StevieG's Car PC Blog

I"ve had a busy week and haven"t had much time to put the Car PC back together again. The first thing I"ve done is, as you can see below – drilled a number of holes in the current case to aid cooling, moved the HDD, fitted a fan and removed the padding inside so now the computer has much more room to "breathe". The internals now look like this:

The search for a better case continues, however and I"ve been looking on the web at this, from Casetronic.

Now, I can"t find anywhere that just sells the case. So that"s on hold for the moment – and it probably won"t take the Opus power supply, which I need eventually – as it has features to allow the PC to stay on when the car is cranking, and shut down automatically after a certain amount of time, and make sure the car battery doesn"t go too low. See Vauxhall Vectra Car PC  website for more info, as he"s organising a group buy.

SO. I can"t keep the case I"ve got – because it"s not really the right material, and doesn"t look "sexy" enough, and isn"t grounded. I can"t get one of these casetronic cases, because they don"t seem to sell them on their own, and anyway – they probably won"t fit an Opus auto PSU. SO…. I still need to make my own. Well – I was out for a ciggie at work a few weeks back and saw in the skip one of those external drive cases, for SCSI drives and the like. Why I didn"t pick it upn then I don"t know – it was perfect. So I"m on the look out for another – and hopefully it will be like I remember – the right size, the right shape and built for computer equipment. We"ll see!!!

I"ve also been thinking of what I want from the system a little more. There are two choices – "KITT" style knight rider, or Bond car style. The bond car computer features are a little more modern, and also more realistic so that"s the direction I"ll be going in from now. Expect to see a missle launcher in my grille!!! No, seriously though I am thinking of putting a webcam behind there!!!

Over the last couple of days I"ve been working on two things.

The first thing is the case cooling. It"s just two hot in there and it"s not grounded, and the Car PC will get damaged sooner or later. A better case is the real answer, but until then I"m going to just have to make do with what I"ve got, as I"ve literally spent all my spare money this month! There are three aims – remove anything that might stop cooling, add some holes and add some grounding.

Removing crap out of the case was easy enough. I"ve had to enscrew everything and remove it, then rip out the soft padding from the inside. The case internals now look like this:

Not very nice – but they"ll soon be covered up again. I"ve also started drilling some holes in the side of the case. I thought that the VIA logo was best suited, as it looks pretty cool, yet a thief is unlikely to knowswhat it is… If it said MR2 they may think it is to do with the Car. That is NOT GOOD.

I"ve still got more holes to drill, but by the time I got this far I was tired and went to bed.

The other thing I"ve been working on is for the interface. I"ve seen the over at the Vauxhall Vectra Car PC website and wanted to do something similar. It"s not original – All the "bits" are from elsewhere except the ghosted photo of my car, but I"ve arranged the whole thing and made it work…

It works now, but there is more I want to do with it – such as make all the graphics myself so it doesn"t break any copyright and I can release the skin. Come back soon to see how I"m doing with this!

I"ve also programmed in extension modules in my CMS application for a guestbook and a thing that lets you sign up for updates by email when this site changes. Be sure to check them out!

Yesterday I put the road angel in. It was a pretty straightforward process – The clock removes easily (After reading how to do it in an MR2 forum) so It was a case of finding out which was the ACC power for the original clock"s display light, to make sure that it only switches on when the car is on, and then mounting it inside the dash. Easy enough – I fixed it with some Velco from B&Q (holds up to 7KG per 50mm – Yeah right)… Here"s a few pictures anyway. Keep reading though, for what happened after!

The clock"s out and, the wire below the clock hole is the power for the clock. In a few minutes though, it becomes the power for the Road Angel…

Wired in, you can see the power lead, and the serial lead coming out the back. The serial lead is wired under the dash to behind the passenger"s seat.

Installed, you wouldn"t know it wasn"t the original clock. Until you switch the car on, and it becomes my GPS receiver and Road Angel black spot / safety camera locator

HOWEVER: All did not go well – Soon after installing it I drove round to a mates house, and when i cas almost there my leg felt rather hot. I touched by where the serial cable went, and almost got burned! I pulled over immediately and ripped out the serial cable. Strange goings on – Why the serial cable was hot, I don"t know!

Then, this morning, I got home and the Velco (Holds 7KG, apparently!) had come unstuck. Well the velco was stuck together, it was just the stick side that held one bit of velco to the inside of the dash had come off. So, I took it apart to put it back together. I checked all the wiring and had a bit of a shock…

If you look carefully, you can see the coiled cable has MELTED through, and bare cables were exposed. REALLY NOT GOOD!!! So the road angel is out, and I"m back to square one. Well, except that my power cable needs a cigar lighter end putting back on!

The replacement screenhas arrived, and works well So tommorow I will hopefully put the GPS in. One thing about the GMX screen from merconnet – It get"s very hot and maybe this had something to do with the screen breaking, as when it first went wrong is was really hot to even touch! The plan for tommorow is to remove the clock housing, and put the LCD screen from the Road angel in it"s place. Then wire it into the system to provide GPS functionality.

I"ve bought the bit that will allow me to connect the Raod Angel GPS to the Car PC. The Mini-ITX board has only one serial port, and that"s being used by the IRMan for the infra red. I"ve bought a USB-serial adpater which give me the COM3 I need. Though I have to wait for a new monitor to arrive….

Anyway, here"s a picture of it. It cost £19.99 from Maplins – I"m going there so often they"ll know me first name soon!

Just in case you haven"t noticed, I"ve also moved the site onto my Content Management System I wrote this myself, and it"s totally amazing. I wasn"t going to bother using it to start with, but now the website has more content it"s hard to manage in an HTML editor. Notice how the site now has a "view printable" button at the bottom etc!

Well, I haven"t drilled the hole yet for ventilation. I had the box running all day on my desk at work and it didn"t overheat, but I will be doing the holes. Secondly, there wasn"t a setting to auto power on the motherboard. I set the power settings though so that"s sorted. I"ve also installed the GPS software, and used a piece of software called "Auto Recorder" to launch the GPS and configure it correctly so it will show where I am on the map automatically.

HOWEVER…. I can"t use it, as when i was driving home last night something went wrong with the screen! There are white lines running all over it horizontally, so I"ve filled in a RMA and will have to send it back for a replacement! Damn it!

Anyway, this will give me time to concentrate on perfecting any rough edges on the system, such as the case and it"s grounding points. I"ll keep you posted!

I got the ground loop isolator first thing this morning from maplins and what can I say – it works!!! Drove down the motoryway with The Fast and the Furious playing. Obviously I couldn"t watch it, but Lisa could. Yipee!

I"ve got 3 things to do tonight:

1) Drill hole and fit a fan in the case for ventilation

2) See if there"s a BIOS setting to switch on when the motherboard gets power, so I can just switch it on without any remote switches, just the master power switch for the motherboard/screen.

3) Set the power management settings – the screen switches off after 20 minutes (I"d never had it on that long in the car before without a mouse/keyboard) and you can"t reactivate it as the IR remote doesn"t wake it up