gs-ireland

I had originally planned to get my hands on a stock or aftermarket navigation unit for my car and I realised very quickly that it was going to be expensive when you inclusde the initial purchase price that has the functions that I want so I decided to install a computer into the dash as it was cheaper and I had a lot of spare PC/laptop parts in the house.The only items I needed were a 7inch touchscreen, 12V PSU and a case. I got a huge amount of information over at www.mp3car.com

Here are few photos of my installation .











It runs a Mini-ITX AMD 1.5GHz processor, 1G Ram, 120Gb HD,

It holds
1000's of mp3's -
HOURS of video
Full navigation maps of Europe
Wi-Fi connection for internet
Bluetooth connectivity fr the mobile phone
It accepts voice commands
The list is endless of what can be connected, as long as its USB...........

Lubs

Neato.

I'm semi-familiar with car PCs from some reading I did in the past. I'm curious, what OS are you running? And what screen did you choose?

gs-ireland

It uses XP-Pro.
The front end software is from Centrafuse (www.fluxmedia.net)
The screen is a heavily modified Lilliput 629GL

Lubs

I was tempted to think it was a Linux distro, but quickly realized it isn't because you can plug just about any USB device in and it WORKS. I figured it was XP Pro or MCE after that. The front end looks very functional. I just checked out their site; Centrafuse addresses a lot of the issues I foresaw in a carpc.

That's a nice screen. If I could recommend an upgrade, a PC slot drive DVD could be handy. I'm not sure how that sits with your power usage though. Do you keep a keyboard around in case you want to check your email, or post on CL? Is it an integrated video/sound card and does it do the job on DivX, etc? And I take it you stereo to RCA and plug into an amp for the car speakers.

Sorry for all the questions... but every one of these systems is unique.

UberNoob

bravo, job well done fitting the carpc into glove compartment

gs-ireland

Thats what forums are for, answering questions...


For DVD/CD, I have a laptop DVD drive in a USB housing adaptor (ebay special). This fits in perfectly in the smaller cubby in the glove-box.

I use an external USB sound card. - Soundblaster 24-bit Live (It was going cheap!).

I have a mini-USB keyboard.

tmf2004

iTrader: (15)

The end result turned out great.. Nice job..