PC Peripherals CARPC - My New Project

G

guru

Adept
Hi everyone,

I've got the software part figured out. a heavily nlited xp + minilogon + htpc frontend [mediaportal -> free]

Few questions,

1. where can i find a small enough cabinet and mini-itx motherboard...

2. i could go the cyrix way -> advantage doesnt need cpu fan. but i was wondering if AMD sempron could be fitted in

3. If miniITX motherboards are hard to find in India, could i go the SFF pcs?

4. has anyone tried this in this board

:)
 
Well you can either go for Via C3 on mini-itx since its cheap. In a car all you'll be doin is media playback i guess and maybe gps? For such a sys, the c3 is enuf. If you are willing to spend more, there are mini itx pentium m boards available as well which you can look at. However they are expensive.... 700$+ for board+proccy. Else you can get a mATX board and dump it inside the antec sff cases (minuet or whatever is available for around 4K). You need a display as well I guess. But the major problem would be getting a power supply that can run of a car's battery!
 
Cool that someone brought it up, was planning to try it out sometime in the future as well. Now we have a guinea pig hehe, just kidding ;)

Via Mini ITX boards are supposedly available around here, and should be reasonably priced around 4~5K for the board + proc (havent personally seen it though). Finding a MiniITX cabinet though would be a difficult task.

The C3 procs arent powerful, they were designed for minimal power consumption and lack in raw processing power. Video playback decoding and stuff is mostly offloaded to the onboard graphics. For Semprons, you'd have to get a mATX board, and their processing power would obviously be much much more than the C3s (at the expense of cooling, power consumption).

The power supply would indeed be a big hurdle. There are 2 methods to go about it :

1. Get an inverter to convert your car's DC power to AC power, and use a regular PSU hooked up onto the output AC power. However there is a lot of unnecessary conversion / energy loss , so it isnt an ideal solution though it is quite easy to set up.

2. The other method is to use a direct DC - DC PSU. I'm not quite sure how you go about this, i'd assume you'd need a local electronics store to supply you with the needed PSU circuitry (?). A lot of stores in the US supply readymade DC - DC PSU units, so you could try if something similar is available around here.

As per the display, you'd need a small 7" sized LCD or so. Not quite sure about availability of that either. A touchscreen capable LCD would be significantly better as per navigating around the OS. You wont be able to play around with keyboard/mouse comfortably when in your car.
 
Crazy_Eddy said:
Cool that someone brought it up, was planning to try it out sometime in the future as well. Now we have a guinea pig hehe, just kidding ;)

Via Mini ITX boards are supposedly available around here, and should be reasonably priced around 4~5K for the board + proc (havent personally seen it though). Finding a MiniITX cabinet though would be a difficult task.
The C3 procs arent powerful, they were designed for minimal power consumption and lack in raw processing power. Video playback decoding and stuff is mostly offloaded to the onboard graphics. For Semprons, you'd have to get a mATX board, and their processing power would obviously be much much more than the C3s (at the expense of cooling, power consumption).

The power supply would indeed be a big hurdle. There are 2 methods to go about it :
1. Get an inverter to convert your car's DC power to AC power, and use a regular PSU hooked up onto the output AC power. However there is a lot of unnecessary conversion / energy loss , so it isnt an ideal solution though it is quite easy to set up.
2. The other method is to use a direct DC - DC PSU. I'm not quite sure how you go about this, i'd assume you'd need a local electronics store to supply you with the needed PSU circuitry (?). A lot of stores in the US supply readymade DC - DC PSU units, so you could try if something similar is available around here.

As per the display, you'd need a small 7" sized LCD or so. Not quite sure about availability of that either. A touchscreen capable LCD would be significantly better as per navigating around the OS. You wont be able to play around with keyboard/mouse comfortably when in your car.
Click to expand...

i think Sempron+mATX board is the way i'm going about this. power and cooling are a problem but minor.

proc+board+ram~5500-6000

Finding a small enough - cabinet is a problem.

display: 7-9 Inch Screen
 
y are u getting a cabby ..... make one and hide that in the car it self.... like below the seats etc ... that will be much better solution ....
 
one of my clients makes some machines for icici, a comp housed in a small box ....used for scanning n mailing chqs or something similar...dunno
he uses a 1ghz via epia c3 which comes soldered on a mercury mobo...the whole thing is for 3k...quite decent machine
 
@Chaos
isn't antec expensive?

@Rahul
that was my initial idea but then that way dvd drive wont be accesible

@apollyon
where can i buy those? btw are you in bangalore?

thanks for the replies guys
 
Last edited by a moderator:
@guru, crazy_eddy did you guys get around to installing a carpc ?

here's a teaser pic of my install in an Indigo :)

dsc07063ag1.gif


pic of the touchscreen interface

dsc07069if9.gif


i'm running a setup with a Via C7 1.5Ghz mini-itx board, 80w dc-dc psu with ignition control (auto carpc startup & shutdown) and a 7" tft lcd wit VGA input and touchscreen. all the parts are available at iRide

btwn this thread got a good bump ;)
 
hi guys,

@AMD4Life, well for benefits/advantages, this beats any head unit/car deck in terms of functionality when it comes to playing different media. you've got 40gb+ (or whatever capacity hard drive u've installed) of media at your fingertips.
also since this is a pc platform it can suport any future formats of audio/video simply by installing the appropriate codec. besides that you can also have dvd, gps & vehicle tracking , on board diagnostics, wireless internet etc, the list simply goes on. in terms of cost it definitely beats buying a standalone gps with prorietory maps and a dvd headunit for one.

the software is a nlited version of xp, and i use hibernate to shutdown on ignition control, so the startup is just a few seconds. there is a variety of frontends(software interface) available for carpc's. besides the frontend is fully skinnable and are available for linux & mac also.i'm using centrafuse with the nexus skin. you can also check out roadrunner & freeway . dl these and try it out to know what they're capable of. besides i also use google earth with goops & mapking with the mumbai map (both embedded in the frontend) for gps.

@ thixkull yes, dvd's working, the dvd slim drive is located just behind the lcd. the systems fully stable, no crashes or BSOD's & no skips over mumbai's bumps & potholes.

for cost, well i got the carpc case, dc-dc psu, mini-itx board, touchscreen lcd & gps receiver from iRide for around 30k, besides that 512 mb DDR2-533 & a 40GB 2.5" harddrive for bout 5k from lamington rd, installation was done myself, so that makes it about 35k.
i'll get some more pics and post in the show-off section soon. :)
 
the iride site gives me a serch page.. its not a valid page...

and my doubts again...
what if i already have a athlon 2000 or somthing on a board wit integrated gfx.. can i just use that wit 512 mb ram all whic i have already got on my second rig...
if thats so then my cost will be just the small sized cabinet and the psu.
can u give me more details on that psu...
and most importantly the electronics... how do u get the pc to auto start and more so the shutdown process...

what if i decide to use the non touchscreen version???

how much would a touchscreen cost.??

its a gr8 concept...thanx...
 
Site seems to work fine here : CarPC based Vehicle Infotaiment Systems | iRide Technologies. Mumbai, India . Try again? :)

Yep you could use something like your old Athlon setup if you're on a budget and it should be fine to an extent. The advantage would be that it will definitely outperform the Via C7 setup by a good margin!

The downside however is that the Athlon setup would use

- More power

- More space

- Generate more heat/need active cooling.

In comparison the C7 procs are claimed to consume less than 7 watts of power, and in some cases can be passively cooled. The mini-ITX boards are marginally larger than a CD case - that should give you an idea of their size ;)

About the PSU, its a DC-DC version. Reason being if you used our conventional type of PSU used in PC's, you'd need to have an inverter to step up the car's 12V DC voltage to 230V AC and the PSU would convert the AC voltage back down to the respective 12/5/3.3v DC voltages, basically making it DC -> AC -> DC . Efficiency of course would suffer a LOT, so rather than doing things in a round-a-bout manner a DC-DC PSU is used which directly filters/regulates the respective output voltages needed from the car's 12V DC supply with pretty high efficiency.

The Auto-start/shutdown process should be pretty simple. I'm guessing you just have a relay wired to your motherboard's Power switch. When you turn on your ignition key the relay activates the power switch and when you turn it off, the opposite happens. Simply playing with your power switch should be enough to get the auto start and shutdown process running.
 
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