Starting and Charging System Question

the ICE starts by MG1 spinning it over and then the computer feeds fuel and supplies the feed to the IGN coils to fire it. The acc. battery is there to bring the computers to live, and supply 12 volts to the lights and other 12 volt acc. The 12volt battery is charged by the converter on the bottom of the HV inverter assy under the hood. It's charge rate can vary upto about 90 amps and 13.8 volts at any time independent of the ICE running or not. How many amps does the CarPC require? Also the 12volt battery has very limited amperage capacity when the car isn't in Ready mode. Not the kind of battery you can run a bunch of acc. off and not kill it if the car isn't Ready.

 

[font=Comic Sans MS:99c28b000e]You might want to consider an auxilliary LiON battery for your CarPC (like running a laptop) which would be charged off the ACC circuit. You don't want to drain your 12V battery. It doesn't power the car, it powers the car's brains.[/font:99c28b000e]

 

The aux battery can deliver quite a bit of amperage, that's why it has a 150A fusable link. However its total capacity is small, it has been said to be 38AH. It could run the 150W configuration for about 3 hours. However, the car is designed to shut off ACC mode after an hour.

 

I was thinking of installing a type of car computer myself. But, I've been draggin butt, mostly waiting for my CoastalETech video interface, so I can have a screen for the thing.. But in the process, I've thought of a few ways to handle things. One of my thoughts was to have a real low-power computer such as the net4521 .

I had an idea to run it much like a laptop, using the guts of a wireless spotlight that has a built-in battery, and takes a charge when plugged in (or, powered-on via a switched ACC line-in). When the car was off, it would run off it's battery, and when on, charge from the ACC line.

Still, just ideas - since the above mentioned system would run headless, there's no need for me to wait on Dave's video interface - that idea was more of a wireless hotspot, or StompBox idea.

So, I'm still mulling over ideas on how to incorperate a car computer, or multiple computers. Even the idea of one that is always on (like above), to act as a mobile hotspot, and collect/distribute GPS coordinates, and another more powerful entertainment-class machine (possibly a hacked up X-box) that would integrate with the screen and audio system.

Also, I was thinking it may be possible to replicate Mr. Vass's CAN project in such a way that the data collected can be stored, and used for not only statistical purposes, but to display on the main screen what is going on in the car in a much more detail-oriented geek-screen. Not only that, beam the data back to home base. My reasoning for this is that I have a friend who works on building car diagnostic computer tools. So, I'd say he knows a bit about CAN and OBD-II and what not. Maybe he can help come up with a way to make this happen.

All ideas at this point. Any other ideas which may help put any of this together is much appreciated. I really do like the idea of having a system running and available 24x7 which I could just access via wireless from home while the car sat in the garage. Converting to a plug-in hybrid would make linking something up more feasable, but I wouldn't want to plug-in just for an onboard computer, if I'm not going to do some serious battery charging.

Okay, enough ranting. I've been interrupted while writing this so many times, it probably dosen't make much sense. But I hope my raw ideas were helpful in thinking of projects to start, and perhaps spawn discussions on how to better these ideas.

 

Most of the 7.5A Ign feed goes to orange wires. One goes to the orange wire of the stoplight switch.
Skid control is another, Hybrid ECU is another, HV Batt ecu is yet another, and finally the combination meter. Airbag ECU has a black wire providing IG2, but I am sure you don't want to touch that.

Much of the system gets powered up at Ig1 (Ig-On mode). Also remember that it only has a 7.5A fuse, as its main function is turn on, and not to provide power.

 

Cool stuff. Now all we need is to convert the touchscreen to a USB interface. My understanding though is that the touchscreen is only output to AVC when accessing NAV functions. I wonder if Nav specific Info functions would output touchscreen info, or if you had to be in MAP mode.