My carputer project

[S3TH]

Hi buddies, a lil project amongst many i\'ve got going on my \'7!... unfortunately i\'m hopeless at progress pics.

This front end basically entailed much plastic chopping, a lot of plastic glueing & epoxy\'ing, a lil bit of fibreglass, a lil bit of filler, A LOT of sanding & prepping, a lot of paint, a bit of lacquer and heres the final product...

Tis an 8" widescreen touch finished in vw diamond black as will the rest of the interior panels, you\'ll notice there wasn\'t enough space for the interior light dimmer!! I keep it on max anyway, it\'s been removed and fg\'d over

[Hayward North]

Oh im liking that a lot, im currently looking for a solution for a carputer so i dont have to plug the laptop into the footwell and leave the laptop on the pasengers seat, so ill be watching this one closely.

Im thinking of a smaller screen as im only wanting to play muzic with no display or log via logworks so not much graphics required there.

Looking nice though mate.
Keep us posted as to how ya do the rest

[S3TH]

Heheh cheers for the comments buddy, i had a 7" widescreen to play with before but i broke it during the sizing up, figured it was too small anyway!! wanted something that would take up almost the whole panel but still look relatively oem... i was close to ordering a 9" widescreen!!

theres a powersupply called the "carnetix p1900", it connects to your ignition, 12v rail & ground, can alter the output voltage between 16-21v iirc. You then solder your laptop/carpc\'s on/off switch to it and it will automatically shutdown/start up the pc with the ignition key... letting you hide it somewhere else!

Obviously not ideal if it\'s an expensive laptop!! Just an idea that may interest you if it\'s a dedicated car pc/laptop

[Hayward North]

Well i do everything on a laptop including tuning so im thinking of just sloting it in the boot to use as the pc part, thankfully it has a vga output so that combined with a usb to control the mouse via the touch screen should do it

[S3TH]

Sounds awesome yeah i used to run a laptop for the pc part of it using the vga out... heres a link for that PSU... a bit pricey but lets you just chuck your laptop in the boot with a safe power source and forget about turning it on/shutting down etc!

[probedb]

That looks very nice!

I keep thinking about doing it as it\'d be so much better than any headunit you can get and the fact I could just leave the car running and wirelessly copy music across from my server would also be excellent too.

[ENVYD]

got to say thats looks great mate! seen one like this before

[Clarky]

This does look interesting, would be good to list components you are using, nice work

[S3TH]

Hi buddies, updates for those of you who are interested

...

wobbly hands after a 14hour day!



iTunes...



Rest of the "Install"...

JL XR 3ways behind the grills...



Subwoofer...



Carputer/front end amp...



Thanks :Thumbs-up

[arrouk]

pics dont work mate

matt

[S3TH]

Should work now?

...



iTunes...



Rest of the "Install"...

JL XR 3ways behind the grills...



Subwoofer...



Carputer/front end amp...



Thanks :Thumbs-up
         

[Jame5]

awesome job my friend. Is that dash flocked or is it just the light playing tricks?

[S3TH]

Thanks buddy

That dash has been retrimmed in royal blue alcantara! \'Tis easier to see the colour/texture in the subwoofer pic, so no your eyes are fine! heheh

[Eddie]

Just doing an install myself at the mo found some great skins for the car puter, I really like the knight rider skin:)
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/rr-skins/

Im using the carnetix p1900 like you mentioned it is really good I would recomend this to anyone, also get the additional 5V supply which goes with it to power usb and other devices.


My screen is a little larger being 12.1 I had to modifiy a standard rx7 clock cluster and cowel, mines going to sit over on the passenger side like another set of clocks.

Heres a pic of the surround, just had all plastics colour coded so nice and shiney.
Used the original holes for usb hub, card reader bluetooth dongle, I have even altered the heat light and those darkened out indicators to show hard drive access and power and things like that.

Good work your doing it looks really tidy

[S3TH]

That\'s awesome Eddie! inspired by the tokyo drift fortune rx7?

What kind of pc are you using? I went for a mini-itx, with an m2-atx psu,

front end skins are cool but I love iTunes too much!

Has anyone used the new ipod touch or seen adverts for the iphone where the user just slides left/right in the record stack of pictures to select the album...?




^^^ That\'s a screenshot of my laptop iTunes but when it\'s used with a touchscreen it\'s exactly the same as an ipod touch
Absolutely fantastic interface to scroll between albums!