Lum

I've mentioned a couple of times here, about 6 months ago that I'm doing a Car PC install, I finally finished it last night.

I used an aluminium WRX chassis kit from http://mechatroniks.com/ that consists of a dismantled Lilliput touchscreen built into a double DIN (ish) chassis



Since it's going into the Legacy, I persuaded him to do a black anodised version which IMO looks far nicer than the silver, looks more OEM too.

I used a Via EPIA M10000 motherboard/cpu and a rather spiffy M1-ATX automotive PSU, this thing connects to the battery and the accessory circuit and presses the motherboard's on/off button for you when the accessory circuit goes live or turns off. In the case of turning off, it then gives the PC 45 seconds to shut down before completely killing the power.. the motherboard doesn't even get standby power. I have Windows configured to hibernate when the power button is pressed.

I didn't want to have a box under the seat like most Car PC installs, so I designed and had a local engineering firm build be a steel top cover with holes for my fans, PSU and HD, this can all sit on top of the motherboard, and is prevented from overheating by the 70mm radial fan, which generates a lot more pressure than a normal PC one. (The axial fan, not fitted in that shot but you can see the hole was originally intended for when I made the heatsink for that amplifier)



note: the amp shown in that picture turned out to be faulty, and rather than void the warranty on a second amp, I've left that external.

Assembled, the entire thing looked something like this. I've also hacked the BIOS and the Windows XP kernel to replace all startup screens with a huge Subaru logo



Installed the entire thing into the car, took it all out again, fitted a ground loop isolator to fix the incessent buzzing and installed it again, with an end result that looks like this



I have USB bluetooth and wireless dongles in there and will be using the PC to do handsfree when the plugin for my preferred frontend (Centrafuse) becomes available. I will be feeding it GPS data from my origin B2 as Centrafuse has destinator integrated into it, just have to wait for the NMEA cradle to arrive, and obviously it plays DVDs

It turns out that since the scrreen is designed to fit the hole in a WRX dash, it's slightly bigger than a double DIN so I can't use the third DIN in my car for anything, however a local car audio shop gave me a slightly smalled than double din, storage pocket that they get with Kia facia adaptors and never use. If I can stand the thought of having Korean plastics in my car leeching at it's resale value, I'll put it in.

There is still more to do though, Stage 2 will involve a second amplifier so I can use my car's rear speakers again, filling up that space in the bottom with a slot-loading laptop DVD+-R/RW, and bringing some ports around to the front (USB, Firewire, ethernet, PS/2 Parallel) I will also look into buying Ecutek's PC based engine diagnostics kit, so that I can create a custom instrument panel in there with a boost gague, oil temp/pressure gague etc. etc.

Hardware Specs:

Via EPIA M10000 w/ 1ghz Via C3 CPU
512mb DDR266 RAM
40gb 7200 RPM Hitachi TravelStar Laptop HD
Cheapo CSR based bluetooth dongle
Asus 802.11g Wireless LAN
Liliput 7" LCD touchscreen (800x480)

Software:

Heavily stripped down XP Pro SP2 (made with nLite)
Centrafuse 1.5 beta from fluxmedia.com
(includes Destinator satnav software, but no maps until I buy it properly)
PhoneControl 1.5.1 for Bluetooth handsfree
I'll probably put outlook on there at some point so that I can get my work email.

STI MAN

Mental! love it.

richiewong

That's mint can you get SN on it

frayz

iTrader: (7)

seriously impressive stuff mate.

lovin it

chiark

Superb job - excellent!

afroking

very very impressive

theres more cool installs on mp3car

D16GER

Any chance of posting some links on where to get all that stuff? Especially the software?

Cheers

chiark

centrafuse.com, or fluxmedia.net

miles25

Looks very impressive

Nice job

David_Wallis

Very Nice

Lum

Well, the Korean DIN pocket was too small, so I've ordered a Forester DIN pocket from my local Subaru stealer. Hopefully that will fit better.

ScoobyDoo555

Looks great - been following this since you first mentioned it. Nice to see it completed

The only thing that would worry me is the theft-side (sorry to put a downer on it!!!) - it would terrify me

Out of interest what sort of money was it (or haven't you dared to price it up!!! )

Nice one though

Dan

Lum

I reckon it cost somewhere between £700 and a grand.

There is still more to do though.
I need some way of receiving radio. Looking at either a USB FM device, or a DVB-T receiver (in-car FreeView, yay!)
I should probably also look into upgrading the audio at some point. The onboard VIA Audio is not the greatest thing in the world, so some kind of USB soundcard such as the M-Audio Sonica Theatre 7.1 (which allegedly has 4v line-outs too) should improve things there.
I'd also like to find a nice compact 4x25W RMS amplifier for driving the stock speakers, currently I'm only driving the fronts with a 2x20W RMS amp that is tiny!

Puppetmaster

Try this if you are too lazy

http://www.karputerdirect.co.uk/

chiark

Blimey there's some nice kit on there, if a tad expensive for the Icepac stuff!

I spend last night dusting down the kit I bought over two years ago to do this, and am actually getting on with it rather than farting around. Yes, it's in the coalwagon rather than a scoob, but it'll be fun all the same. Cheers for the inspiration

chiark

Blimey, this is a picture of exactly what I was planning in my WRX when I had it...



I then got a PSI3 unit, and the plans sort of changed/disappeared. Ho hum.

cw42

iTrader: (1)

Excellent looking install there lumm, love the screen, but I'd also be worried about the nicking element Here's my old install in my classic which has now all been removed, awaiting fitment in my new 03 sti . The screen is the biggest worry at the mo', I've been looking at fabricating my present screen into the surround, which doesn't seem too big a job, but security is an issue. One solution to that would be to place some small magnets on the inside of the screen surround, and mock-up an old facia, and clip it on when you park the car Apparently, magnets do not affect lcd's like they affect crt's.
My pc was wired under the passenger seat in the classic, and a 4 channel amp wired up under the drivers seat, like yourself, I had problems with feedback and hum. The ground loop isolator solved a lot of the probs, and also a cheap external usb sound card improved things still more, but on the 03 sti install, I need to make sure that all components are ground to the same earth
Get yourself over to digital car uk for all carpc related uk chat
chris.

muddy

And the Original CarPC is currently undergoing a facelift over the non-show season months.

I'll start up a new thread if anyones interested..

Muddy

cw42

iTrader: (1)

I'm interested muddy, get threading

chris.

Granby

iTrader: (5)

Me too, luv this type of install

Fizz

iTrader: (1)

thinking about using the screen and bracket with a apple mini-mac in stalled in the car.. like your install though.. looks neat.. would like to see pictures of the rear?

how easy would your install be to run 6 channel?

Lum

The closest I have to a rear shot is this one from part way through.



The onboard audio supports 6 channel already, though you lose line-in and mic if you do this. So it's just a case of running the appropriate leads. I'm going to go with an external USB 7.1 card though to improve sound quality.