My In-Dash Car PC project

I purchased the parts for the PC today. I updated my first post with the parts information.

I also bought some cables and other stuff. I don't really think I need to mention what they are.

 

I'm thinking about putting it in the lower cargo area but I'm accepting any ideas. The case I'm getting is larger than yours. So I'm a little tight on space. I do want it out of the way. I want to be able to use my trunk fully without problems.

 

Here is a quick update.

I have the PC put together and its currently running on the bench with an ATX power supply acting as the virtual prius battery.

Windows XP is up and running with all addons working.

God I hate Linux :angry: I actually love linux but its such a PITA. I installed Fedora 7 and its by far the best linux distro out there. It recognized everything that was built onto the motherboard. The only other distro that I tried that did that was RedHat 9. Of course I havnt tried any others since RH9. I'm having problems finding some drivers for the GPS, USB wireless A/B/G adapter, and my nvidia video card. The nvidia driver shouldn't be that hard to find. I tried the one on nvidia's site but the current driver did not support my card. I think I may have to find an older version. Or I may try to see if I can force 800x480 resolution with the current generic drivers. I still want to try to get the nvidia drivers installed because it might speed things up a little with real drivers. I also have to make a linux boot CD so I can get rid of GRUB.

I had to do a little modifications to the case and other parts to get everything to fit in that small area.
Since I have two 120gb drive in raid 1 I had to make a little more room. The two stackable drive bay I bought was either nonstandard or the case was non standard or both. None of the holes lined up to mount the drive in the extra bay slot in the upper right hand side of the case. I had to drill an extra hole on the mounting plate of the case. No biggie. Then I realized that the video card had to be in the bottom PCI slot of the PCI riser card. This meant I had to either find a new location for the 2 hard drives or split them. I decided to split them. One will be in the regular IDE hard drive bay beside the power supply and the other left in the current spot.

My video card that I bought was a little defective. The push down plastic clamp that keep the heat sink on was not fully depressed. It was blocked by a little bit of solder in the hole. Stupid me decides the best way to open the hole was to stick a small screwdriver in it and chisel it out a little. Some how a CAP popped off of the rear side of the GPU. I was like $#!! and it had to be one of those little surface mount ones to. :angry: I decided it could not get any worse and got out my soldering iron. I hate soldering SMD components. In fact I'm better at desoldering them than actually soldering them. I got out my very fine silver solder and went to work. about an hour later I had it secured to the board and I checked it with my multimeter. Looks like I got all 8 leads connected to the right place. So far I havnt seen any video problems. I also desoldered the crap that was in that hole. The heat sink is now secured to the board.


HD0 is at the upper middle and HD1 is at the right under the video card. You can just barely see it. I put a strip of metal on the USB ports in PCI slot 2 to keep it from moving inward when inserting USB devices. This case does not have anything to hold down the PCI plates so I had to rig this thing up.

 

Another update.

I'm currently getting my windows OS fully installed and working with a front end. I decided on RoadRunner with the DigitalFX 2.0 skin.

So far everything works except for a little problem. When I try to use my DVD drive it seems to kill a hard drive. Every time the DVD drive tries to access the DVD the hard drive sounds like it powered off. Sounds like a *CLICK* and a spin down. I have also seen it do this when accessing my USB TV tuner only it fully locks the computer when it clicks. I can only think of 2 possibilities. One being that I'm using an ATX power supply to run the car PC while its out side the car and its not providing enough power to the PC. The second being that the hard drive may be bad. I can only hear one of the drives click so it may be that it is a bad drive. I hope not but since having two drives in a raid 1 I wont mind shipping one hard drive off to get it replace.

I'm currently running Spinrite on the drives now just to make sure they are OK on the SMART end.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(JamesL @ Jun 12 2007, 03:25 PM) [snapback]460342[/snapback]</div>

I have A/B/G/BlueTooth and I might get some king of wireless data plan so I can have internet as I drive


Here is an update on the hard drive issue.

I failed both of my drives one at a time and booted into windows. Both drives did the click of doom when accessing the DVD drive and TV tuner. I also got out my spare sealed lead acid batteries and hooked them up just so the PC could get all the amps it needed straight from the battery just like if were installed in my car. This did not make a difference either. The thing is I did not have this problem until recently. So I decided to see what Linux did. When I booted into Linux I tried to access the DVD and it ran just fine. I tried everything to get the drives to fail. As always it looks like windows just sucks. :angry:

I'm going to try a fresh install of windows and install drivers one by one to see if I can find the culprit.

 

Looks like it was my video card that was causing the problems. Why it was not showing up in Linux I have no clue. I tried another old pci card that did not have a built in fan and it seemed to work just fine. I put the nvidia card back in with the fan disabled and it was a lot more stable but it still locked up. My guess is that maybe the video card was drawing too much power from the pci bus and causing some issues.

So now I'm just going to run my PC without an extra video card. I wont be able to do the native 800x480 resolution like I wanted to but I guess this will help out on keeping the PC a little cooler. Now I need to find something to put in that extra pci slot. <_<

 

I'm giving up on Linux for now. The only real reason I was wanting Linux on my car PC is to run kismet when I want to do a little wardriving. h34r: I could get kismet working on my laptop with RedHat 9. I may install RH9 on my car PC just to get kismet working. I really dont need the latest kernel or anything major. I'll just stick with Netstumbler on XP for now.

Since I'm giving up in Linux I've been more focused on my XP install. I have everything installed that I think I may need. If I miss anything I'll just have to install it later because right now I'm going to focus on getting the wiring for the car to hook up everything.

What I'm going to need to find out is how many USB extension cords to buy and what type. What kind of other cables to get and how many like RCA, 4 strand wire, some kind of wire for power and some cat5 for other stuff.

Also I would like to get voice activation to work with this PC but my current microphones are so crappy you have to hold you mouth up to them before the software will recognize what you say. So i'm looking for either a good wired mic possibly a powered mic or maybe a bluetooth mic that is small and hangs on the ear.

I also need to figure out what I'm going to do about the "power" button and reset button. I can currently have the PC to start when I start the car but I may throw in a kill switch so if I don't want the PC to boot I can have that option. I'm thinking about buying a tire reset button to use as my PC reset button. This is the button that is under the steering wheel. I thought that since there is an extra place for a switch down there I could add another tire reset switch in the empty hole. I would then use it as my PC reset switch since its just a momentary switch plus this would be an out of the way area so I don't accidentally bump it or a passenger does not bump it.

 

I decided to mount the PC in the upper trunk area sacrificing some room for better cooling. I mounted the PC on some plywood and covered the plywood with some gray carpet stuff that matched the Prius almost perfect. I secured the board with some heavy duty nylon strig and some S hooks. This will allow for a some what quick disconnect in case I need to remove the PC setup for larger cargo when I need to put the seats down. I put 2 blocks of wood at the sides to keep the bottom from scooting in. The strings are looped through an eye hook on the bottom of the plywood, then trough the hooks on the floor of the car, then through an eye hook on the top of the plywood, then through the baby seat anchor and then back to the top eye hook with an S hook. This seems to keep the plywood from moving around. I hope this will be a temporary solution until I can find a better way of securing it.

I decided to route the wires through the driver side rear tail light hole. I should have enough cables to go this way and if not I can always buy more. So far everything looks good and is ready for a finished install by the end of the first week in July. I still have to cut a hole below my LCD for the DVD drive and drill and cut a few holes below that for two USB ports. I also have to cut out places for the USB/VGA switch button and the PC kill switch. I still want a reset switch even though windows XP is pretty reliable. I still want to have it just in case I would need it.

Oh and I tested my DC to DC converter and when its on standby its only drawing 2.25mA. I'm just going to have the main power wires hooked directly to the battery and the IGN-ON wire hooked up to the kill switch. With it only drawing 2.25mA I'm sure I can leave it hooked up for a few weeks without powering up the car. But if I leave the car off for a few weeks I would unplug it anyway because Toyota recommends unplugging the batter if left for long periods of time. So I'm not worried about a dead battery.

Here are a few pictures and yes I know I need to clean my trunk mat.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Conine @ Jun 28 2007, 11:46 PM) [snapback]469828[/snapback]</div>

Well I dont know yet. I havnt got that far but I will explain how I do it when I get it done.


Day 1. Lots of cutting for the USB ports and DVD drive. Also Installed the cabling.

I cut some holes in the lower center panel for some USB ports. Because of the size of the cables I had to move my GBS ECU to the side so I could have more room.

I mounted my GPS under the dash just like the one in the Prius but mine is seated next to the center speaker on top of what I think is a vent duct and its attached with some velcro.

I have the 4 port hub sitting behind the radio. Actually everything seemed to fit behind there without any problems.

All my wires fit under the trim work on the passenger and driver side floor board.

I routed the wires under the rear seat and fed them up through the rear seat crack between the seat and the trunk bed. This made things a lot simpler and made the cables a lot shorter than what I was planning.

I ordered a 30 foot OBD2 cable from Norm for the Can-View. At first I though I would need about 30 feet but now it looks like 20 feet will be plenty. Right now I'm just using a hacked extension that does not work too well.

I have everything up front hooked up now and all thats left to do is the rear. I tested the setup with the Can-View and at first the screen was very blurry. This really pissed me off because I knew the cable length was not causing the problem. I took my screen out and put it back in and that seemed to fix that issue. I'm guessing that the VGA cable may have been to close to a power cable and was causing some interference.

I did not take any pictures because I was just too tired and my fingers are sore and bloody. Like always I cant do a project without loosing some blood.

More info and maybe some pictures tomorrow.

 

Day 2. I'm F****** Pissed! :angry:

So I got my PC working and my custom switch even worked but it was my damn DVD rom drive that kept failing. I tracked it down to the length of the cables used. The length of the cables dropped the voltage to slightly below normal causing the drive to power skip when reading a disc. A powered USB hub has fixed the problem. Now since I have to use a powered USB hub I have to install a power inverter and an extension cord. I swear if I knew I was going to have all these problems I would just say F*** installing a PC. :angry:

No pics. Too pissed off.

 

Well I finally finished the install. Well most of it anyway. I still have to figure out a few things.

I still have to install the OBD2 cable I bought from Norm. It has not come in yet but I hope to get it in the next few days.

I crimped on little O terminals or what ever you call them to the end of my power cable and then just put them in between the nut and bolt on the battery.

I shortened the cable lengths for the DVD drive as much as I could and I finally got it to read DVDs but I still don't have enough power to burn DVDs. I also split the DVD drive and USB hub into two different USB cables. I think this helped also.

I could not get a signal with my wifi so I think I will have to remove the internal USB wifi and make it external for a better signal.

I still have to secure the board to the trunk. I think I'm going to try to find some bungee cords to secure it in the up right position. I think I will leave it laying down most of the time just so it can have better airflow. I just don't know until I can try it out for a few weeks.

I do have some audio hum when there is no sound coming from the PC and the cars audio is above 10. I have always had some hum on PCs so I dont think this is a big deal unless I have always done something wrong. When there is music playing you cant hear the hum at all. At least I cant and thats all that matters. I'm not big on audio.

Here you can see the two USB ports below. Yes they are centered on the lower plastic piece but the angle makes it look a little off. You can also see the red button on the left beside the screen. This is my USB/VGA switch. The way I have it hooked up the button will not switch unless the PC is ON. When the PC is on it switches between the Can-View and the PC just fine like nothing ever happened. The good part is when the PC turns off it will automatically switch back to the Can-View. This is because when the relays have no power they default to the Can-View side. Below the red switch is the power button rocker switch. This allows me to keep the PC off when I turn on the car. Its basically a manual control of the IGN ON power.


Running XP Pro


This is the frontend for XP. Its RoadRunner with the DigitalFX 2.0 skin. This is by far the best skin for RR. It has everything you need. I put a picture of my car as the background.


Yes its a mess. I'm not very good at cable management