I’ve been looking into building one for a while and I can find no cons to them. The problem I’m running into if finding a place to buy the gear. I’ve found several websites but I don’t trust a lot of online vendors. I’ve though about just using a power converter, an old lap top, and setting up a touch screen to control it. But then I’d have to figure out a way to make it start up real fast with the ignition of the car.

Do any of yall know of a place to find to buy the computer, screens, etc?

Any brands of touch screens you’d stay away from or run to?

If someone local sells them that would be great to that way I could have some support for if/when something goes wrong

and/or if you know of a site with great info on in car computers I’d enjoy if it you shared

thanks guys
-james

 

if you need some parts i have a motherboard, ram, and a gps reciever that i was gonna use for my carPC project

if you want PM me and i can get you a PS for cheap as well as a processor and hdd.

 

mp3car.com

 

I think Toby (TJElite) sells car PC units (not parts) for somewhat over a grand, but these are top notch-not assembled by a monkey-type shit.

 

Shinmei2006 - i might take you up on that i have to check on some other goodies and ideas 1st

P057 - thanks for the site i think i ran across dam near everything but that one, and it has more info than most the others put together

building your own system seems just as easy maybe even cheaper than buying a pre done deal as far as the ones on mp3car.com go. and after talking to a buddy he has a Xenarc touch screen he's not using. i'm going to look into modifing my old lap top, it faster and has more memory than the ones they sell on mp3cars.com . and it fits in the glove box already. these don't really seem all that dificult to install, makes me wonder why some people would buy just a double din touch screen head unit when you can have something with a lot more toys for about the same amount of money.

-james

 

Theres a lot more to it than throwing a laptop in and calling it a day. mp3car.com has some pretty good prices on the components themselves.

The PSU on the car PCs have ignition sensing wires that can order the bios to go into standby, they also have smart voltage sensing to keep brown power from damaging the internal components on the board. Even a decent brand inverter will spike to ~130 volts and drop to ~100 or so during cranking.




Theres also heat, storage, maintenance, and device compatibility.

 

yeah i was jumping the gun, its nice sometimes to think you can take some old stuff you don't use anymore and make something sweet lol. i just turned on the old lap top for a while to make sure it still works, it runs so dam hot i'd be scared to have it running in the car. when i get back in the tampa area i'm just going to trying going by tobys shop and looking into getting something thats built to last in cars.

 

+1 to what you guys said. There's no way the laptop can withstand the heat, especially if like you said: it was already generating an excessive amount on it's own in room temp.

The components on the website are designed for being in automotive environments, for the most part they can withstand the heat, voltage fluxes and other nasty stuff that regular PC parts can't deal with.

And trust me, getting parts from this site will cost just as much if not more than if you get a single-unit solution.

Try it out, calculate prices, I did the same thing a while back and they are pretty much neck and neck... Talk to TJElite for what sort of stuff he's selling (which I believe he only has one unit, but it is VERY nice).

 

im thinking ill just finance the 2499 double din in dash when I get the benz...


Actually... I have some pics of a past attemped at installing a car PC... you will get a laugh out of these..

 

Muhahhaa I give you Franken-PC!!1

A half size ATX motherboard with desktop components all packed up in MDF wood.

AMD Athlon? 1.2ghz
512mb ram
40gb hdd
ati all in wonder 128
windows 2000 pro

The standby button was hooked to a relay that closed when the ignition was turned off and then tripped momentary power to close the power switch to turn it back on.

Super power whore. 7amp draw at idle and 12amps under ANY load. The sound card was a soundblaster pci 5 channel hooked to an ADS 4 channel for the mids and a Polk 300.2 for the subwoofer... which cause a whole bunch more problems being in such close proximity to the computer.

I ran a USB hub in the front with the keyboard and a mouse, I was planning on getting a touchpad but I scrapped the project before I bought it.


Keep i mind this was a few years back(like 2004) and I've learned a lot since then.