jniamehr

Well the days are numbered for not having a carputer in my car because of the recent oppertunities that have come to light in this forum, I am scheming out my ideas to make sure my idea wont be a complete failure... I ran into a problem when planning... How will I have the carputer turn on and off when I turn the car on and off... anybody have any suggestions?

Japan8

Check out these products. For me I have a concern of space, so what I go with is in question, but something along these lines should work....

http://www.opussolutions.com/150watt.html

http://mp3car.com/store/index.php

http://www.via.com.tw/en/VInternet/carpc.jsp

Choppy

jniamehr,

others would correct me if im wrong but im sure there is non constant power cable ( Somewhere around the stereo ) that you can use as a REM in a power system to trigger it to shut off.

guy321

Use Linux with a journaling filesystems along with one of those devices that shutdown the PC.. there's one based on Basic Stamp..

There's a project on freshmeat.. atleast I think I saw it there, and they have kits/schematics for the shutdown device.

jniamehr

I dont want to use linux because of the navigation software I will be purchasing and the lack of knowledge I have in linux. The power supplies I was linked to seem to offer the solution i am looking for, but are quite expensive, I will look into them however maybe if Im not the only one we can do a discounted group buy... let me know of interest...

Omicron

If you don't want to use Linux, then the only thing I could figure you could do would be to set up Palm OS or Windows CE embedded into an EPROM as a bootable bios.

jniamehr

Why not just use XP?

Omicron

Because it's a bloated code pig that has to be loaded from some form of disk, and will take 3-4 minutes to boot up. Do you really want to wait for that?

jniamehr

Well heres the deal Omicron, if you look at Japan8's first link that he posted you will see that power source that allows you to put the PC into suspend or hibernate mode... I plan on stripping down Windows XP to the bare essentials and removing a lot of things... What do you think? I also like the idea of using Windows CE

OverLOAD

you might want to look into XPe... Embedded WinXP.. Much smaller and designed for near-instant on..

Regards,

OverLOAD

jniamehr

Can you give me a link to this Microsoft product?

Genom

Uhm... a properly setup full XP setup will boot in 40 seconds and hybernate in 20. Using a startup/shutdown interface is cake and you have a huge range of software and hardware options. True you can achieve the same with linux, for much cheaper, but it's a lot more work.

Shocka

im currently working on a carputer idea. At this moment I am simply working on Tweaking Linux to function as i would like it to in my car.

I am using a p3 800, and have Linux Loading in about 15sec!
I tried XP but the fastest I could get it to load was 45 secs.

the shutdown is the problem.
Linux is taking about 10-15 secs
while XP is takeng about 45-60 seconds. I couldnt figure out what is taking soo long. my desktop shuts down quicker. I am thinking it is the processor. and ram i only have 256.

I have still not looked into actually getting this in the car yet. I would like to get the stock navi setup put in a touch screen and mount it there with the case in the trunk.

I am waiting for Overload to come out with the Audio input for the stock unit so i can get further with this project. I will go with an FM modulator at this moment.

Jni.. what navi software are you using? co-pilot or mappoint?
also have u researched how this will function in the summer/winter with the extreme heat of the car?

I would also suggest checking out MP3Car.com

now to your question like Choppy said there has to be non constant power by the stereo. Here is ANOTHER ADVATAGE of Linux. If you just turn off a linux box it will not run a startup scan everytime. XP god knows what it will do when the computer is just shut off.

jniamehr

Shocka, this is a reply to your post:

Have you uninstalled components that come with windows that are not necessary? I am going to be formatting a PC that I will use for the meantime, its nice and small and I am going to add a shitload of ram to it and I will see what happens.... Its a P3 850 MHz, and I will put about 786 ram in it... A nice 7200 RPM HD and a low resource using decent quality video card.... and I will make XP VERY VERY LIGHT.....

Dont you think having the stock navi with a touch screen is kind of pushing it? How far could you possibly reach while driving at the same time? I suggest you go to your dealership ask to see the car with a nav and put the seat in your position and see how it is...

If we use overloads audio input i assume we would have to switch the audio to AUX or the tape deck everytime we want to use the carputer for any audio needs, this doesnt seem to bad....

An FM modulator seems like a nice idea, anyone know if we can get a VERY high quality FM modulator (group buy)??

I am going to use the Deluo Routis 2004 that can be used for Pocket PC and PC it costs 90 dollars right now, maybe we can purchase this together or do a group buy... It has maps for Canada and the USA, and from the screen shots it looks VERY touch screen friendly with a built in screen keyboard etc (most other laptop nav softwares I have seen dont have this)

I also dont see how the functionallity of the setup will have anything to do with climate (I could be wrong)... Ive heard about silicon rapping hardware etc that absorbs shock, or we can use a laptop HD that are very durable to shock etc... I use this company for my laptop HD needs, there pricing is very good and they even have the laptop HD to PC connector kit for 15 dollars and it comes with cables and brackets (I believe they are also open to discounted group buys):
http://xtradisk.com/cgi-bin/webc.cgi/notebook.html

I think it is very important that we determine how we will be doing the audio aspect of the carputers, and testing it to make sure it works well...

Japan8

The audio portion? Easy... gut the factory HU and put my computer in that 2DIN space. Radio will be via PC Radio PCI card. Another option is the Dlink USB radio. I was thinking to work with WIndows CE.Net to get a realtime OS, but after seeing front ends like Media Car and Media Engine... I'll pass. The same goes to Linux... just too much work. Maybe if someone is paying me to develop a system we can talk about that dev time. THose two front ends will run on 98 SE, NT, 2k and XP. I've been thinking to push it on a stripped down 2k pro (not a big XP fan). Embedded XP is a possbile solution, but MS is talking $995 for the SDK?!

OverLOAD,
If you can get me XP Embedded and the tools I'll need to setup my system to run from CF, I'll buy it.

If you haven't been to mp3car.com yet, then you need to go and spend some time going over what has already been done... there is a front end for linux out there too...

Japan8

jniamehr,

Sure the Opus hardware is a bit pricy, but better than the stuff from mp3car.com. As I can see the mp3car.com sutff just startsup and shutsdown your machine... no standby or hibernate. That's enough right there for me to say no. Read through mp3car.com.... I remember seeing a thread where someone said that the ITPS didn't work well for them either...

Sometimes it's better to spend a couple extra doallars and get the superior product instead of cutting corners...

jniamehr

Japan8 you are right, and Im sure if we have enough willing people we can get a decent discount as well, also I have MSDN access, I will check to see if MSDN has win xp embedded version...

guy321

For you people complaining that Linux would be too complicated to develop...

http://www.dashpc.com/

They have developed the software and are still distributing the source for free.. also they have developed hardware to do the shutdown.

jniamehr

guy321, this looks pretty good, with the speed of linux and this software we may be able to use linux instead of windows, but yet again many of us dont use linux on a regular basis, and i have yet to come across a navigation software that works with linux

guy321

This is what the DashPC people use..

http://www.kraftvoll.at/software/

jniamehr

Where do they get the maps from? Do the maps come pre-loaded for that many countries? Also does it have many points of interest?

guy321

Network Maps:

Download of maps from internet built in (Expedia). Can also load topo-maps (avail. for USA only)
GpsDrive can use NASA satellite images (see Nasamaps section).
gpsfetchmap.pl: Script to load maps from internet.
Supports internet connection through proxy server.

Japan8

And that, my friend, is what's wrong with http://www.kraftvoll.at/software/ as your GPS software. Those maps and the capabilities of this software lag far behind a NavTech map based system... one like Destinator, CoPilot, TomTom... offer door-to-door directions and voice instructions and POI DB. They hands down beat that software. What else is available for Linux, I dunno... gotta search, but I have a feeling that there isn't anything that beats the aforementioned systems. And really... you have to get a system that is almost as good as the stock nav system or what was the point?

As far as dashpc goes... not bad, I have looked it over as well. But to go with linux, particularly on CF and setting it up embedded/"read only" is going to mean having to switch over to somethign like SquashFS... which means no distribution... take the original linux kernel and build up from there. OUCH!! To much work... and this is just to get booted...

jniamehr

I want the opus DC thing, but Im feeling its way to expensive, are there any more parts out there like this?

Japan8

Just Opus, Mp3Car.com and the DashPC ones. IF you do some searching on Mp3Car.com some people may have built their own in the past and you can take those schematics. Otherwise... you're SOL. Sorry.