StevieG's Car PC Blog

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.

Check out the build section and have a look at the new pictures I"ve got from Chris at demon car tech… It"s well on it"s way to looking superb !

Head over to dashboardmonkey.com – for you "daily dose of Car PC news". It"s great to see more deidicated Car PC sites pop up – as it"s showing that Car PCs are finally catching on. I spoke with Dave from dashboardmonkey earlier this week and you can read the interview at their site.

We"re trying to get everything together over at www.digital-car.co.uk as we organise the second national Car PC event. We know we"ve got a lot more people who"ve installed them this time around but this time we"re getting better organised – the first time round we didn"t know if anyone would turn up – luckily around 40 did! So we"re estimating that now we"ve more than doubled the members of Digital Car we should be set for 60 upwards. our target however is around 80 Car PCs and a good few more people who are interested in them and want a look so it looks like I"ve got a time consuming few months ahead.

We"re just now organising prizes for competitions at the show, trying to get some press coverage guaranteed and getting the venue finalised before going out to promote it to Car PC"ers again and this timer anyone else who"s into modding cars, computers but might be interested.

Well it"s been a while since the last update – so this one had to be a big one. It"s a new year and one of my resolutions is too make this site even better, so expect to see a lot more content and articles/how-to"s on Car PCs.

The new version of StevieG.org has went live. It might be slow for the next 12-14 hours as the pictures need to be uploaded to the fast hosting so please bear with me while that happens.

Apart from that, welcome to the new site. The next version of the install is in progress and you can check that out over in the carpc install section above.

Best wishes,

Steve

Right – it"s been a while since I updated this… and a lot"s happened!!!

1. Holiday

Beginning of August, and I was off to Majorca for two weeks in the sun!! Well I"m back now. Looking forward to Jamiaca next year…

2) Custom PC Magazine

After a couple of emails back and forth between Custom PC magazine, in London back in June/July time they invited me down to their offices to demonstrate the Car PC for an article they were planning. Nice drive down to London and it was nice to meet Alex and Josh, and their photographer and chatted for a while in a cafe in Central london and even got my breakfast bought for me Though I did manage to get myself a fine for forgetting to pay the congesion charge.. Darn it, will have to write some software to automatically pay it when I drive though London next time (or just remember )

Anyway, here"s what you need to look for in the shops…

NOTE: Just read it and it said that I said the Cigarette lighter socket is the best place to ground on the Car, and not to ground against the Chassis – I don"t rememebr saying that, because it"s not true! Just to correct any erratta there….

3) New Arrivals to the Family

Lisa my Fioncee was off ill after we got back from Holiday, so to cheer her up I got her a little present (or two). We"d planned to get a cat after we moved into our new house, and seeing as I"ve lived here since last December I thought it was about time… And to make sure the kittens are never lonely… There"s two!

4) Been busy with work

Uuugh.. No pictures of this luckily. I"m in the middle of a £4 million network upgrade at work, and for me, one of the senior systems administrators, it means a LOT of work migrating servers – and to top that off there"s a million and one other projects that I"m involved up to my neck in. Which is why I was glad to get away…

5) Organised and went to the First national UK Car PC meet

James Warner (of Digital-car.co.uk) and I started organising this at the Beginning of June, and the meet finally happened on the 25/26th September!

Original threads regarding it are here at MP3Car and here at Digital Car and the next one"s planned at the moment around Jan 2005.

More pictures are on my photo website, but here"s a couple for you to see here..

It was a great day all round, and everyone enjoyed themselves.

5) Coded

And in any spare time, mainly coded on various OBD/ECU stuff I"m getting working. I"m getting intially the various trip counter fucntions, such as range, instant / average MPG working then moving onto the gauges. I"ve also seen a suggestion for a winamp plugin that uses ECU data to change the vis around depending on how you drive, so I"ll be doing that afterwards – all this in the aim once it"s working well with MediaCar, to integrate into my own application which is still in slow development while I get experience with the various functions I require.

and finally…

6) Finally got the go ahead to do the next version of the install..

The next version of the install is two fold – stealth car PC and integrated screen. The first was already planned but put on hold, else Custom PC magazine wouldn"t have had anything to see. The latter however required me to persuade the missus (my car but it"s not worth pissing her off!) that cutting up the new car"s dashboard was a good idea. She saw James and CdrSkulls dash work at the Car PC meet and has agreed to let me do mine.. Focus owners, stay tuned