Am looking at building a car pc for my own car and for a mates car, so i was thinking after testing the units and making sure they are all working 100%that i might continue to make them, however i wanted to know what you would expect from a car pc, and how much you would expect to pay for it, now some of the things that will be in there are Mini ATX motherboard Solid State hard drive 5.1 channel sound mini atx 12v to 12v pc power supply What else would you expect, what sort of processor speed would you want, how much ram, etc,
Mini ATX motherboard (you will want an onboard video card(64 min + 256mb preferred) + BLUETOOTH + USB) <go onboard if u dont want to run high-end games) Solid State hard drive 5.1 channel sound mini atx 12v to 12v pc power supply a mini-x case (like a cube) small 7" lcd screen 1gb ram (if its solely for diagnostics only) 2gb preferred (if for multimedia) preferrable a unix/linux system (try to dodge Windows) unless the software is not compatible :vomit: power supply unit with the correct amount of 4-pin molex's and for the cpu (p4's run an extra connector) the usual small compact usb mouse/keyboard (you can get foldup keyboards, really handy) thats about it.
50gb hd would do nicely the ability to hook up the consult cable so you can run it on the pc dvd\cd player wouldnt bother me....as you could copy all your info onto the hd, so a usb port would be needed
hard drive would probably be 32GB and would be solid state, 64gb just gets really expensive was thinking about one of these but is still reasonably expensive and you cant get a lot of the components i want on it and would be more difficult to mount up Was going to try to source a motherboard with most things built in onboard to save space Solid state drive will most likely be a usb drive, but these can be used to boot up the machine Will be trying to get decent onboard sound card aswel Case will be made by me or if i find a suitable case that is compact enough i will use that I have contacted lilliput in regard to there DIN sized touch screens Will have 2GB minimum as i plan for this to be a full multimedia / diagnostics unit Power supply unit will be an M1 or M2 ATX unit Looking into touchscreen and have software with onscreen keyboard for use with touchscreen in order for it to look better in the car Definitely via USB and Wireless Internet, will look into bluetooth aswel
What about something like this Byron? I am seriously considering purchasing one of these but if you could do it for similar or less price I would be in
that is what the plan is, The differences between my proposed unit and that one That one uses a laptop hard drive, these have been known to fail under the stress of movement, they have used rubber mounts, but from what i have seen typical hard drives are just not built to handle the stresses it is taken to in a car, mine will boot off a flash thumb drive which is solid state and shouldnt fail And yeah i am planning on my units to be cheaper, otherwise i will be buying one of these with you Will try to nut out more details this weekend, and get specific details on specs and try possible price ranges etc
I put together one very similar to that one. 1.7GHz Via Mini ATX, 1GB ram, 160GB disk, slim DVD. I used the M3-ATX power supply - it all basically fits on the M/B power connector. Works a treat. Survives cranking, and has a delayed shutdown after you turne the car off. You don't need a very fast CPU as it is very hard to keep it busy while you are driving. You need stacks of US ports though - touchscreen, mouse/touchpad, keyboard, GPS, wireless, Blatz cable etc. Controlling it is the biggest problem. The 7" touch screen is a flimsy, and unless you auto start or run a skin like roadrunner, it is very hard to do anything while you are driving. I have a touch pad next to the gear stick and a foldable hard keyboard. I have the (Odyssey Navigator) GPS auto starting. If I want datascan, I have a shortcut for that on the desktop. Another shortcut to roadrunner for playing mp3's. To get the sound into the radio, I got an adapter that converts the speaker output from the PC into a CD changer signal
I have been happily running my carputer for 2.5 years. It's a fully self sufficient in dash PC with M1-ATX Power supply. The PC looks like a DVD player. I have Lappy HDD, Slim CD/DVD Burner, touch screen, touch pad mouse (for those times when fingers just can't do the walk'n on the touch screen), Play Station 2 USB Keyboard, Laptop sized keyboard in glovebox, broadband Internet 7.2 Mbps, GPS Sat Nav etc etc. It also has a Playnow BIOS, so I can exit out of the power on sequence and play CDs or DVDs immediately, and not have to wait for an OS to boot. Basically it's an embedded OS I guess They are a great all round package. Not probably as good at individual things as a specialised unit, but if you want something that can do it all, this is the way to go. Laptop HDDs are quite robust. Mine has happily survived all the cruises we run, and the roads aren't necessarily smooth Currently waiting for mine to die, so I can get a faster one
Any PC can with a spare USB port can run a touch screen (as long as drivers are available for the OS). Not a problem for Windows XP or probably many Linux ditributions.
yeah well planning on mine being in the lower price bracket, but still have most of the bells and whistles, as someone said the problem is enough USB ports, as once you add Bluetooth WLan Hard Drive (This will be external solid state and use boot from USB) Touchscreen Keyboard and mouse (may be able to get PS2 connector units) GPS spare slots for additional accessories External DVD burner Conzult I can look into laptop hard drives also as this may bring the cost down
all im after is something i can throw 42 gigs of music onto, with enough space to then have consult on there along with gps and windows....thats it then just a separate non fold away touch screen
yeah pretty much what i want out of mine, but also want a DVD drive still available to me, i may be able to price additional things such as Wlan bluetooth tv tuner as an additional cost as most of these will be external USB devices
