily my fioncee was quite understanding… I have no idea how she puts up with me!

As I said I have everything I need now.. and not just bits of wood. I"ve got a ton of cabling to do the final install, and (heres the big one) upgraded the basic Car PC hardware. I"ve swapped the motherboard for a Via Epia MII 12000 - which makes a MASSIVE difference, and used a faily new 120GB HDD that I had bought for my home file server a month or so ago as the main HDD. This web site itself is now running from the old hardware in the old case, running quietly from a shelf in my study … so if you see on the site the install in the silver serenti case… You are actually using that system RIGHT NOW. (You may need to be a total geek to find that at all cool, so if you have no idea what I mean… Don"t worry about it)

In other news… I popped down to W.H.Smith"s today, and picked up the latest copy of GigaHz magazine.. And was pleased to see I"m finally in it - Page 57 of Issue 4, so if you"ve came here after reading that… Welcome, hope you enjoy the site.

Next update will probably be in the nexxt day or two, as a temporary update to the build section so you can see in detail how well it"s going, and I"ll be publishing some of the "upcoming" articles a few people have told me they are waiting for. From then on it will be another week or two until I get the install completed and do a full write-up, as I have had a lot of requests for more pictures, more step-by-step detail and the build seperated into different sections, for all the different bits and bobs that make up the install.

The new install (see build v4 section) is coming along nicely - in the workshop. It"s paramount that whatever goes in the car has to be as quick and reliable as a basic head unit and offer a lot more features in addition to looking and sounding better. (Yes that"s right it needs the girlfriend seal of approval !) To ensure this I"ve got a lot of testing to do. As is true with most IT systems whatever the size, users (the missus) will lose confidence in it quickly if the production system is not working for one reason or another. So testing it and getting every part working the way I want it is the only answer… Although what I really want to do plonk it however in the boot of the car just to have a working system again.

Although the weekend is here again I"m not able to do as much as I"d like - I wanted to get the boot install underway - as it"s raining and I"ve got the flu . Not worries though as I"ve got somewhere (with the lilliput auto-on modification etc) and in addition to testing the software there is lots of other stuff to do, like measuring the cable runs to make the Car PC "wiring loom" - Once built I will be able to test the actual setup inside using the actual wiring before actually installing it in the Car.

Well my image hosting is back and I"ve re-organised my image hosting a bit. Thanks to the wonders of PHP I can point it to multiple locations, so should anything go wrong again it will be trivial. Hosting is such a pain in the ass when you have to rely on other people!

Ooops! It looks like the new idea of having links to ultra high resolution images of the Car PC components wasn"t such a good one - I"ve apparently went over my daily quota of 250MB and it was only 11AM. And there I was thinking I was being a good boy by hosting the images elsewhere so as not to cane my ADSL bandwidth that this site runs off!

Anyway I"ve copied up my last "images" folder to somewhere else for the time being but there is a few images which I uploaded straight to Plus net without copying into the local copy of the images site first so the latest updates are missing - I apologise all should be well soon!

Once again look in the build section to have a look at the finished in-dash screen! I went for a quick drive upto Stockport and got the screen. And I"m pleased to say I"m really happy with the result. It"s really going to look great in the dash. I"d defaintely recommend Chris if you need anything done as it"s a really professional finish.

As you"ll see in the build section I spent some time today test fitting everything and it all fits fine however it"s going to be a few weeks until it"s finally installed as there"s a few other bits and pieces to do on the rest of the install first.