Chamberlin

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Well, I am sure many of you remember Rotorgeek's carpc project from this year... thanks to his help, I was able to aquire the rig and I have started to re-install it into my RX-8 with some changes...crappy pics for now, sorry...

Epia M1200 MB, now with XFX GeForce FX5200 PCI card and 90 deg adapter/riser from adexelectronics.. first try was too short (model -1) but the -10 model was perfect, except for that pesky PCMCIA TV tuner card making the Dsub monitor connection flex the video card slightly.

Original Xenarc 7" 5-wire touchscreen in Mazda nav housing with IR window...
one of these days I might make the buttons work with the control board posted somewhere here on RX8club.... BTW, Rotorgeek did a great job installing the screen, it ain't no easy task....but I think there is a good chunck of video area missing behind the Mazda facia on top.... not much I can do about it, at this point..
although with the Nvidia keystone tools, I am able to squeeze things back down to show in the visible portion of the LCD panel... kinda defeats the point of the native res though huh?

PIE adapter for sound (not using the Mbus steering wheel control adapter which I also have). Need to get my ground isolator installed, to get rid of a little bit of alternator whine...

Wifi 200mW USB 2.0 adapter, much higher power than most... with SMA antenna connector too- cool USB device... I soldered on my own leads for an external LED, hence the red and white wires coming out of it... unfortunately, it just blinks all the time when powered... where most adapters actually blink with some significance.

Linksys Bluetooth adapter, hopefully to be used with Phonecontrol...what a nightmare this integration stuff is...

Wireless keyboard with joystick mouse...perfect for this app.
Trackball I love, but I have a Griffin Powermate I might install for cool factor
Even tried installing it in the center heating control, but that panel was not friendly to the removal of the HVAC controls like I had hoped...would have been cool to have a silver **** at your fingertips..

PCMCIA Tv tuner card, crappy included antenna, gonna have to mount a powered low profile home antenna... looked into all in one antennas for wifi, cell, Btooth etc... not do-able for me just yet.... and yes I do like my little antenna farm on the dash..the more the merrier.

GPS through USB antenna, running the latest iGuidance - works very well.

XMPCR has been added, a must have, even though the sound quality on XM sucks ***... it's still too cool. Only getting terrestrial signal though (no Sat sginal), antenna is on back rear deck, thinking the tint on my car might be metallic....will need to change that anyway cause I don't like the silvery look. I was one of the first XM subscribers way back, and never had any probs with my Sony receiver and it's antenna sitting on the front dash of my CRX....so that will be a last resort... one more antenna for the farm.

The famous Rotorgeek rear mounted 3rd brakelight NTSC cam, I rigged the light bulb behind it, so the break light works, but as expected, it blinds the camera due to the reflections of the plastic housing... LEDs properly placed would probably do the trick... Front NTSC bumper cam to come later when MazdaSpeed frontend installed.

Front mounted Logitech Orbit camera mounted in centerspeaker location (the base for this removeable camera literally pops into the speaker mount like it was made for it...) This little web cam is just a novelty...it is made for close range work, not out the front window, but it does work, and has a utility to pan the camera up and down and left and right about 170 degrees... neat factor good, practicality factor, well kinda low. I do most things just to see if they work and thats it....

Custom status light panel below radio... 5 LEDs, plus I brought out the 2 hidden LEDs everyone has behind the minidisc/tapedeck panel....they are just sitting there lit up all the time behind the plastic, so I desoldered them off the radio board and mounted them flanking my 5 LED array...they are dimmable with the dash lights. L-R: Red PS pwr, Blue MB pwr, White HD, Yellow NTSC camera pwr, Green Wifi status light.

With the GeForce card, I am able to run 800x480 native (the whole reason for going with a PCI card to begin with) and with the Nvidia purevideo drivers, forget trying to use powerDVD, windows media player runs great (even though I hate the interface).

Hymee Scanalyzer livel reports back the OBDII stats, I used it for a hi-speed mountain run keeping an eye on coolant temps, air temps, lambda etc... very entertaining...

Where Rotorgeek had his MB mounted upside down in the 'roof' of the glove box housing, I decided to mount it upside down on the actual car itself...the hacked up glove box door is basically now an access panel with only a USB hub, hard drive and WiFi adapter mounted... It's pretty rube goldberg overall, but it is still a work in progress... now, as expected, I am dealing with heat issues due to the added video card, but with the glove open, there aren't any probs...

Also, out of view is the 2nd 4 port USB hub (1.0 for basic peripheral stuff), and slot load DVD burner, Velcro'ed to the passenger side center tunnel... it is in a housing, which is firewire and USB so I can remove the burner if need be....it does not get in the way in any regard. Slot load DVDs for the win.

I have run a 5 volt circuit off of the Opus 120W powersupply to power the DVD burner as well as supplemental power for the USB 2.0 hub, which powers the XM, GPS, Orbit cam and WiFi... all the high power stuff.

The open ended rectangular cut out you see on Rotorgeek's diamondplate mounting board is for my master power switch, which slides out sideways when removing the panel... that way the switch can stay plugged in and out of the way... When the panel is mounted, the side of the glove box housing blocks the switch from going anywhere. There is also a hidden switch which controls power to the 1, and eventually 2 NTSC cameras.

NOW, what about front ends.... OMG....what a nightmare. I am not even sure I want to start playing with RoadRunner or Centrafuse... that would be a whole life devoted to learning the code and trying to integrate so many different things... I start reading those forums and even being technically minded, it all hurts my brain.

Some pics highlighting some of the aforementioned in next post....

-C

Rotary Rasp

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Pics?

Chamberlin

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Rotary Rasp

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Very nice, good to see you're not using the built in video card in the VIA board. It cannot do widescreen resolutions. How much memory do you have? What size is the hard drive?

Are you using the auto switching function built into the xenarc when viewing the reverse camera?

As far as front ends go, try frodo player and road runner. Those are the best. Some people even use windows XP media center.

Are you doing full shut downs or have you enabled hibernate?

You'll soon learn that you're never really done, there is always more you can/want to do.

Rotary Rasp

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mobile-effects.com

and

mp3car.com

are good resources if you need help.

Chamberlin

iTrader: (1)

Thanks alot Rasp, I definately have been scouring MP3.com for about a year now, but I haven't gone to mobile-effects yet....

Yea, I was really pissed about the VIA onboard video... searched for work around for about a week... and there really isn't one... I am still kinda bummed some of the Xenarc is hidden by the Mazda NAV facia, but it is a small price to pay for the
factory look and integration....
But as far as the poor VIA video goes, I guess it was all for good, as the XFX card is a great DVD solution, as well as being very flexible for resolutions...
I am still trying to get the 'keystone' correction to autostart (for fine tuning the screen dimensions), but it is no biggie. Also, the Xenarc doesn't seem to remember it's posistions sometimes either... have to hit autotune and then make some manual adjustments, and its fine.
I run a 7800GTX solution in my WinXP64 64bit $3000 gaming monstor computer too, I like their software package...

No, I am still doing full shut downs... haven't tried to much with the hibernation yet... or standby...

It has 1Gig single stick of RAM, and a laptop 60GB hard drive. The M1200 and Nehimhia proccesor seems to be running at 666MHz, instead of 1200.... checked the BIOS, but nothing... maybe there is a jumper? Probably runs cooler this way, but I'd like to know if it is something I can change...

No, autoswitching for the rear camera, how does that work? Eventually I will have the rear on AV 1, and a new front cam on AV2.

I have roadrunner installed, but it is not configured or anything...
I was looking into Centrafuse, as it was touted on the phonecontrol homepage,
but it is looking like a lot of work to get phonecontrol to work anyways, so I might jsut forget about bluetooth altogether...

Chamberlin

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Well, bad news, got my car back from the dealer on monday from the recall, and the computer wouldn't boot... it booted once the next day, and then never again...
HD had seized up, and was un-repairable and unrecoverable (except sending it to a data recovery house). SO looks I will buy two new drives, a copy of Norton Ghost 10, and start over! Anyone recommend a good compact low power robust IDE laptop drive in the 80-150 gig range?

-C

Rotary Rasp

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FYI- dont by a laptop drive.

Get a cheap desktop drive.

I paid 60 bucks for my 120gb 7200 8mb buffer WD DESKTOP drive and its been running for 18 months with no problem. When it does crash, I can send it to WD because it's got a 3 year warrenty, or just buy a new one.


Laptop drives cost too much and you really dont know if they are going to last longer.

Not to mention that your system will run a lot faster with a desktop drive.


As far as the computer running at 666mhz, check that the ram is running at full speed. The VIA processors make hardly any heat at full speed so I doubt that you running it at 1/2 power is doing anything but slow you/it down.

Chamberlin

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Rasp - that is good news -thanks! I was just about to bid on a laptop drive, but yea those things are indeed expensive.... I was concerned about shock resistance, but it sounds like that isn't too much of a concern (until the JIC coil overs are installed hahahaha). The only other issue is that a 3.5 drive probably won't fit where I had my 2.5 drive located on the glove door, but that shouldn't be a hard work around, I already have some ideas... Looks like I can get started today on the repairs then!

As far as the core running 666MHz, I will have to look into that... when I go to the standard Windows System info page it did indeed say running at 666MHz so I really want to track down that bug... plus my Catholic self don't like running at such an evil speed

Thanks for all your help Rasp-

-C

Chamberlin

iTrader: (1)

Desktop 120 HD purchased, installed on the backside of the diamond plate, next to the OPUS....everything is pretty much back up and running!!! My DVD video is for some reason a little more stuttery than the last computer, don't know why... same USB DVD pioneer player, newest NVIDIA purevideo drivers etc... I guess there is alot of ironing out to do when you do a clean windows install...to bring things up to speed...thanks again for your help

-C

Chamberlin

iTrader: (1)

Stuttering DVD playback fixed with some De-interlacing adjustments... (why can't Windows Media player have the DVD adjustment tab for Nvidia VIDEO as well as audio!!!... took me a while to find that the stupid Nvidia Icon only comes up in the tray when you are playing a DVD...

Wide angle color IR camera has been ordered, will go in the tail as a reverse camera with IR illumination, current color tail cam will be installed in the front grill on AV2 input!

Working on TV tuner software right now, as the crappy WinDVR software is crap and crashes... Unfortunately, so is the Beyond TV software I am trying out... (Oh, and yes without a diversity antenna, forget TV in your car for the most part...)

Still can't figure out why the EPIA is running at 666 MHz..... are there some physical board jumpers that came off or got changed? I'll see if I can find anything in the .pdf MB manual...

-C