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problems with double din unit

Wesley — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 06:04:02 GMT

hey guys, names Wesley, from south africa, sttumbled on this site while googling my problems that im having with my headunit in my car, hope you guys can help.

so a week ago i bought a chinese headunit,double din touchscreen with all the features, dvd, nav, tv, bluetooth etc.

but im having the following problems with it:

1. Does not play music off the micro sd card for music, the music sort or stops and starts continously, iv tried different things like changing th file systems on the card and trying different cards doesnt help, but the music will play in the navi slot via the windows ce player in the navi.

2. when i play Mp3s off the Usb slot certain songs are heavily distorted at any volume, and the equalizer on the headunit shows all the bars at full. its like the output from the deck is clipping before it reaches the amplification stage, can i somehow access this and adjust this? even with the bass and treble at negative it still distorts, and its not with all songs, its very annoying.

when i play a normal cd off the deck, it plays fine no distortion.

when i play an mp3 disk, i get a little distortion on certain songs.

all this happens at low volume. and my speakers are fine so they are not the cause.

If i play songs off the navi section, no distortion.

what do i do guys? im thinking i should have juts paid twice for a branded deck with half the features, you pay for what you get i guess.

the headunit is solid and well built, its an 'audiobank unit' if that helps

I was thinking maybe the bitrate of the songs may be the problem, as the songs with a high bitrate also seems to be the ones that distort. like 320kb/s. the 128kb/s doesnt distort.

Printers

alancop — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 15:40:37 GMT

Most printers are powered by a power brick that converts AC to DC. The DC voltages that are used can vary wildly, between 5 and 14 Volts. A printer could be usefull in a car under some circumstances, but powering it, like powering your carPC, would be the hardest part.

RRFuelPrices

Enforcer — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:19:51 GMT

Developer Name: Enforcer
Description: Lowest Fuel Prices nearest to you.
Download Link: Enforcer's forum
Thread: http://www.mp3car.com/rr-released-pl...2-03-11-a.html
ScreenShot:

How to get started

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:44:37 GMT

How to get started
1. The quickest way to learn about Car PC's
2. A n00b's guide to mp3car.com
3. MP3Car.com rules of etiquette

-Why you shouldn't double post.*
-Why you'll have a hard time finding anyone to spoon feed you.*
-Why people keep telling you to SEARCH rather than answering your question

4. Don't know how to get started? Try this tutorial by Newbie Jamiks.
5. Here are some books on how to install car PC's.
6. How do I move from newbie to low bitrate?

Using a Laptop or Tablet as a CarPC

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:44:18 GMT

Using a Laptop or Tablet as a CarPC

A laptop or tablet can make a good CarPC. This is partially due to lower power consumption and lower heat generation which are desired qualities for a CarPC. Most laptops possess these qualities and are purpose built to be mobile and efficient. Some laptops are better suited for this use than others, although just about any laptop can be used. There are a few unique challenges to a laptop install that should be addressed before diving in too deep. A highly portable unit will generally be a better choice than a huge desktop replacement type laptop.

One trend that is sure to grow rapidly as performance rises and price drops is to use an ultra portable mini PC; just slip it in its dock and the dock is wired to the car while the screen is in the dash. A really down and dirty way is just to mount it in a way that you just view the ultra portable itself, once transflective screens become more commonplace in these units this will be a good option for some to achieve an install without altering the vehicle much at all.

Choosing a laptop:

Many laptop installs are done with a laptop that the user may already have. However, choosing the right laptop specifically for the install is sometimes an advantage. A Pentium III 1.2GHz will perform similar to a standard via board, it can get the job done if you like the minimalist approach & have a good handle on your running services and optimize your system for the performance you have. They are relatively efficient partially due to their speed step technology.

If you have a choice try to avoid Pentium 4 laptops; this goes for p4m�s as well, they are the least efficient and generate the highest heat levels, and consume large amounts of power, then they also suffer as being more susceptible to being damaged by the heat they do generate, they require high amounts of airflow and large power supplies.

A good high performance choice would be a Pentium M, which is part of the Intel Centrino designation. These processors are very efficient and have some of the highest allowable core temperatures of all processors. They deal with the harsh environment of a vehicle install very well and perform well under the most extreme conditions and are thermally protected. This, combined with speed step throttling and a very efficient design with low power draw makes them a great choice. There are 3 variations of the M chips:

Regular M�s
Low voltage (LV)
Ultra low voltage (ULV)

A 1.2GHz ultra low voltage may sound anemic, but with their 2MB L2 cache and fast front side bus, they are very capable performers, a 1.2GHz ULV will far outperform a common VIA board, it will even outperform a 1.8GHz Pentium 4 while using literally half the power, they generate so little heat that there are laptops that don�t even use a fan with this processor, you can install one of these almost anywhere without worrying about airflow or overheating. Also worth mentioning is the Athalon XP-M�s, another good choice as a mobile processor.

If your budget allows, you can opt to go Core 2 Duo, which is inarguably the best mobile chip available at this time. While this would be considered way overkill by some, the Core 2 Duo�s are efficient enough to actually be an excellent choice There is no processor family available right now that is as efficient. If your goal is to look towards the future and ensure more than enough performance no matter what you throw at it, a Core 2 Duo may be the way to go.

As a general rule, avoid Pentium 4�s , even the Pentium 4 Mobile�s are very inefficient. They use a lot of power and build up excessive heat, add to this the fact that they don�t deal well with the heat they do generate, makes them a poor choice.

Installing the laptop

For as many different laptops as there are out there, there are almost as many different ways to install them. This may be determined in part by your willingness to either partially or even completely take the laptop apart. The easiest way to install a laptop is probably by using a laptop with a docking station, a docking station can usually eliminate the need to disassemble the laptop at all, as the power switch is usually available and easier to access right on the dock itself. This can be an ideal setup if you have thoughts of using the laptop outside of the vehicle on a regular basis, the drawback to this approach is it adds the burden of always making sure you have the laptop or the inconvenience of living without it if you want to just take a quick run to the store or something, this can be less of a problem if you chose to retain a head unit.

The power switch

Short of using a dock, most laptops will require at least partial disassembly to access the power switch. This is necessary to be able to remotely turn the computer on and off. Having to actually go to the laptop and turn it on each time is not desirable or acceptable. This is usually the most intimidating part for most people who are not experienced with disassembling expensive and delicate electronics, but it�s really not that difficult at all on most laptops, this is another area that some laptops are better than others with.

Some laptops with the power button on the area right above the keyboard can be downright easy, this panel is usually easy to remove without getting too intrusive to the assembly of the laptop case. Most laptops that have their power switch on the side of the laptop will be just a bit more difficult, they will usually require separating the lower case completely. Another design that is commonly used is the power switch on the screen bezel, these will require disassembling the bezel of the laptop, which is generally easier than disassembling the lower half.

You will need to extend 2 wires outside of the laptop to be able to control startup and shutdown. Some have been creative in the way to achieve this. One very clean way is to just wire the power switch to the useless regular modem jack. You can then use a telephone wire plugged in to run a remote switch on the dash or just as a way to wire in a startup/shutdown controller. Worse case for the severely electronically challenged, drop it off at any local electronics repair center, you should be able to get a tech to wire the power switch to the modem jack for around $75 give or take.

One alternative to the power switch approach is a wake on ring or wake on lan type setup, but this only works on some boards and reliability can be a bit questionable. If you are dead set against opening the laptop this can be an area to explore for some users.

The lid switch

Another area of concern with a laptop install that will use a complete intact laptop is the LID SWITCH. This switch is what triggers the laptop to shut down, hibernate or stand by depending on the settings within the operating system. Many times it�s enough to just select the �DO NOTHING� option in Windows and sometimes even in the BIOS, but some laptops may still have issues starting up reliably with the lid closed. This lid switch can be disabled if necessary, some may use a tiny pin switch at the joint of the screen hinge, some use magnet switches and some tablets have switches built into the hinge itself for auto rotation.

Custom case mods

If you�re willing to use the laptop as a dedicated CarPC you can choose to disassemble the laptop and remove the screen. You could then remove the keyboard and mouse pad, actually attach a plate and create the ultimate CarPC case. Imagine a CarPC around the size of a thick magazine, install possibilities are widely expanded when a laptop motherboard is chosen. Very unconventional locations can be used with ease. The plate can be the mounting system and brackets can easily be extended off of this plate even before the plate is attached to the lower half of the laptop. A laptop like this can be installed under a dashboard or sometimes behind the glove compartment, in a center console sometimes, ahead of the shifter, sometimes directly in the dash, if you're creative there are other more far out possibilities, like in a headliner or seatback, of course this can also be installed in the trunk too. You should pay attention to airflow and make sure there is enough for the machine you choose.

Laptop, screen and all

There has always been interest in using a laptop screen for a CarPC. Well the absolute BEST way to use a laptop screen is to run it off of the laptop it came with. One major problem with this approach is most laptop screens are not very bright at all and will suffer in the daylight even more than the typical Lilli�s and Xenarcs and really be pretty useless for daytime bright sun use, but, there are exceptions.

A completely integrated and efficient install can be created by embedding an indoor/outdoor screened tablet in your dash, considering the single tablet will include your whole carpc including a transflective screen, motherboard, memory ram and hard drive and operating system this can actually be a pretty cost effective solution too, or at least on par with the alternatives.

This option may work well for those desiring screens of 10.4� and larger, but now even smaller screens are surfacing, like Fujitsu�s new 8.9� widescreen indoor/outdoor tablet. Virtually everything you need for an awesome carpc can be had from one of these tablets, right down to the touch screen and all, but it also is not for everyone to disassemble and install an expensive delicate and beautiful machine such as this, but the end result could be spectacular.

One major problem area in the �screen run off the laptop board� approach is dealing with the ribbon cable, these can be anywhere from not too difficult to totally impossible depending on the actual cable design, but if you're determined enough even an impossible to extend ribbon can be dealt with. Sometimes you may have to have a harness made for you, but there is almost always a solution.

Choosing a Tablet as a CarPC

Using a tablet as a CarPC is a somewhat newer subject and there is far less information available than for other devices, but people have started doing so.
There are many tablets to choose from and hardware varies a great deal:
* some are cheap and the screens do not have very good daylight visibility
* most do not have FM receivers
* many do not have 3g data, just WiFi

Choose carefully!

I will speak from experience for the rest of this post and welcome edits as those with more information choose to add it.

Barnes and Noble Nook Color
I am using a removable Nook Color which has been rooted and runs CyanogenMod 7 (nightly): this adds Bluetooth, overclocking and far more control of the device than the stock operating system. (Note that CM7 is under very active development on the NC and changes most days as of 29 March 2011.)

For Navigation I use a Droid cell phone with Wireless Tether for data and TetherGPS for GPS location on the Nook Color's 7" screen.
For music there is a headphone jack which can be connected to a headunit's aux jack or to amp inputs. (Not yet tested)
*Streaming music over bluetooth may also be possible but note that the Nook Color bluetooth has very short range. Other devices may not have this limitation.

There are quite a few car-oriented applications available in the Android Market and one may suit your needs. The interface itself is already more car-friendly than Windows or Linux, being based on cell phones, and Honeycomb (and CyanogenMod 7) will be more so once it is widely available.

The Nook Color is a good choice NOW for a CarPC that is, admittedly, limited to fairly basic desires, but the near future should see it extended to be even more versatile, especially if a removable device is desired.

Android tablets in general are an excellent choice but use care when selecting one! Most of the inexpensive ones do NOT have good screens and may not have a strong developer community improving them beyond the manufacturer's intentions.

CarPC 101 Video

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:43:58 GMT

CarPC 101 Video

Video created by Bugbyte

ASIO VST Plug-in Method with KX Project Compatible Sound Card

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:43:38 GMT

ASIO VST Plug-in Method with KX Project Compatible Sound Card

What You Need

How To

Foobar Output

Select KS 0/1 output for the best result (because it bypasses the windows KMixer). DS 0/1 will work too.

KS = Kernel Streaming

DS = DirectSound

Foobar Resampling to 48khz: Whitout resampling playback will fail. KX drivers only work at 48khz in DSP mode.

KX will record in ASIO everything that is coming from the FXBus 0/1

KX ASIO Configuration

Select 170ms latency as we don’t care about latency for playback and some VST plug-ins are more accurate with larges chunks of data.

8+8 means 8 inputs channels and 8 outputs channels.

Console Audio I/O Configuration

Select only the I/O channels you need for better performance.

Warning:

Input or Output 1 and 2 in Console are 0/1 in KX.

Console Routing example:

KX Master Volume and gain

The last step involves applying a Master Volume and gain to the outputs then connect everything to the K2LT. The Master Volume part is very important because it is the only control we have over the volume (when using Kernel Streaming). Implementing it at the last step will prevent any delay. If it is implemented at the first step (before ASIO recording), there is a very annoying 170ms delay. Fixed negative gains prevent any clipping of the card preamp.

Article written by BenOBS

Everything You Need to Know About Your Lilliput

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:43:20 GMT

Manufacture
Lilliput

Where to buy
http://store.mp3car.com/Monitors_and...reens_s/21.htm.

8" Lilliput (809GL-80NP/C/T)
Measurements and Internal Pictures

Monitor: Height 6 3/8" (162mm) x Width 8 1/16"(204mm) x Depth 1 1/2" (39mm)
LCD Panel: Height 5 1/2" (141mm) x Width 7 3/16"(183mm) x Depth 1/2" (14mm)

Update Your Drivers

Download the drivers here or here.

Power consumption measurements and tech info

Troubleshooting tips:

Ensure the DIN connector is fully plugged in.
Try pinching/squeezing DIN connector (bad ground connection)
Auto adjust
Set refresh rate to 75Hz or higher to stop flickering
Order a replacement ribbon cable (aka flexible printed cable) from www.digitalww.com.
Ensure wires soldered to board
Despite what the specs say on many of the auctions and even on the Lilliput website, the 618 and 619 do NOT support reverse X-axis or reverse y-axis (i.e. - to emulate a mirror or make image upside down). This is an error in their documentation.
The 'USB' port on the side of the monitor isn't actually USB, it just looks like it. It's a special plug to give access to the auxiliary inputs (like RCA).
The RCA audio-in only works when you're in one of the RCA video-in modes, not in VGA. You can't use it as a small PC speaker while in VGA mode.
If you have no power going to your Lilliput (eg. led doesn't even light up)either the eggs is faulty up - power it from your power supply; or the smaller ribbon cable is not aligned correctly, it needs to be positioned all the way to the right if the screen is facing up.
If you have a white screen - the larger ribbon cable is not in all the way/correctly
If you broke of the retention clip for the ribbon cable use tape/hotglue/toothpick method
If the colors are off (eg my screen had a bluish tint to it) check the soldered connections on the board, or check to see if the pins on the din connector are bent; check the color settings on the lilliput menu.

Power Tips/Issues

Auto-Power On Tutorial
If you're not good with soldering, you can try this method also.
Auto-power on and technical info:Auto-Power
Power your Lilliput from your computer power supply
The "Barrel plug" for your Lilliput is an "M" size one at Radio Shack... 5.5mm OD 2.1mm ID (274-1569 @ Radio Shack). You can also purchase it here
Lilliput 5-in-1 White Dongle Cable for 8" Lilliput Screens
Lilliput 2-in-1 VGA+USB cable
Sumicomm/Xenarc/Lilliput/Commell/IWill Case Power Cable

Powering your Lilliput from your Opus

You can power the Lilliput monitor directly from the Opus's regulated +12V output without going through the car cigarette adapter. Run two wires (18 AWG) from the Lilliput to the Opus. At the monitor end of the wire, solder a barrel plug ("M" size... 5.5mm OD 2.1mm ID) that fits into the monitor's DC in jack. At the Opus end, solder the wires into a Y power splitter (+ve to yellow and -ve to black) - the one that has a female connector that plugs into the Opus 4-pin power connector for hard disks and splits into 4-pin hard disk power connectors. This way you can disconnect the wire if you need to bring the PC into the house.

The tricky part is getting the polarity right. Measure the voltage at the barrel plug BEFORE plugging it into the Lilliput. The center connector (tip) should be +ve and the outer connector should be -ve.

Inputs

SVGA
RCA Composite
VGA

If you want to extend the video/touchscreen breakout cable (the one that gives you your VGA plug), use a "9 Pin Mini-Din" cable. This may also be referred to as a 'bus mouse extension cable'. Don't confuse this with a normal PS/2 keyboard or mouse extension cable, they don't have enough pins and have a different shape inside.

Taking It Apart

Remove the four screws on back
There are four clips in the plastic housing. 2 on top, 2 on bottom, just apply pressure to the top and use something like a credit card (not a screw driver, it'll chew your casing up) to pry it apart. Take your time, and be patient, basically you don't want to rip the wiring apart when it pops open, once you get the top the bottom will come loose much easier.
After you have the casing open you'll notice 4 small tabs holding the LCD, take a screw driver and loosen the screws, turn the tabs and the LCD will come loose.
As far as the ribbon cables go, for those that haven't encountered connections like these, don't just pull them out. You'll notice on the connector a little collar this needs to be popped up, (only on the housing button panel) once you slide the collar up the cable will be very easy to pull out.
The ribbon cable on the back of the LCD has a different connector, basically it has a little plastic piece that pivots up to release the ribbon cable use a small flat head screwdriver to gentle pry this up.

Important: Both kinds of ribbon cable connectors are delicate and easy to break so know how they release before trying anything. And NEVER try to force them.
Now your LCD is basically free
To get the circuit board out you'll see the four small screws like you removed from the back of the case

Remove those NOT the silver screws (those hold the USB control board on).
After you get the circuit board free you'll notice that the 9 pin connector can't be remove from the case.
Don't be scared, make a wiring diagram. This is quite possibly one of the easiest soldering jobs out there.

Note the wires, peel off the hot glue, desolder pull the cable out of the housing, re-solder and hot glue them back in place to hold them in place.
Now both the LCD and circuit board are free.

NOTE: Don't go crazy when you power the Lilliput and nothing happens, just re-seat the ribbon cables, in specific the wide one is a bit tricky to get reseated properly.

Lilliput 8" 9-pin Cable Wiring Diagram

Lilliput 619 (7") Screen Wiring Diagram

Cutting out the 9 pin din connector on a 619

Connect Orange to Blue, and Blue to Orange
Connect Brown to Purple, and Purple to Brown
Green and ground are correct
All touch wires are also correct

Replacing the IR Sensor

If you break off your sensor, you can replace it with Radio Shack Part # 2760640 38MHZ IR Receiver Module. cost was $3.69

Article written by hevnsnt, bambooracer, Chairboy, studmonk3y, blackpacu, Anointed, gospeed.racer, NoTicketsPlease.

What is the Best GPS Reciever

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:43:02 GMT

What is the best GPS receiver?

Do you mean best, or most popular?

Nearly all of the GPS receivers work reasonably well. Main differences come from speed to initial lock, ability to log where you've been, sensitivity to GPS signals, etc. Many users use the Rikaline and BU-303 models with great success. Here is a thread that compares recievers side by side:

http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/gps/47774-gps-receiver-tests-by-www-pocketgps-co-uk.html

Everything (Almost) You Want to Know About GPS

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:42:45 GMT

A basic guide to GPS on your PC.

Note that this is not comprehensive but perhaps this will get you started.

What do I need to get GPS on my CarPc?

Aside from the PC, you need

GPS receiver/antenna
Software

How does a typical GPS installation work?

It's very simple. You plug the GPS receiver into your computer. Many GPS's use the serial port, some use the USB port. There may be a driver you have to install. You then configure your Navigation software to let it know where the receiver is and you should be ready to go.

More detail:

Some USB GPS receivers simply route the GPS information over to your PC's com port so the GPS APPEARS to be a serial GPS. They do this by installing a small driver known as a USB-serial port bridge. You can then set the com port by right clicking My Computer--> Properties --> Device Manager. Look under the serial port entry and you'll find the serial port bridge (if it installed correctly). Click on driver and then advanced and you can set the com port to the port you would like. You then set that corresponding serial port in your navigation software and the the receiver should work.

Things to consider for automotive GPS are:

Interface

Many of the map applications were not designed with mobile car use in mind and thus their interface is intended to work with mouse/trackpad and keyboard inputs. In a car environment, this makes them more difficult to use. Some of the applications come with software development kits and members of this forum have built specialized interfaces for them that are more suitable for the car. Mapmonkey is one that puts a front end on Destinator 3.
Turn by turn directions

Any good mobile navigation package should give you turn by turn directions. This means that it tracks your position as you drive and alerts you to upcoming turns, exits, etc. Most of them will do so with voice and via some type of display on screen.
Ability to embed in a frontend

The ability to embed your nav program in your front end software (the software that most of us use to control music, video, navigation, etc.) may or may not be important to you. Programs like Centrafuse and Road Runner give you the option of embedding the navigation application in their software so that when you launch it from the frontend, it appears in the context of that frontend, still allowing you to control music volume, etc.
Points of Interest (POI's)

POI's are what they sound like. Things like gas stations, ATM's, restaurants, etc. The more POI's, the better, especially if you're nowhere near home. POI's often include telephone numbers so you can call and make a hotel reservation, etc.
Views

All nav software will give you an overhead "map" view of where you are. Most will give you a choice to autorotate that view so that the top of the map is in the same direction as you are traveling. The map rotates as you turn to keep up with your position. You can usually shut this feature off as well. Some programs offer a "3D" view that is closer to what you see out the window. Go to the web site to view screen shots of this feature.
Mapping

Most all of the nav programs use maps from just one or two service providers (Navteq is one) so accuracy of maps, while they differ, usually isn't that big a deal. However, some programs (Destinator) divide up the maps into regions and you must load a new map set when you cross over into that region. This makes planning of routes across regions impossible. Other programs don't do this and you can easily plan a coast to coast trip.
Routing

It's a computer and it will do stupid things because of that. One shouldn't substitute the computer route for common sense. You'll need to check to make sure it hasn't put you on some ridiculous routing because you picked "shortest" instead of "quickest". The ability to designate certain roads to avoid or certain roads to prefer is important. If you are taking a meandering tourist-like trip, you may end up fighting with your software to route it. Delorme's Street Atlas is my software and has two choices "quickest" or "shortest". Even designating specific waypoints along the route, it will defer to quickest or fastest. Often, I've put in a route that it stubbornly insists the "best" choice is to backtrack for several miles, even when I know there is a better way to go.
Rerouting

This is a great feature, particularly when you miss the turn. The software recalculates from where you are and points you in the proper direction by recalculating your route.

What should I look for in GPS software?

Some of the current GPS programs avaliable are listed below. Some are better for European use while others are better for U.S. use. Popular software for the PC are:

Windows Based

Destinator
- Pros
  - Intergrates with Centrafuse well
  - Can use MapMonkey
  - Is being developed for PC
  - 3D view
  - Easy POI (point of intrest) finding
  - Map zooms in and out with speed
  - Voice guided directions
  - Works great with USB GPS on resume from hibernation
  - TS (touchscreen) friendly
  - Auto rotates map
  - OSK (on screen keyboard)
  - Great European Maps
- Cons
  - Requires some "hacking", and buying the software and SDK, so it can be a bit expensive.
  - Some say has bad routing.
  - POI is a bit outdated, no street names in 3d mode, maps are broken into regions, so no cross country routing.
  - Requires you to "switch maps" which are essentially regions. In the US you have the West coast, East coast, Canada, mid-West, Southeast, Southwest, ect. and you can only have one up at a time so you can only route within your current loaded map.
  - Integrates one step further than any other GPS application so far.
  - Centrafuse (CF) was made with the intention of putting Destinator3 in it , where as the other apps just embed.
iGuidance
- Pros
  - Can route across whole country
  - 3D view with street names
  - Touch screen friendly
  - Intergrates with Centrafuse well
  - Can use NaviVoice to talk to your GPS
  - Routing is good
  - Voice guided directions
  - OSK
- Cons
  - POI DB is a bit confusing, and or limited
  - Has issues with USB GPS and resuming (routis launcher fixed most of it).
  - There is a Beta iGuidance skinning application on the forums by 0l33l
For more info on iGuidance see this thread and the Skinbedder forum
Delorme Street Atlas USA
- Pros
  - Decent maps
  - Voice guided turn by turn directions
  - Voice control of interface
  - POI Radar
  - Good POI database
  - Auto rotating map
  - Special high contrast "mobile" mode that helps with sunny environments
- Cons
  - Interface is not touchscreen friendly with very small tabs and buttons
  - No OSK
  - Can be difficult to integrate into a front end because of the way it names its windows
  - No 3d view
CoPilot
- Pros
  - Good maps
  - OSK
  - 3D view
  - Zooms in on turns when approaching
  - Driver safety view that places next run/distance in large text when over 10mph
- Cons
  - Does not embed in front end software (although there is a menu setting to allow you to keep the taskbar visible to enable switching to another application)
  - Auto-complete for street names not as good as others
  - Expensive
  - Odd movement of cursor and map
Microsoft Streets and Trips
- Pros
  - Great POI Database
  - Has the ability to update construction zones via internet
  - Great maps
  - Auto rotates map
  - Great trip planning
  - Calculates gas stops based on MPG of your car, etc.
  - One of the best at showing the "breadcrumb" trail where your car has been
- Cons
  - Not touchscreen friendly
  - Small text
  - No turn by turn voice guided directions
  - No 3D view
  - Trouble intergrating it into Centrafuse
  - No OSK
  - Requires you to manually start the GPS tracking each time the program is launched
  - No way to change bright map colors, making it wash out in sun
Microsoft MapPoint
- Pros
  - Fully programmable
  - Can be used to build custom mapping applications
  - Accepts plug-ins
- Cons
  - Not as many features as Streets & Trips
  - For all intents and purposes, MapPoint is identical to Streets & Trips. However, MapPoint is aimed at businesses and professional application that require customized mapping solutions. It can be programmed to do any number of things including driving fully customized navigation applications. However, as a standalone navigation program, it is not really intended to compete with some of the other products.

Macintosh Based

Route 66
Windows GPS applications listed above, using VirtualPC emulator

PDA Based

Tom Tom Go for PocketPC and Palm. Does not run on Windows platform

OEM (Original Equipment Manufature) GPS

Many cars come with GPS antennas already installed in the car. It is possible to tap into an OEM antenna and use it for your car PC. These involve a separate GPS module (serial or USB) that have an external antenna. A thread on how to connect to an OEM GPS is here. These have the advantage of having a external waterproof antenna, i.e. the stock Audi or BMW Sharkfin, and the modules are quite often better at obtaining locks. A few members who used the Garmin 15L (low voltage) OEM module on this site have shared some of their information to make a RF solutions one. Other modules are available and there is also the possibility of new dead reckoning systems from companies such as Tyco Electronics. A little bit of electronics work is needed to convert the TTL output to serial level and to provide a battery backup and power to the reciever but this is quite simple.

Compact Flash (CF) Receivers

There are also CF type receivers that can plug into your PDA's Compact Flash slot, or your PC's PCMCIA slot with an adapter. CF is same as PCMCIA only smaller. They can come with an external waterproof antenna. Some have observed that a PDA seems to gets a lock much much faster than the PC with a CF GPS in it.

Article written by BugByte

Embeding Windows XP

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:42:26 GMT

"Embedding" Windows XP

Late last year (2004), I started investigating how to implement certain features of XP Embedded into XP Pro in order to make an installation that could run off of a Compact Flash card. This page gives details on what I found. Particularly on how to use the Enhanced Write Filter (EWF), MinLogon, and Hibernate Once, Resume Many features from XPe in order to create a more robust and faster OS for my CarPC.

The first step in preparing a CF install is to download the XPe SP2 trial from Microsoft’s MSDN site here. The install will create a network share on your system called ‘Repositories’. This is where all the XPe components are stored.

MinLogon

This is an optional component and is not necessary for running XP from a CompactFlash card, but it has been shown to improve boot time. Search the repositories for the latest version of minlogon.exe and transfer it to the PC.

First go to your Windows\System32 directory and rename the file winlogon.exe to winlogon.exe.bak.
Copy the minlogon.exe file to the Windows\System32 directory renaming it winlogon.exe.
If Windows File Protection comes up warning you about changing the file just cancel the dialog and continue.

Make sure that the new MinLogon file isn’t replaced by Windows File Protection!
Next import the following registry entries by creating a text file called ‘minlogon.reg’. Edit the file and enter the following text:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"Config"=dword:00000017
Save the file and then merge it into the registry by double-clicking on it. Double-check the registry to make sure the entries were entered properly.
Reboot the system.

As long as you entered everything properly the system will boot into XP using the System account. The first time you boot up it’ll prepare the user settings for the System account so it’ll take a bit longer than usual. Once that is done, go ahead and reboot again to make sure everything is working properly. If you find that it doesn’t fit your needs then just restore the original WinLogon.

EWF

Now that MinLogon is working properly you can go ahead and set up EWF. Before you do so, make sure you disable the Paging File by right-clicking on ‘My Computer’, clicking the ‘Advanced’ tab, clicking the ‘Performance’ button, clicking the ‘Change’ button in the ‘Virtual memory’ section, and selecting ‘No paging file’. You’ll also want to disable System Restore, again by right-clicking on ‘My Computer’, selecting the ‘System Restore’ tab, and checking ‘Turn off System Restore’. One bug I’ve found is that booting with EWF, XP always brings up the recovery options at boot up. We can disable this by deleting the ‘bootstat.dat’ file under the Windows directory. You’ll need to search the Repositories directory again for 3 files:

ewf.sys
ewfntldr
ewfmgr.exe

Make sure you get the latest versions.

Rename the ntldr file on your root drive to ntldr.bak.
Move the ewfntldr file to your root renaming it ntldr.
Move ewfmgr.exe to your Windows\System32 folder.
Move ewf.sys to your Windows\System32\drivers folder.
Create a text file called ‘ewf.reg’ and enter the following text:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOpt imizeFunction]
"Enable"="N"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\OptimalLayout]
"EnableAutoLayout"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\FileSystem]
"NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters]
"EnablePrefetcher"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager]
BootExecute=""

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\R oot\LEGACY_EWF]
"NextInstance"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\R oot\LEGACY_EWF\0000]
"Service"="EWF"
"Legacy"=dword:00000001
"ConfigFlags"=dword:00000020
"Class"="LegacyDriver"
"ClassGUID"="{8ECC055D-047F-11D1-A537-0000F8753ED1}"
"DeviceDesc"="EWF"
"Capabilities"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\R oot\LEGACY_EWF\0000\Control]
"ActiveService"="EWF"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\ewf]
"ErrorControl"=dword:00000001
"Group"="System Bus Extender"
"Start"=dword:00000000
"Type"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\{71A27CDD-812A-11D0-BEC7-08002BE2092F}]
"UpperFilters"="Ewf"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\ewf\Parameters\Protected\Volume0]
"Type"=dword:00000001
"ArcName"="multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1) "
Pay special attention to the last entry, ArcName. That points to the volume you want protected. This script will default to the first partition of the master drive on the primary IDE controller. As long as you have your CF card as the master drive on the primary IDE controller you’ll be fine.
The first few entries are optimizations for EWF enabled systems. We’ve disabled automatic defrag as well as prefetch for instance, to minimize disk writes. I also included a tweak to disable the NTFS last access file timestamp. In case you use NTFS on your system you don’t want the OS constantly updating timestamps for files you access, creating unnecessary disk writes.
Now, save the file. Before you merge it you need to alter the permissions on one registry key. In regedit, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\R oot. Right-click on Root and click ‘Permissions’. Set ‘Everyone’ to have Full Control and then merge the file by double-clicking on it. Like you did for MinLogon, ensure that all values were entered properly and then reset the Root key permissions to the way they were before.
Reboot the system.

Once the system boots, pull up a command line and run “ewfmgr n:” where ‘n’ is the letter of the protected drive (typically ‘c’). The output should be similar to this:

Protected Volume - Configuration

Type - RAM (REG)

State - ENABLED

Boot Command - NO_CMD

Param1 - 0

Param2 - 0

Volume ID - 87 0B 88 0B 00 7E 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

Device Name - "\Device\HarddiskVolume1" [C:]

Max Levels - 1

Clump Size - 512

Current Level - 1

Memory used for data 1294336 bytes

Memory used for mapping 4096 bytes

If instead you get an error stating that no EWF volume could be found, pull up the Registry Editor and recheck your settings, make sure that ewf.sys is in the System32\drivers directory, unplug any other hard drives, and restart. Ewfmgr gives you some important information about your protected volume and tells you how much RAM your overlay is taking up. That’s an important factor to keep in mind: the more changes you make to your protected volume, the more RAM it’ll take up until you finally run out of memory. So be careful what you do to your system with EWF running. Here are two important commands to remember:

ewfmgr c: -commitanddisable –live

- This will immediately disable EWF and commit all changes to the volume.

ewfmgr c: -enable

- This will enable EWF on the next boot up.

The typical process for making persistent changes to your volume is to run the commitanddisable command, make your changes, run the enable command, and restart.

“Hibernate Once, Resume Many” (HORM)

If you’ve got hibernation support enabled in your system this basically allows you to hibernate your system just once and always resume from that same hibernation state every time you boot up. This minimizes writes to the CF card and improves boot and shutdown times. All it takes is a simple file called “resmany.dat” on the root of your drive. Just create a simple textfile and rename it. When it’s present on the root drive, the EWF NTLDR knows not to reset the hibernation file like it normally would so you never have to re-hibernate unless you specifically need to. If you decide you don’t want to resume from hibernation just hit F8 while the system is booting to delete the restoration data and boot up normally. The hibernation process bypasses EWF so there’s no need to disable it when you hibernate. Make sure to disable EWF when you create the ‘resmany.dat’ file. Most likely you’ll have an external drive containing your MP3’s. Microsoft recommends setting the hibernation point without any other hard drives plugged into the system. The reason being that if the write cache still has data in it when you hibernate, every time you resume that data will be in the write cache and could potentially corrupt your partition. XP will automatically detect any new drives that are attached to the system so once you set the hibernation point you can leave your drives plugged in.

Deployment

You want to get your XP installation as small as possible so that it can fit onto a CF card. I recommend using nLite. Most likely you’ll have to choose between a 512MB or 1GB card. Do some research and try to find the fastest CF card you can afford. I’ve only used SanDisk Ultra II, Extreme, and Extreme III cards. Keep in mind that if you plan on using hibernation, your space requirements will increase by the amount of RAM you install in the system. So if you’ve got an XP installation that takes up 320MB and you’ve got a 256MB stick of RAM you’ll use up about 576MB of space. You’ll need to get a 1GB card, but if you don’t need hibernation you can make do with a 512MB card and save some money. You’ll also need to buy a CF-IDE adapter. Do a search on Google and you’ll find quite a few different adapters out there. The cheaper adapters out there may not support the faster speeds of the SanDisk cards. I’ve used adapters from acscontrol.com and logicsupply.com. The best way to go about this is to first set up your system on a regular hard drive. Load up all your drivers, 3rd party tools, make configuration changes, and of course install EWF and MinLogon. Once you’re happy with the system you need to initialize your CF card. Microsoft recommends using a FAT file system to improve the performance of EWF and minimize writes to the drive. You may have no choice depending on the type of CF card you get. Off-the-shelf CF cards come configured as removable drives and can only be formatted as FAT. Windows XP will not allow you to partition and format a removable drive with NTFS, so you must use FAT. You can sometimes get a special utility from the manufacturer to configure the drive to be fixed. XPe includes a special tool called Bootprep.exe that is used to make FAT formatted disks able to boot into Windows XP. To setup a CF disk using FAT you’ll need a DOS boot disk with fdisk.exe, format.com, and bootprep.exe.

Start by installing your CF card as the master drive on the primary controller and your hard drive on the secondary controller.
Boot into Dos and partition your disk, then format it using the command “format c: /s”. This will set the disk to boot into Dos. Do this first to make sure your BIOS and CF card are set up correctly. Reboot, and if all goes well the system will boot into Dos from the CF disk. If not then you need to check your BIOS settings.
Once you’ve confirmed that your CF card boots successfully, reformat the card by just using “format c:” (no /s switch) and then finally run Bootprep. The command for Bootprep is “bootprep /dc” (the /d switch specifies which drive to use).

If you are using a fixed disk and plan to use NTFS then just simply use Windows Disk Management to partition the drive and format it.

Now you are ready to copy your XP install over. Use whatever method you prefer, whether it’s booting into Knoppix, Dos, or another XP installation. Just make sure that you copy all hidden and system files and keep the attributes intact.

Once the transfer is done connect your CF card to your system, remove all other hard drives, and boot up. As long as all the files were copied over properly it’ll start booting into your XP install just as it did from the hard drive. Once the system boots up take a look around and make sure everything is working right. Bring up a console and check that EWF is running. If you’re going to be making significant changes to the system you may want to consider doing it on the hard drive first and then redeploying to the CF disk that way you can clean out log files, temp directories, and any other leftover junk that’ll take up precious space on your CF disk.

Article written by SFiorito

Discussion thread for these instructions can be found here

Getting Started With CarPCs

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:42:05 GMT

Getting started in the Car PC hobby

Car PC's are custom installations. Beyond the basics of ensuring that a car PC is installed safely, there is no 'right' way to do it. Some hobbyist prefer their installs to appear as if they came from the factory while others don't care if there is a tangled mess of wires strewn across the dashboard. It's all up to your personal preference.

This means a considerable amount of research and planning must be undertaken by the hobbyist to solve specific problems associated with placing a computer in a mobile environment.

Below is a list of things that a carputer can (possibly) do. This list is by nature never complete.

Why would anyone want a computer in their vehicle?

The answer can be summed up in one word: convenience

This may seem contradictory, considering that computers require a good deal of maintenance in order to maintain stability. There are software updates, new hardware, the occasional system crash, and other aspects of computing that make it far from convenient. The goal of every vehicle computing hobbyist is to minimize the need for all of these, and there are a variety of approaches to do so.

The convenience comes in when you have a centralized system for all the functionality you want from your PC, as opposed to multiple gadgets for each function. A single PC can provide music file playback, DVD playback, satelite radio, GPS navigation, diagnostic information from the vehicle (usuall OBD-II), internet access and hands-free cellphone operation. In order to achieve all that with individual products, you'd need a high-end audio/video system, a GPS system, a satellite radio receiver, a scan tool for diagnostics, and a device capable of internet access such as a PDA or a laptop. The PC will usually be cheaper than all the gadgetry involved for all that functionality, not to mention you'll have central control of all the functions, ideally through a safe driver-friendly interface.

Show cars are increasingly using computer control for many systems, including operation of mechanical systems such as power windows and locks, actuators to open hatches or doors, and so on.

One of the favorite responses among CarPC hobbiests when asked what ll they can do with their CarPC:

Anything you can do with a desktop computer can be done with a vehicle computer.

The only limits to what you could have your carPC do are in your own imagination.

Typical system

A typical Carputer system is composed of four parts:

Machine
- Laptops / Notebooks
- Apple / Macintosh
- Windows
- Linux
- DOS
Displays
Interface Hardware
Power

Machine

The machine is the heart of a carputer system. Based on budget, enthusiasts can easily incorporate and install essentially any computer. Back in 1999 - when hardware prices were still pretty high and laptops were thousands of dollars, the first carputer systems were based on hardware such as 233 MHz desktops. Prices have come down so much on small form motherboards that even those on a budget can build a small machine for little money. There is a growing market of used carputer hardware for sale - which helps the beginner afford a system and learn the ropes.

In 2007, many carputers run at CPU speeds in excess of 2 GHz. Typical memory varies from 512MB to 1GB. As always, performance and flexibility will be a function of the available processor and memory resources.

However, there is a point of diminishing returns here. As a user, you will need to ask yourself if that 3.4GHz Hyper Threaded processor is going to gain you any benefit in the car. You will have to figure out how to cool it adequately and how to power it since CarPC power supplies are not all that powerful at this time.

The machine can run on any platform including Apple / Macintosh, Windows, Linux, or even DOS.

Displays

You have to be able to command your carputer system. Preferably, this process should be as easy as possible. Initial carputers (pre-2000) typically used LCD or VFD character displays to interface and play music. Commands were typically sent to the carputer by means of a keyboard. Not far after the initial advent of the carputer, many people started using a wireless serial port remote to control their machines. This was about the time that small TV screens became affordable. The majority of the first (affordable) carputer screens were RCA video input only, not VGA input. To learn about the differences between VGA and RCA screens, please see this FAQ.

This awkward phase of sub-par display devices was frustrating to the carputer community. Users had difficulty justifying $1000+ for a VGA Touchscreen, and for the most part, screens that nice were rare or just unavailable. Modern screens are leaps and bounds better than those of just a few years ago.

The most common modern-day screen that people use is the 7 inch VGA touch screen. One of the issues that still make these screens less than ideal is daytime visibility. Now even solutions to this problem are surfacing. There are transflective options as well as other enhanced screen options. This is sure to improve at a rapid pace as the demand for more viewable daytime screens increases.

Interface Hardware

In addition to the touchscreens, many other options exist to interact with a CarPC in a manner that does not distract the driver from the most important task - keeping the car on the road.

Wireless keyboards are commonly used in the CarPC environment to manage and maintain the system.

Other alternatives for control involve the use of either IR or RF connected remote controls for hands-only, driving-friendly control.

Another notable mention, although technically a software more than hardware, but a very versatile & popular interface option is Girder, which will allow almost unlimited control integration of hardware to software control. It will allow you to custom program a remote control, or integrate many different possibilities of hardware button controls, from a custom built button interface using anything from a keyboard matrix to a simple keypad. Girder is worth checking out if you are after custom controls.

Power

Once you have your machine and your displays a long with all of the other gadgets that you want for your carputer you will need some way to power it.

It all comes down to two options:

A power inverter
A DC-DC power supply

Your car's battery puts off 12 volts of DC electricity. Computers natively utilize DC power as well. Because most computers are used in the home or office, they must be able to convert the electricity that comes out of the wall (which is AC curent) to DC current. This is where you will need a power inverter to convert the DC current from the car to AC current that the computers power supply can utilize. Then the computer power supply converts the AC power back into DC power so that the computer components can utilize it. In short, if you choose to use a standard computer without a CarPC specific power supply you will need a DC-AC inverter.

Your other option is to use a DC-DC power supply (such as a M2-ATX) which will allow you to connect the 12 volt DC power from your car to your computer. Most DC-DC power supplies have other features such as an ignition switch which will turn your computer on when your car is started and will send a signal to go through a soft shut-down process or put the computer into stand-by or hibernation. Most of these DC-DC power supplies also incorporate an amplifier turn-on signal which is timed to not send a turn-on signal until the CarPC has alredy started the boot-up process. This feature is usually configured to prevent amplifier turn-on thump which can not only be very annoying, but can also damage your speakers.

To learn more about the various DC-DC power supplies, you can read in this fourm: PSUs. You can also purchase many of these power supplies here on our very own MP3Car.com store.

Considerations in Choosing Hardware

Space Availability
There is a limited amount of space available in any vehicle for installation of any additions. For a computer installation, "smaller is better" is the general rule. The smaller form factors of motherboards and systems make popular choices for vehicle installations. Not only for space, but for power requirements and for heat generation.
- Pico-ATX
  
  Pico-ITX motherboards are new to the market and are now the smallest motherboard avaliable on the market. With a form factor of only 4.5" X 3.3" (10cm x 7.2cm) these boards are ideal for vehicles with little space. You can read up on this form factor here
- Nano-ITX
  
  Nano-ITX motherboards are another small form factor. As with all small-sized electronics, they are more expensive. Due to the limitations of the small size, they are also lower in computing power compared to a typical desktop PC. Nano-ITX motherboards measure 4.8" X 4.8"(12cm X 12cm). You can read up on this form factor here
- Mini-ITX
  
  Mini-ITX motherboards are small enough to fit in a standard DIN-sized dash opening. Via makes a range of motherboards with built-in CPUs that range in speed from 600mhz to 1.5Ghz. There are also models that will accommodate a P4 CPU. They measure a little less than 6.7" X 6.7" (17cm X 17cm). You can read up on this form factor here.
- Micro-ATX
  
  Micro-ATX motherboards are designed to mount in a case designed for its larger ATX counterpart, yet still be smaller in size. The official specification calls for a maximum size for 9.6" X 9.6" (24.4cm X 24.4cm), although many are not as large as the maximum specification. Micro-ATX motherboards exist for any CPU manufactured.
- Flex-ATX
  
  Flex-ATX motherboards are an addendum to the micro-ATX standard. They will mount to a full-size ATX case, but the specification calls for a maximum size of 9" X 7.5" (22.9cm X 19.1cm). Like Micro-ATX motherboards, there are models to accommodate any CPU on the market.
- Shuttle
  
  Shuttle brand motherboards and PCs do not fall into any of the form factors above. They utilize their own mounting scheme for motherboards and cases. There are Shuttle models that are compatible with every CPU manufactured. A Shuttle form factor motherboard measures just under 8" X 8" (20.3cm X 20.3cm). It is important to note that Shuttle also manufactures motherboards in other form factors such as MicroATX and ATX.
Heat Dissipation

Heat is the enemy of all electronics. Keeping a computer cool is necessary in order to keep it stable and trouble-free. Computer components generate heat that must be be removed from the general vicinity of the component(s). Generally, lower-power hardware generate less heat, but it still must be dealt with to ensure stable, reliable operation.
Power Consumption

There is a limited amount of electrical power available in a vehicle and there is a limited amount of power avaliable through the currently avaliable DC-DC power supplies. As such, the amount of power drawn by the PC must not overload the vehicle electrical system or DC-DC power supply so that the important systems of the vehicle will be able to operate.
Computing Power

Every task a computer performs utilizes CPU cycles and memory. The faster the CPU goes through the cycles, the faster the task will be performed. For a vehicle installation, the CPU needs to be able to perform all of the processing tasks required in the vehicle. Some tasks, such as DVD playback and video recording, require a good deal of CPU speed, while other tasks such as music play back and internet access do not.

One of the more common motherboards used in vehicle installations, the EPIA M10000 by Via, has a 1Ghz C3 CPU and is adequate for most vehicle tasks.

Obviously, faster CPUs will result in faster performance.

Other Aspects of a Carputer Install

Sound

Most motherboards include on board sound. They can range from 2 channel up to 8 channels depending on the motherboard. Some include SPDIF (COAX or Toslink optical out) as well. You can however upgrade your sound card to achieve better sound results or to do features that on board sound cannot do. You should plan ahead and figure out if you only 2 channel, 4 channel, 5 channel, or more depending on how you want to control the speakers in your car. A common question that arises is:
Should I use onboard sound or an upgraded PCI or external soundcard?

System Features

NOTE:

Some of the features/ideas below may be illegal to run while a vehicle is in operation. Users should always check current local laws regrading proper use of their systems.

Music

Play music from CDs, hard drive (MP3s, other compressed files) or external device (USB/PCI FM radio receiver, etc.)
Benefits over a head unit with music file (MP3/WMA) playback:
- Support for additional formats, such as loss-less OGG, as well as DRM-protected files (via iTunes or WMP).
- Faster indexing of songs (useful when there are hundreds or thousands of songs).
- Ability to directly download songs (via cellular data connection, or Wifi if close to an access point).
- Faster, easier playlist management

Video

Play video from DVDs, VCDs, or from the hard drive.
Install DLP or LCD projector to create a mobile "drive-in" movie theater
Create a mobile video production system (Capability to pull video from a camera, edit it, compile it, and burn it to DVD).
Real time monitoring of webcam and/or DVR video feeds, & can be reason enough to install a webcam or DVR.
View over the air tv channels (regular and HD) with a tv tuner

Audio Tuning via Software

Use ASIO to allow you to use VST plugin effects.
More Advanced Equalizer - parametric or up to 61 bands of adjustment
Crossovers and filtering to run an active crossover system dividing the audio frequencies and sending them to specific speakers.
Time Alignment to delay sound coming from different speakers in different locations, but make it appear as if the sound is coming from a central location or more realistic soundstage.
RTA or Real Time Analyzer helps you smooth out the frequency response of your system by measuring the response with a microphone and software to aid in adjusting your EQ.

GPS Integration

Provide GPS Tracking/location tracking, route planning and GPS navigation, etc.
Using your GPS receiver, store logs of locations vs speed and time of day. This could be uploaded to a collaborative site for predicting travel times vs time of day (very useful in areas where freeway congestion is variable).
Provide real-time tracking of vehicle location.
Get live traffic data (requires GPS that supports this feature)
Combined with wireless internet use mapping software (e.g. Google Earth) or web pages with live display or to route or do geographic searches.

Satellite Radio

Satellite radio through external receivers.
View XM's NavTraffic via your carpc

Wireless Internet

Note:

This topic includes both wireless cellular services such as GSM, Edge, and EVDO as well as local wireless ethernet Wifi (802.11, access point) connections which are different and should not be confused).

Internet browsing through an eligible cell phone or wireless 802.11 connection.
Wireless synchronization of files between desktop and carpc
Wardrive: Use your 802.11 b or g wireless connection and GPS, locate and log locations of wireless access points.
Use broadband internet phone options with cellular data card (Note that quality will be limited since cellular data normally has high latency).
Download traffic/weather information from internet.
Wireless Mobile Routers (e.g. Kyocera KR1) when used with a wireless broadband card can turn your car into a wireless access point.

Cell Phone Control

Hands free cell phone control via software with Bluetooth.
Connect to a mobile phone or other device using Bluetooth (useful for voice and data communications and synchronizing with PDA's, etc.)
Send & Receive text messages via your connected cellular phone using your carpc
Enhanced contact list with large pictures

On-Board Diagnostics

Connect with your car's OBD-II, J-1850, CAN, i-Bus, or Consult interface and display real-time data on all diagnostic information available. (RPM/Temps/Speedometer/etc.)
Pull and clear error codes immediately.
Find 0-60, 0-100, 60-0, 100-0, 1000', 1/8 mi, and 1/4 mi times (Use GPS to mark ideal performance testing sites)
Find vehicle horsepower and torque
View live data with graphs of fuel injector pulse widths, knock adjustments, O2 sensors, etc.

Video Games / Emulators

Play video games
Run an emulator and have accessibility to any game that you have a backup copy of. This can range from Atari 2600 and Sega Master System to Nintendo 64 and Playstation. The emulator you can run is only limited by the systems resources. Alternately include an actual gaming system in the car.
Connect a controller from the system of your choice to your CarPC. Microsoft Xbox controllers are very simple to modify yourself and drivers are readily available. If you prefer a controller from another system there are companies that sell them with USB connectivity pre-wired.
Install multiple monitors and controllers for mobile multiplayer gaming

Cameras

Display video from car mounted camera for backing up. (infrared cameras are available for backing up at night)
Record video from a webcam/mini-dv camera and store it to the carpc for later perusal. (good for recording close calls on the freeway - setup a rolling buffer which stores the last X minutes on button press)
Provide night vision capability with infrared cameras.
Process video from car in real-time using image recognition software. Capture license plates and store in database with GPS location.

Vehicle Control

Control windows and locks via relays.
Control Climate Control via software.
Control exterior show lights (under glows and accent lights) via relays.
Gain control of ignition timing, air/fuel maps, shift points, boost control, top speed, rev limits, etc. (WARNING: This requires a thorough knowledge of vehicle systems and should only be attempted by qualified individuals)

Other Devices

Radar Detectors (e.g. the Valentine V1 by using the remote display)
Add a small printer to print a map for someone else, or print a quick report for work.
Media players via remote control
PDAs

Weblinks

MP3Car Website - Wiki hosting site, Vast forums/user knowledge base, Downloads, etc.
MP3Car Store - Most products listed in this Wiki for sale here
Dashboardmonkey.com - A community of carputer builders and their blogs
VIA Epia - Website of one of the main producers of Mini- & Nano-ITX motherboards

Software

StreetDeck - A Microsoft Windows based hardware and software bundle developed by the MP3Car.com team. 30 day free trial. Full version must be purchased.
Centrafuse - Soon to be pay-for frontend
Freeway - An upcoming open-source front-end for Windows in the works, built for stability and speed
RoadRunner - An open source Microsoft Windows based software "frontend", very popular due to its expandability. Free to public.
DashPC - A Linux based software "Frontend"
FrodoPlaye - A Microsoft Windows based software "frontend". Free to public
CCarProject - interface to play your songs in car (Macintosh only).
AMP - A Macintosh software "Frontend".
Windows XP MCE - Windows XP Media Center Edition.
nGhost Media Center - Linux Based front-end software
LinuxICE project - Linux In Car Entertainment - A Live distribution for car PCs

Related Books

Article written by Cabe, Profit, Durwood, RedGTiVR6, Turbocad6, Vorex, rdholtz, Fatejd, Enforcer, Altinono, Kev000, SethW, Overtheedge.

Should I Use an Onboard Sound or an Upgraded PCI or External Soundcard?

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:41:45 GMT

There is no right or wrong answer, but it depends on how you listen to your musi.c If you sound like one these people, then this should HELP you decide. Just remember, it’s always easier to upgrade later if onboard isn’t cutting it.

Onboard

If all you want to listen to are low bit rate MP3’s or some other form of compressed music.
You plan on using stock speakers or maybe even just an inexpensive set of coaxial speakers (tweeter mounted in the center of the speaker).
You are the type of person that listens to music at home on a home theater in a box/boom box setup. Yes, even the Bose systems are home theatre in a box systems.
You are running your computer through your stock or aftermarket radio through AUX_IN or by an FM modulator.

Upgraded PCI or External soundcard

You are going to be using component speakers or spent a decent amount of money on replacement speakers for your car.
You are using amplifiers of good quality (brands such as Rockford, JL Audio, Kicker, XTANT, Audison, ARC, Zapco, USAmps, Steg, Focal, Butler, TRU, Brax, etc. just to name a few reputable brands), or if your 4 channel amp costs more than $300 (retail).
Your computer audio output goes directly into amplifiers.
You desire more control over your sound that onboard cannot do (crossover, better EQ, time delay).
If you want to do things with ASIO, look for a supported ASIO card and Read here and here
A cheap way to do more advanced sound processing is an Audigy Card with the KX Project drivers.
You have good home theater equipment i.e. you do not listen to music at home on a home theater in a box setup or boom box.

PCI or External

Are you using a laptop or a desktop?
- Laptop = External Card or PCIMIA card
- Desktop = Either PCI or external will work most of the time
Do you have room for a PCI card in your case/car?
Do you want to do all tuning via software on the computer or are you going to be tuning with an external processor (like the Alpine PXA-H701 processor for instance).
Have you spent a decent amount of money on sound deadening your vehicle and on audio equipment for it? (greater than $1000 in most cases).

For a list of external cards see this compiled list.

Article written by RedGTiVR6 and Durwood

Booting XP from a USB or Compact Flash Card

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:41:27 GMT

Frequently Asked Questions about Booting from Compact Flash

Does using a CF card make XP boot faster?

Your mileage may vary. This thread should help answer this question.

What is the advantage to booting from CF

Mostly, that your system is not tied to a mechanical disk drive. Disk drives can fail from vibration, heat, cold, shock. CF cards use less power as well.

Are there downsides to CF cards?

CF cards only support a limited number of writes (don't worry, it's "lots"), so you want to ensure that your XP install will write as little as possible to the card.

How does it work?

CF cards have a finite number of "writes" that can be made to them. This is the reason that XPe (embedded) is used to write the files to the card. First, MinLogon can optionally be used to help reduce boot times. Then a product called nLite is used to strip XP down to a bare minimum to fit on the card and EWF (Enhanced Write Filter) is used to reduce writes to the card. A procedure called HORM (Hibernate Once, Resume Many) is also used to reduce writes to the card.

Will any Compact Flash card work?

The only real caveat is: how FAST do you want to boot. Some older cards don't actually support IDE emulation mode (though those would be too small to be considered, anyway).

Article written by BugByte, SFiorito, Wimster, thumper_svx.

ASIO VST Plug-in Audio Tuning Method

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:41:09 GMT

Items Needed To Tune Using the ASIO VST Tuning Method

A mulitchannel soundcard with ASIO drivers and routing WDM/MME sound to ASIO.
Cards brands known to have this feature - Audiotrak, ESI Pro, Some M-Audio, RME
- If you don't have one of the cards listed above download 'ASIO4ALL' drivers and 'Virtual Audio Cable'.
If you plan on using more then one plugin (i.e. EQ, crossover, time delay) then you need 'Console'.
Crossover Filter - 'Frequency Allocator' - 'Full' or 'Lite' delending on your situation and needs.
EQ - Pick one from this list.
Time Delay - 'Voxengo Time Delay'

How To...

How to Use Console

Install plug-ins into one common folder to make it easier to find.
Set your folder options to “show hidden files”.

Mainly for Frequency Allocator, otherwise Console will not find it.
Open up Console and select your “Audio” card.
Select ASIO from driver type, then select your device. Finally, make sure you have all your channels available. If your device isn’t listed as a device, you need to get the ASIO4ALL drivers installed and/or use VAC (Virtual Audio Cable program).
Open up console and click on path.
Browse to the folder you put the plug-ins in from Step 1 by clicking “Add” then “All”. Hit OK once you have found the folder with the plug-ins.
Back in the main window, click on “plugin” and you will get a box that looks like this.

From there, click on the plugin you want to use, and drag it into the window workspace.
You can drag in as many plugins you need to use.
Now click on “Intrnl” to get your soundcard inputs and outputs. Click and Drag each “Wave In” and “Wave Out”. When using a soundcard with multiple outputs your wavein/out will show more than 2 channels. On this computer, the onboard card used as an example only has 2 channels.
Now it’s time to “wire” everything up. Play connect the dots. Click on 1 in wave in then drag over to 1 on the delay box. Do the same for the remaining. It should look like this when done.
Now you can click on the plugin box and you can use it for what you need. For the delay in the car, you will be dealing with 0.00ms. From here it is up to you to use the plugins how you see fit.
Now click on the Power button to turn on the whole setup. You will note the lights change on each device in the window. You can turn off individual parts too by clicking those “lights”.
You can save your setup to recall it later. Below is an example of how it could look when you combine 2 EQ's, Frequency Allocator and 4 Voxengo Stereo Delays.

Article written by Durwood.

What is Bit-Perfect/Bit-Accurate?

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:40:50 GMT

Bit-perfect

This is how the audio stream will come from your PC. If you are running bit-perfect, you will have a more true reproduction from the media that you are playing. If you are looking for the best possible audio from your system, you will want to know about bit-perfect.

By bypassing the Windows KMixer and running either ASIO or Kernel Streaming, you are ensuring that you are hearing the music as it was encoded on the CD.

The downside to this? If there are errors on the CD, you will hear them as there is not any correction being made to overcome the error.

In essence, by runinng bit-perfect, you are ensuring that there is no difference in information between the CD that is being read and what makes its way out of the digital output of your sound card.

The quality of a sound card can have an effect on the quality of the output, even with bit perfect playback enabled. The timing and/or jitter can vary between sound cards, usually with the lower end sound cards having a higher likely hood of jitter.

KMixer

The KMixer is a part of Windows that enables your computer to take multiple audio sources and play them back at the same time and at the same bit rate. The KMixer is also how Windows handles your volume control. Regular CD audio is 44.1 kHz. Many times, due to poorly written drivers, sound cards that will interact with the KMixer wil cause this 44.1kHz data to be resampled to 48kHz. Obviously this will result in an undesireable result when trying to achieve the upmost in sound quality. The mixing algorithm as implemented by Microsoft has been shown in many cases to only have a signal to noise ratio of about 92dB. CDs have a signal to noise ratio of about 96dB (technically 97.5dB). The KMixer effectively reduces the data from 16bit to 14 bit.To bypass the Windows KMixer you either need to use ASIO or Kernel Streaming.

ASIO

ASIO is a professional audio standard that provides for a low-latency audio stream from the computer. ASIO bypasses the KMixer entirely. ASIO is used by the recording industry as a standard. For more information on ASIO, please see here.

Kernel Streaming

Kernel Streaming is just about the same thing as ASIO. It is Microsofts answer for being able to play audio files in a bit perfect format on a Windows machine. Kernel Streaming make efficient real-time streaming of audio possible. However, Kernel Streaming is not an industry standard. ASIO will have many more supported plugins avaliable for various media players. Kernel Streaming requires less CPU time than the regular 'wave out' method.

Software

Media Players That Support Kernel Streaming

Foobar2000

Foobar2000 supports kernel streaming natively. To activate it do the following:

Foobar 2000 -> Preferences -> Ouput -> change Output Method to Kernel Streaming.
Then you will need to change the sound device to the sound card you are using.
If you are experiencing audio dropouts, you may want to change the buffer length. The default is 2048ms.

WinAmp

WinAmp will support kernel streaming with the addition of a kernel streaming plug-in.

Kernel Streaming Plug-ins for WinAmp

WinAmp 2: You can find a Kernel Streaming plug in for WinAmp 2 available here from Steve Monks.
For some discussion or possibly for some support on this plug-in, check this thread.
WinAmp: For a Kernel Streaming plug in for WinAmp, as well as FLAC and VolumeLogic, see here
A note about this plug-in for WinAmp:
Sometimes the play list will not advance automatically when a song finishes. You will have to manually press Next or select another song. This can be resolved by combining the Kernel Streaming plug-in with the VolumeLogic plug-in also included in this torrent. In Winamp’s output plug-in list, double click on VolumeLogic (setting it as the output plug-in for Winamp to use) and a window will pop up asking you to select the out put plug-in. Select Kernel Streaming from here. This will fix the play list advance issue so everything works. When you double click a song, however, rarely, it will not start. Just press pause twice and it will start like normal.

Media Players That Support ASIO

J. River Media Center
Media Center natively supports ASIO.

Tools -> Options -> Playback -> change Output Mode to ASIO
Then you will need to change the sound device to the sound card you are using. Or, if you are using a ASIO -> KS wrapper, choose it.
If you are experiencing audio dropouts, you may want to change the buffer length.

Foobar2000
Foobar2000 does not support ASIO natively.

Foobar2000 ASIO Plug-ins

These plug-ins can be found here.
For a translated version of the page, see here.
Foobar2000

.dll version – From 2/25/2005
.exe version – From 2/25/2006
.x64 version – From 2/25/2006

Foobar 2000 -> Preferences -> Ouput -> change Output Method to your sound device
WinAmp
Winamp does not support ASIO natively.

WinAmp ASIO Plug-ins

These plug-ins can be found here.
For a translated version of the page, see here.

WinAmp 5

.dll version – From 10/4/2006
.exe version – From 10/4/2006
x64 version – From 10/4/2006

Options -> Preferences -> Output -> change the output plug-in to the ASIO Output Plug-in -> Configure
Then you will need to change the sound device to the sound card you are using. Or, if you are using a ASIO -> KS wrapper, choose it.
Thread Priority - for audio only, Time Critical should be fine.
If you are experiencing audio dropouts, you may want to change the buffer length.
Turn resampling off, if it is on, you will no longer be playing bit-perfect.

Using an ASIO Wrapper
Since many sound cards do not support ASIO natively, you will need to use an ASIO wrapper. There are a few options for this:

http://membres.lycos.fr/asiox/
http://www.asio4all.com/
- These directions were provided by darklorjames for ASIO4All:
  
  Upon installing ASIO4ALL, you will get a control panel for it on your desktop. Open that up and set it up as follows. The buffers I have described here are huge, but it is better to have large buffers when trying to get it to work, and then work the buffers down once you know things are functional.
  
  Audio Device = Your Sound Card
  Sample Rate = (greyed out)
  Buffer Size = 2048
  KS Buffers = 4
  Always resample @ 44.1khz = off
  Disable input = on
  Force 16 bit samples = off
  Direct DMA Buffer I/O = off
  
  Now, go grab Winamp and the ASIO plugin and set up the plugin as described below. Try playing an MP3/CD Audio track and see if you have success. It works? Good! The battle is half won! If you are using SPDIF in your setup, and have a reciever that does DTS decoding, then you need to do a 44.1 khz DTS test. If the DTS test passes as well, then you are one step closer. Do one last test with a DVD or Divx with an AC3 track and see if that still works. If it does, then you are good to go. Welcome to the bit perfect world! At this point you should fiddle with the buffers in the ASIO control panel and Winamp to see how low you can get them without noise/dropouts. Of course you can also use other ASIO-enabled programs as well now, but I will leave the details of that up to you. You know the concept of getting this to work, that was my aim.
  
  But let's say you weren't lucky, and things aren't working. Or AC3 output is now dead. Uh-oh. First, double-check your settings. The ASIO4ALL Control Panel is dynamic, and as such it can be used while Winamp is open and any changes you make will take place immediately. There is also one other thing that may need to be done. There is an exploit in the Envy24HT-S driver's Control Panel that you can take advantage of, but I believe this is only valid for SPDIF output. Go to the Digital Out tab and select PCM Only. Then select the 8 Channel output tab and go to Sample Rate & Immerzio 3D. Under Sample Rate Select uncheck Automatic, select 44.1khz, and re-check Automatic. Go back to the 2 Channel tab and go to Digital Out. Select AC3 or PCM Autoselect (48khz only). This should result in the Envy24HT-S Control Panel essentially being tricked into letting AC3 or PCM at 44.1 and 48khz autoselect ::between eachother. I don't know why it doesn't just work like that in the first place, but, whatever.
  
  Thanks to Signal and B3b0p for the above Control Panel trick!

Bit-Perfect Audio Codecs

ACL880
ACL882
The AC97 codec is NOT capable of bit perfect playback.

Rules of Thumb for Bit-Perfect

When Bit Accurate mode is applied to the playback, adjusting the volume control or applying EAX effects will not have any effect on digital output signals.
Once Bit Accurate playback starts, the digital output sampling rate is automatically set to the current playback's sampling rate regardless of the current digital output sampling rate.
Bit-perfect can only truly be tested using the tos-link out of either your sound card or a compatible audio codec for onboard sound for some motherboards and a DTS-decoder.
Any software DSP or sound processing will cause the benefits of bit perfect to become null.
Play with the buffering options. The buffer settings will vary depending on your system. Lower buffers are better, obviously as you will have a lower latency, however, if they are too low you will run into issues with audio drop-out with a system that is under a heavy load.
Once Bit Accurate playback starts, the digital output sampling rate is automatically set to the current playback's sampling rate regardless of the current digital output sampling rate.
Bit Accurate mode is only applicable to .WAV files with the following specifications:
- Stereo Format
- PCM audio data
- 16-bits and above (maximum 32-bits with 24-bits resolution)
- 44.1, 48, or 96 kHz

Testing Bit-Perfect
If you have successfully achieved bit-perfect playback, you should be able to play a DTS file off of a CD (16-bit, 44.1kHz). If you only get static from trying to play the file, then you know that you haven’t achieved bit-perfect playback.

Bit-Perfect CD Players
This is from the Alcohol Software web site. Those listed under the 120% column are considered to be bit-perfect capable CD players.

Resources

Article written by RedGTiVR6.

How To Tune Via A PC

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:40:29 GMT

Tuning via PC

In the quest for the best sound quality possible, a few of the users of MP3Car.com have been researching ways to do all of this tuning via the PC. What you will find below is the results of our research. If you are interested in contributing or would like to read the entire thread, please follow this link.

Terms you need to know

ASIO

Audio Stream Input Output is a protocol for low-latency digital audio specified by Steinberg.

ASIO provides an interface between an application and the sound card. Whereas Microsoft's DirectSound is typically for stereo input and output for consumers, ASIO provides for the needs of musicians and sound engineers. ASIO offers a relatively simple way of accessing multiple audio inputs and outputs independently. It also provides for the synchronization of input with output in a way that is not possible with DirectSound, allowing recording studios to process their audio via software on the computer instead of using thousands of dollars worth of separate equipment. Its main strength relies in its method of bypassing the inherently high latency of operating system audio mixing kernels, allowing direct, high speed communication with audio hardware.

Find more here: FAQ: All You Need To Know About ASIO
VST

Virtual Studio Technology and its acronym VST refer to an interface standard for connecting audio synthesizer and effect plug-ins to audio editors and hard-disk recording systems. VST and similar technologies allow the replacement of traditional recording studio hardware with software counterparts.

Methods / Examples

Foobar Player Audio Processing - add a FAQ and FAQ URL here

This is a great method to use if you only need crossovers, EQ and delay for music. If it needs to work for anything else, such as video, skip this method. All the processing is done by the player itself.
Sound Blaster with KX Project Drivers Audio Processing - add a FAQ and FAQ URL here

This is a good entry level point. It will do everything you need it to do in music and video since all the processing is done by the DSP chip on the sound card itself. That means your computer processor does not need to do any processing. This is equivalent to the crossovers built into head units, amplifiers, and outboard crossovers.
ASIO VST Plug-in Audio Tuning Method

If you want nothing but unlimited tuning capabilities this is the way to go. It is superior to any of the other methods based on the fact the plug-ins are more professional. It is very tricky to get this method to work and requires a good balance of the right hardware and software. The downside to this is that it is complex and requires all the processing to be performed by the CPU. You will need a minimum of a Pentium 4/AMD equivalent processor. There are a lot of little details you have to worry about if you pick this method.
Bit-perfect

Hardware You Will Need to Do This

One of the number one questions asked is "What's the minimum processor speed I can get away with?"

Simply put: No one knows.

Because each set-up will be different from the next, it's nearly impossible to know what the minimum requirements are for processor speed and/or memory. Some people will be going the KX Driver route, some the Frequency Allocator/Console route. Each of these requires different amounts of processing. Then there's the different number of channels that people will be running, meaning different loads placed on the system there as well.

In general, the minimum for each of the following is listed as below: W.I.P.

Software You Will Need to Do This

Plug-Ins

VST Effects
A VST effect is a type of VST plug-in that is generally used to process audio. Types of VST effect include (among others) reverb processors or phaser effects.
VST Effects can be used in real-time when used with an appropriate software and hardware configuration, such as a sound card that supports ASIO, software that bypasses Windows' slower audio engine and so offers much lower latency times, allowing for effective real time playing. Modern Macintosh computers typically ship with low-latency audio drivers.
WinAmp VST Plug-In
WinAmp Direct-X Plug-In

VSTSHELL for combining/wiring/stringing VST plug-ins together

Console
A VSTSHELL that works with ASIO. It routes the cards in and outs and gives you the ability to wire up multiple VST plug-in effects how you want them. It does not stream audio from the actual media player unless the output of the player is ASIO.

Audio Stream Capture to use with VSTSHELL programs and ASIO

VAC
VAC is designed to capture the audio signal from media players using KS/Direct sound/WDM to be routed to VSTSHELL programs or any program that needs/uses ASIO.
Reaper
Reaper captures the audio stream with the REAroute function built inside of it.
See this thread for how it was used.
Directwire
Only available on ESI PRO and some Audiotrak Cards.
Some M-Audio cards also have this capability.

The Delta 44, Delta 66, Delta 1010, 410 and Firewire 410 can do it for sure within the driver control panel.
Another option is to use the SPDIF OUT looped back to the SPDIF IN if the card has both available.
See this thread.

Tuning Software

31-band 1/3 octave Equilizers

1/3 Octave Graphic Equalizer Studio Version 2006

$49 - Programmable 31 band display
Anwidasoft - GEQ31V
$69 - The GEQ31V is a professional graphic equalizer plug-in.
Graphic EQ Series
174 EUR - 15/21/31/41/61 Bands
ElectriQ Full 64 Band
$99 - One of the best EQ's according to some members at KVRaudio forums

Free EQ's

31-band Graphic EQ VST

Free VST 31-band EQ
Free VST 31-band EQ
Free 31-band EQ

Specifically: efm-eq31-96k.zip
Linear Phase Graphic EQ 2

Free VST 61-band EQ
ElectriQ posihfopit edition
Free VST or Winamp 64-band EQ. Supposed to be one of the best EQ's according to some members at KVR but it's probably the pay version.

Other EQ's

Time Alignment

Frequency Arbitrator

$89 - VST & ASIO
UFX Plug-ins

Free - KXProject
Voxengo Stereo Delay

Free (Donate) - VST & ASIO
Foobar2000 DSP Crossover

Free - Foobar Player

Phase Control

KX Project
Voxengo PHA-979 Phase Delay

$39.95 - VST & ASIO
Phase Arbitrator

Built into Full version of Frequency Allocator - VST & ASIO

Crossover

Frequency Allocator

$149 - VST & ASIO
Foobar2000 DSP Crossover

Free - Foobar Player
UFX Plug-ins

Free - KX Project

Channel Allocator

Console

Combine/Wire multiple VST plug-ins together
Virtual Audio Cable

Send audio to ASIO applications (For sound cards that do not have built in routing features
kX Project

RTA

TrueRTA
- 1 (free) - 1/3 ($39.95) - 1/6 ($69.95) - 1/24 ($99.95) octave versions

RTA Mic

Behringer ECM8000

Phantom powered, +15 V to +48 V

Mic Pre-Amp

Behringer Eurorack UB802
Rolls MP13

This unit uses 12vDC and is relatively small, might be able to permanently mount it in the car.

Article written by RedGTiVR6, Durwood, Vorex, Thekl0wn.

General Questions About Hard Drives in a Car

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:40:09 GMT

Should I mount my hard drive vertically or horizontally?

There's been a lot of discussion in the past about how to mount a hard drive for a vehicle PC environment. There have been a lot of very good points raised by people with knowledge in this area.

The basic question is whether mounting the hard drive vertically or horizontally would increase the longevity and stability of the hard drive. The answer is inconclusive. Users have had drives mounted vertically with no problems and horizontally with no problems, both over the long-term.
The question stems from the possibility of the drive heads breaking the cushion of air they ride on and coming in contact with the surface of the platter, which would damage the platter, causing data loss (at best) and hard drive failure (at worst). That seems to be a logical concern, especially when driving over poor-quality roads or even off-road for those that are so inclined, however there is no evidence that horizonatllay-mounted hard drives are more susceptible to shock-related damage than vertically-mounted ones.Now, it's also logical that the flud in the bearings for the platters would pool at the bottom of the bearing compartment in a vertically-mounted drive, causing extra friction, heat buildup and premature failure of the drive. Again, while it sounds logical, there is no evidence to support this.

So how should you mount your hard drive? In whatever orientation fits the space available for your project.
How can I protect my hard drive against excessive shock and/or vibration?

The common idea is to use rubber or silicone grommets between the hard drive and the mounting points. They are about 3/8" tall. Additional rummber grommets/washers could be used when mounting the PC case (if you use one) as well.

Others have used elastic bands (a.k.a. bungee cords) to suspend a hard drive inside an enclosure. This may seem like a good idea until one of the elastic bands breaks or comes loose from its mounting point and treats your drive like slingshot ammunition. There is also the possibility of the elastic bands developing a harmionic vibration that could also decrease the life of the drive if it persists for a long period of time. This might not be recommended as a mounting solution for those reasons.

Still others have used anti-static closed-cell foam as a cushioning material between the hard drive and the mounting location. This doesn't provide as much shock amsorption as rubber/silicone grommets, but provides some. It isn't recommended to cop up your sleeping pad for camping. Make it anti-static foam to prevent static from destroying your shock-protected drive.
Will extremely cold or hot temperatures cause problems with my hard drive?

You bet. Every electronic component has an optimum temperature range for operation. If the temperature is far enough outside that range, the component won't work.

Hard drives have fluid bearings. Any fluid can freeze if it gets cold enough, including the lubricant inside the hard drive. If the hard drive starts to spin up (which happens as you boot your PC), the platters will not turn because the fluid isn't viscous enough to allow the platters to spin at the proper speed. As a ruslt, your computer will either not boot at all with an error at POST or it will boot up and give data access errors once booted.
The heat will have the opposite effect on the bearing lubricant, making it too liquid, and not providing adequate lubrication. This is less common than a hard drive in the extreme cold, but it has happened. The poor lubrication will cause excess friction and heat and possibly drive failure.

The simple solution is to not boot the vehicle PC up until the ambient temperature of the vehicle is inside the operational range for the hard drive. If your hard drive is in your trunk (or boot if your British), you may not be able to do anything about the ambient temperature. If you live in an area that gets extremely cold, it's advised to not mount your hard drive in the trunk (boot) for this reason.

Some have taken the steps to get their OS installed on a Compact Flash card and booting are from that. It isn't going to speed up your PC much, if at all, but since the compact flash has no moving parts, it will boot in the cold temeratures that would render a hard drive useless. This isn't an easy process, however.

There are other solid-state drives on the market (or coming to market) that would serve the same purpose as the CF setup, however these tend to be very pricey, out of reach of most hobbyists. If you can lay hands on one of these, it would certainly be a good solution for HDD replacement.

Article written by DarquePervert

What is the best (GPS antenna/GPS software/LCD monitor/motherboard/power supply/etc.)

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:39:47 GMT

What is the best (GPS antenna/GPS software/LCD monitor/motherboard/power supply/Satellite Radio receiver/etc)?

Let’s face it, very few of us have a lot of money to spend. We pretty much all work hard for our money and we want to put it to good use. In this market, that’s the difference between spending X amount on a great quality product, or spending the same amount and getting a not so good product.

Many people come on here wanting to know what the best ________ is.

The simple fact of the matter is that there is not a single best ________ out there.

Lets have an example, shall we?!

There's the mind set that you spend the money once, and be done with it. You spend more than some think you should, but you know you are getting a high quality product and that you will most likely not need to replace it due to shoddy craftsmanship. For some people, they simply cannot work like that. They need the cheapest possible solution on the market, period.

While some may need the extra whatever it is some might need extra of, another individual could care less about that (lumens on a screen/satellite pickup ability/wattage from an amplifier/etc). We all have different needs as to what would be the ‘best’ for our situations.

There is not a single best for everyone. This is where you use that mushy thing between your ears and do that little thing we call Search!

Check out the Work Logs and the Show off your projects forums for ideas on what others have been able to use successfully.

Since this question has come up on a regular basis, we have decided to help you out a bit. In the FAQ Forum, various users have been kind enough to take the time to start a few threads with polls asking current users what they prefer and why!

Check them out here:

Article written by Rafster, xBrady, DarquePervert, RedGTiVR6.

What Is The Best Front End?

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:39:30 GMT

What is the best front end?

So you’ve picked out all of your components, you’ve planned out the install, you’ve got everything laid out in your head. Then it hits you…What front end should I use?

It’s one of the most common questions asked on this board. After all, what good is a CarPC if you can’t easily use it!?

Check out this thread started by xBrady: Which is the best front end?

Here you will be able to read through many peoples thoughts and experiences on each front end.

The simple answer to this question is the one dreaded by most. It’s completely up to you. What may work for one individual in one install may not work at all for another.

Spend some time over in the Front End sub forums. Download them all! Try them all out for a while. Gradually you will learn what features you like and what features you have absolutely no idea how to use, or think you would never need. The developers of each front end are generally very willing to help. If you have specific questions about how to use an aspect of a front end, post them up in the appropriate forum, someone is bound to be able to help you out!

Article written by wizardPC, RedGTiVR6.

Can I Hook Up My CarPC to My Stock Audio System?

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:39:13 GMT

Can I integrate into my stock system?

It depends on your stock system. We recommend heading on over to the Car Audio forum and searching for posts that pertain to your specific make and model. You might also head over to the Show Off Your Project or Worklogs sub-forums to see if others have already installed their CarPCs to work with a stock system like your own.

Many times there are adapters out there that will allow you to plug right into your stock premium amplifiers.

Article written by RedGTiVR6

What Do I Need To Purchase to Make a Car PC?

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:38:52 GMT

What do I buy?

Another question that is often asked by those newcomers to the MP3Car.com community is “What all do I need to make a CarPC work in my application?”

While we cannot possibly tell you exactly everything you will want for your implementation, we can give you a decent list of the basics that you need to get your rolling:

Motherboard – keep size and power consumption in mind when purchasing.
Processor – as with the motherboard, size and power are a concern.

PLEASE NOTE:
Some of the smaller VIA boards have imbedded processors. This means that you might not need to buy a seperate processor. You will need to research this further depending on the motherboard you are purchasing.
Memory – keep in mind that the more memory you have the longer your boot up times, however, the less memory you have the slower you computer can run. Also, please take note of the kind of memory your motherboard requires: DDR or DDRII (DDR2)
Hard Drive – people have had success with both laptop drives as well as full size drives in this community. Laptop drives consume less power but are generally slower and have less capacity while full size drives consume a bit more power but are generally faster and have more capacity. You will have to decide which one is right for your application. Both have proven to handle the harsh environment of in car use quite well, withstanding the bumps and jars that will present themselves from in car use.
If you would like to read more about this very discussion, please see this thread.
Power Supply – Follow the FAQ located here and another one here to help determine the proper power supply size.
Display – remember, a computer uses a VGA input, not a composite input.
Optical Drives – for regular CD use and for loading software and the like.

There are many things you can add on to your CarPC. Some of those options are as follows:

GPS
Satellite Radio
AM/FM Radio.
Wi-Fi
OBD-II scanning
What new and innovative application can you come up with? Be sure to post it up in the forums!

If you’re looking for some suggestions, you might also try this thread started by Bugyte: System Recommendations.

Article written by RedGTiVR6.

Where Can I Mount My Screen?

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:38:32 GMT

Where Do I Mount My Screen?

One of the first questions that nearly every newcomer to the MP3Car.com community asks is “Where am I going to mount my screen?”

This is one of the most important aspects of your install. If your screen is not easily readable or easily accessible, the benefits of having a computer in your car are negated. Mounting your screen in such a manner that it is out of sunlight, within reach, and possibly even hidden from prying eyes, are the most important factors to your screen install.

A good place to start looking for ideas is to check out the worklogs or finished projects forums. Do a quick search in each of those forums for the particular car that you have in mind and read up a bit on where people have placed their screens in cars like yours.

Once you have a location in mind, you might want to do some fabricating. If this is the case, we urge you to check out the fabrication forum and the awesome stickies found in there for more help on how to fabricate your new dash.

Some of those stickies are as follows:

Article written by DarquePervert, RedGTiVR6.
Linked stickies written by MP3DUB, Altimat.

What Kind of Screen Can I Use?

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:38:15 GMT

What kind of screen do I need? Will this (insert typical car audio screen here) screen work? Can I use the touch screen from my head unit to control my PC?

Don’t worry, you’re not the first person to run into this dilemma, and you certainly won’t be the last either.

A computer uses what is called VGA (Video Graphics Array). It is a much higher resolution than your typical screen from a Car Audio manufacturer.

What this means for you:

Most car audio screens are composite video. This standard does not lend its self well to the complexity that a computer presents. Your images will be fuzzy and text will be difficult to read. This is one reason we here in the MP3car.com community use VGA screens for our CarPCs.

The other issue you will run into is the ability to control your computer from that specialized car audio head unit. Most VGA touch screens that individuals are using here at MP3Car.com use either a USB or a serial connector for the touch screen over lay. This essentially acts as your mouse on your desktop. In order to use your car audio head unit touch display, you would have to open up your expensive screen and hack into the wiring and circuitry, adding on your own USB or serial connector. Then you would have to write your own drivers. If you are well versed in this procedure, then by all means give it a go and be sure to post up your project! But if you’re reading this, chances are you are quite that geeky and would be much happier using a solution that fits your needs much better.

May we suggest the MP3car.com store?

Find out more about Video Standards here.

Article written by RedGTiVR6

How Fast of a Processor Do I Need?

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:37:56 GMT

I’ve done a bit of searching and I’ve noticed that people seem to be using underpowered computers in their cars, why is this?

Lets face it, most of us who have come into this hobby have done so from a computer background in the first place. We’'e very performance oriented, and many times we like to have the biggest and baddest systems out there.

There’s a few problems with that in an automotive environment though:

• How will you provide power to that power hungry beast?
• How do you cool that monster?
• Where do you put something so big?
• Do you really need that much power in your car?

We’ll give an example based on a general experience of users who have successfully put PCs in their cars.

Many users are currently running the VIA MI12000 motherboard, 512 MB ram, and an 80 GB hard drive. They're running onboard video, and using any number of USB sound cards (of which you can pick through from this thread. Many users are also using a USB GPS dongle (the GlobalStat BU-353).

These users report that they are able to run mp3s and navigation at the same time without any issue. That’s on the equivalent of an 800 MHz processor and 512 MB of memory.

What you do in your car, and what you do on your desktop are two totally different things.

Sure, there are those out there that want to be able to play DoomIII in their car.
We have to wonder why?
How is playing DoomIII on a small (7" or 8") screen any fun? Not to mention, we all know you shouldn't be playing games while driving. Your passangers aren't going to appreciate playing such an intensive game on a small screen and just how often are you going to be sitting in your car with hours to waste playing games?

Keep this all in mind when you spec out the parts and pieces for your CarPC. It will make your live much easier and will probably make this whole project that much more enjoyable.

Article written by RedGTiVR6.

Has Anyone Installed a PC in (insert make and model) Before?

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:37:38 GMT

Has anyone installed a CarPC in (insert make and model car here)?

One of the easiest ways to get started is to see if others have installed a CarPC in a car similar to yours. You can get ideas from what others have done, and you can use their mistakes and successes to your advantage. Check out the Show Off Your Project forum and search for cars like yours to see what others have been able to do successfully and unsuccessfully.

Interested in learning more about the whole process of installing a CarPC in your ride? May we suggest spending some time searching through the Work Logs and Fabrication forums.

Article written by RedGTiVR6

How to Make Windows Boot Faster

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:37:19 GMT

What basic knowledge and/or skills do I need in order to put a CarPC in my car?

Many people are very interested in putting a PC in their cars only to realize that there are a few skills that you need to at least have a grasp on before attempting a project like this.

Knowing how to build a computer and understanding the basics of electronics and wiring are of critical importance. If you do not have these skills, it is suggested that you either take the time to freshen up on these, or purchase an all in one solution like the MP3Car.com G4 Powered by StreetDeck.

Or like these units: Pre Built CarPCs

If you are interested in integrating your system into your car and trying to make it seamless, you will probably want to head on over to the Fabrication Forum and read up on fabrication techniques and how-tos.

If you still have a few questions about all of this, I’d suggest spending ample amount of time in the FAQ Emporium. Just about every basic question and then some has been posted and discussed in this sub-forum. However, please note that the FAQ Emporium is NOT intended as a place to ask your questions. It is intended as a place for people to post answers to Frequently Asked Questions.

If you do have questions that you would like to ask, please be smart in asking your questions. It's greatly appreciated by the members of this community.

Article written by MatrixPC, RedGTIVR6

Getting a Rough Tune on Your EQ

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:36:57 GMT

Getting a Rough Tune on Your EQ

In this article we will tell you how to do a quick tune on the EQ. This article is not intended to be a comprehensive tuning guide. It is designed to get you started.

Tuning your car is a process that can take years if you're looking for an audiophile standard of audio.

First Step:

At least initially, you will want to use the graphical EQ as the parametric is fairly advanced to use.

You will need to buy a Radio Shack digital spl meter for about $40.

Yes, there are other, more expensive solutions out there. For the purposes of this article, we will reference this hand held meter. If you are interested in using a better meter, you can use the specifications from the above pictured meter to pick out another solution.

Quote:

Originally Posted by [url=http://www.madpsi.net/PMR2%20-%20Stereo%20System.htm]MadPSI.net[/url]

One popular way one can tune their system is by watching the frequency levels on the RTA while tweaking the frequencies with an equalizer. Access to an RTA, however, can be difficult and expensive.

If you are content with a rough tune to get rid of the major resonances and peaks, and cannot afford an RTA, you can purchase a Radio Shack sound pressure level meter (dB meter) for $40.00 (digital).

The Radio Shack meter is fairly consistent (standard deviation is about 0.5-1.0dB) and accurate - especially when measuring the midrange. It maxes out at 125dB. Various corrections are available on the internet in order to improve accuracy. When measuring using "slow" response and "C" weighting, the following corrections seem to be most accurate:

10Hz +20.5
12.5Hz +16.5
16Hz +11.5
20Hz +7.5
25Hz +5
31.5Hz +3
40Hz +2.5
50Hz +1.5
63Hz +1.5
80Hz +1.5
100Hz +2
125Hz +0.5
160Hz -0.5
200Hz -0.5
250Hz +0.5
315Hz -0.5
400Hz 0
500Hz -0.5
630Hz 0
800Hz 0
1KHz 0
1.25Khz 0
1.6KHz -0.5
2Khz -1.5
2.5Khz -1.5
3.15Khz -1.5
4KHz -2
5KHz -2
6.3KHz -2
8KHz -2
10Khz -1
12.5KHz +0.5
16KHz 0
20KHz +1

After purchasing the SPL meter , you would then make a test tone CD filled with test tones of various frequencies at a 1/3 octave step. You can then measure the dB of various frequencies and either boost or cut the frequency with an equalizer. You can download the MadPSI test tone CD by right clicking and "save target as..." this link. The file is compressed by WinRar, and each sound file is in mp3 format (high quality variable bit rate). The compressed file should have the following mp3 files:

20Hz
30Hz
40Hz
50Hz
60Hz
70Hz
80Hz
90Hz
100Hz
125Hz
150Hz
175Hz
200Hz
225Hz
250Hz
275Hz
300Hz
350Hz
500Hz
600Hz
800Hz
1000Hz
1200Hz
1600Hz
2000Hz
2200Hz
2500Hz
3200Hz
4000Hz
5000Hz
6000Hz
8000Hz
10000Hz
12000Hz
14000Hz
16000Hz
18000Hz
20000Hz
Brown noise
Pink noise
White noise

Second Step:

Set the gains on your amplifiers. This is a critical first step to getting the best possible sound quality out of your set-up.For a How-To on this process, check this Wiki article.

Third Step:

Make sure your gains and x-overs are adjusted for the best most realistaic sound quality.
Make sure you tone controls such as bass, treble, loudness etc. are all turned off. You want to make sure you not corrupting the freq responce in any way.
If you're using rear speakers, turn those off for tuning. Once you have your EQ set up you can go back and tweak later.

You will need some graph paper for this process. It will make the process a bit easier.

On this graph paper, write down all the frequencies in a row with a space by them so you can fill in the SPL number. Then position the SPL meter on the center console facing forward or maybe a bit higher like on the top of the passenger seat. Set it to slow and C weighting. Adjust your volume on the test CD so that you can hear the low frequencies without overpowering your mids or highs.

NOTE:

You will need to make a note of the volume level you are using on your headunit so that these measurements are repetable. You might also pick a middle frequency like 2k and note the volume. That way if you adjust your gains and the volume number on the head unit changes you can play the 2k note and reset the volume.

Sit in the drivers seat and go through the tracks with the CD palyer or PC set to repeat the track. Calmly watch the SPL reading as it may not stabalize. Go from one frequency to the next and write down the SPL reading. You'll need to adjust the range on the meter as the volume gets louder or quieter.

Once you get all the frequencies written down you can use the graph paper and treat each line as one dB. Graphing them out will help create a better visual representation. At this point you may want to use the correction chart listed above.

Fourth Step:

Now comes the hard part: Looking at the curve and deciding what needs to be corrected.

You can start by looking for peaks. If a single peak in the response curve (not the EQ curve) is higher than 3 or 4dB compared to the adjacent frequencies, then drop it down to so it's within no more than 2 dB higher. Then look for dips in the same way.

You're not trying to get the response curve (not the EQ curve) perfectly smooth nor perfectly flat. You just want to get rid of the peaks and dips. You want to use the least amount of correction possible which is why we didn't say to flatten the peaks or dips.

Here you want to start making corrections in groups. No more individual frequencies. At this point it gets very difficult to describe the type of curve you want. You can try specific frequenies you think need more volume by playing some high quality recordings. Stuff that was recorded accurately. Add a little peak at a specifc frequency that you think needs to louder. If it sounds good, adjust 2 or 3 bands on either side of that center frequency so that you don't create a big peak. You want the response curve (not the EQ curve) to be fairly smooth between the bands. It doesn't matter very much what the EQ curve looks like, but if you see a big dip or peak on your EQ curve, like 4 or 5 dB more than the bands next to it, then you might want to back that down or up a little.

The reason being speakers don't usually create such peaks or dips in such a narrow frequency, so it may be the result of reflections or absorbtions in the car. You also don't want to over correct.

Hopefully using this technique will give you a nice, but not quite polished tune. It takes more time compared to using an RTA, but it's cheaper and you can do it yourself. Remember to keep the windows up and the don't let outside noises interfere with your readings.

Make sure you save the EQ settings when your done!

Just in case, you might want to go through all your EQ settings freq by freq and write them down. That way you can go back and adjust your EQ very quickly if you need to; or if you switch EQ's the new one can be set up very quickly.

Article written by JasonWW.

Troubleshooting Noise

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:36:36 GMT

Troubleshooting Noise

So you just installed all of your expensive new equipment and it works! HURRAY! Except for one annoying aspect - You have a strange buzzing noise that mimics the reving of your engine. This noise is commonly caused by a ground loop. Lets see what we can do to help.

Almost all car audio is based off of 12v DC which requires a circuit to operate. What it means is that you need to have 12v coming in from the alternator/battery and it must return to the battery via a ground. (Purists: Yes, 12v actually runs from - to + in US vehicles, but lets not confuse the point). Electricity is sneaky, and rather moody. It will try to find the easiest path to create this circuit. We want to ensure that its easiest and most efficient route is through the ground wiring of the unit. This brings us to our first potential cause for your noise...

"Your ground is not ground"

Yes, I'm sure you think your ground is enough but its not. Here's a short list of things to check for:

Always make sure your ground is the same gauge wiring as your 12v +.
Make sure that the wiring is a large enough gauge for your needs (Google or read your manual).
Get good quality crimps and make sure that you are using a freshly stripped end of wire.
Crimp the wires solidly making sure little strands are not pokeing around wildly.
Now find a grounding point.

This is the tricky part! It's also the part where you need to pay the most attention.

Why not use the stock bolts in the car?

Yes, that stock bolt looks like it may be good and it even tests as ground with your mulitimeter (which I KNOW you have purchased...) but its not. Its awful.

Car manufacturers coat all of these pieces to prevent corrosion. This coating causes resistance and makes the ground less efficient. This will cause your component to seek out more inviting grounds which we want to avoid. What you need to do is find a new point in solid metal and make your own grounding point. Again, sounds easy but its not. Most modern cars are built on the uni-body concept. Metal portions are tacked together with high power tack welders. The welds are awful for grounds and can cause a real hassle. You want to make sure you have found a solid piece of metal, preferably on the base of the vehicle. This should be a thick piece of metal away from the GAS TANK! Make sure its easily hidden by carpet and begin your sanding.

Typically you use a piece of course sand paper or a wire brush and scrape away all the paint and coating for about a silver dollar size circle. Using a self taping screw or a bolt, create a new grounding point. Once you have attached the ground to this new point, use electrostatic grease to cover all the bare metal. Don’t want it to rust on you. If you dont have electrostatic grease, you can use vasoline or undercoating. This is usually the last step as the ground you choose may wind up being a bad ground.

Power Wires (+12v)

It should also be pointed out that the same meticulous care should be taken for your 12v+ wiring.

Make sure you use good crimps
Make sure you useadequate gauge wiring
Make sure there is a LOT of contact at every connection.
- That means your connection to the battery should have a ton of surface to surface contact. The more the better as just shoving a little bit of a ring terminal into the battery terminal does NOT make the proper type of connection. You should tug on the wiring after you connect it. Give it a decent tug. If it comes loose, it wasnt a good enough connection/crimp.

Electromagnetic Interference

Our next potential cause of noise is something called Electromagnetic Interference.

This stuff is everywhere.

Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) is electromagnetic radiation which is emitted by electrical circuits carrying rapidly changing signals, as a by-product of their normal operation, and which causes unwanted signals (interference or noise) to be induced in other circuits. This interrupts, obstructs, or otherwise degrades or limits the effective performance of those other circuits. It can be induced intentionally, as in some forms of electronic warfare, or unintentionally, as a result of spurious emissions and responses, intermodulation products, and the like. It is also known as Electromagnetic Interference or EMI.

What this means is that if you are not careful with the quality of your components and where you place them, they hold a strong chance of picking up EMI. Shielding on cables can help reduce this effect but the cost of cables is rediculous. A standard RCA cable from a decent manufacturer purchased outside of Radio Shack should be sufficient. Looking for single shielded cable. Plan on spending about $1.00 to $1.50 a foot.

These cables are very important to your system and should not be the weakest link.

Make sure you route your cables as far away from RFI sources as possible. Your power cables are a source, your PC is a source, strange electrical component boxes around the vehicle are sources. Basically anything that carries an electric signal can produce this unwanted nuisance. Keep your cables as far away as possible from them all.

Now you may ask what about your amplifiers? your PC? Your radio? Are they also susceptible to picking up EMI? They sure are. In the trouble shooting proces, it is important to determine which component is picking up the EMI. We will get into how we do this later in the article, but for now lets talk about what we can do to help combat or defend ourselves.

Grounding Equipment

Grounding a components chassis can help create a shielding barrier by passing the interference back into the ground. Depending on how the system is designed, this can be good or bad as it can create a ground loop. We haven’t gotten to ground loops yet, but we will. For now it's recommend that you ground the chassis of your PC to the same grounding point that you ground your amps and PC. This will help in creating that barrier protecting components in the PC from an EMI environment it was never intended in. It is recommend that you do the same thing if you are using an inverter.

Some amplifiers will also pick up EMI. Usually these are inexpensive amps where they cut corners in the design. If you have determined your amp is the problem, try mounting the amp to metal. It may help the situation.

HUGE NOTE:

Grounding the chassis of an amp can cause the exact symptoms we are trying to avoid, so only try this in your trouble shooting process. Usually it is recommended to NOT mount directly to metal.

Keep in mind that those external crossovers (passive AND active) can also pick up EMI. Be careful where you place them.

Finally the most famous culpret...

The Ground Loop

In Electrical Engineering and electronics, a ground loop refers to an unwanted current that flows in a conductor connecting two points that are nominally at the same potential, for example ground potential, but are actually at different potentials. In English, this means that one component has found it easier to ground itself through another component.

Remember in the beginning when we spoke about grounds and making them as clean and efficient as possible?

Well this is where it's important.

If a component does NOT have a proper ground, it will look to ground itself through the easiest means. This is by grounding through the next component down the line.

How does it do this?

Through those nifty RCA cables. The outer shielding of the RCA cables is actually a common ground (in most cases). If your PC's ground is not so great, it will try to ground itself through your amplifier's ground by passing its ground through the RCAs and into the amp. This is where all that noise comes from. This can happen if the ground potential of any one component is higher/lower than another. We combat this by making sure our ground are sufficient (first paragraph).

There are devices called ground loop isolators which are a band aid for this problem. They will filter out and isolate that ground loop on the signal path. They are out there and everyone should pick one up. You can use it as a ground loop detector. Some will use it in cases with ground loops to help pick up which components are causing the loop and then work on grounding potential issues.

There is one other scenario that can cause this issue and its easiest explined as a burned up component. Bad grounds and ground loops can actually burn up the grounds on the signal path of components. When this happens, you will NEVER be able to remove that whine. The unit has to be repaired. This is a bit more advanced and will not be covered in this article.

Finally, how do we troubleshoot a system?

Trouble Shooting

Isolation, Isolation, Isolation

We have to separate each piece from the system and test it. Consider the system below:

[Source (PC, HU)] ----> [amplifier 1,2,3...n] ----->[passive crossover] ----->[speakers]

We just installed the pieces making sure to properly ground all devices and keep signal path away from EMI emitting devices. We have discovered that we still have a ground loop somewhere. How do we find it?

Lets get that ground loop isolator out and plug it in at any of the -----> points. This will tell us where the ground loop is and help us determine which components to look at.

Step 1:

A good starting point is to break the chain right in the middle. Try to unplug the RCA's going into the amplifier and plug in the shorting plugs (see FAQ on troubleshooting tools). You can try to use an ipod as well, just make sure its battery powered and you keep the RCAs away from power.

Is the sound still there?

If yes, we know we have a problem (may not be all of the problems) with the amplifier or the speakers.

Step 2:

Next step is to disconnect the speakers and grab a test speaker. A test speaker can be any old working full range speaker. Even factory speakers will work. Attach the test speaker and listen for the sound.

If the sound is gone, the problem is in your speakers or passive crossovers. Check to make sure you have not put a screw through your speaker wires and they are not touching a metal ground somewhere. Relocate your passive crossovers as they may be picking up the sound.

Step 3:

If the noise is still there, it's your amp. You may want to try mounting the amp to metal, relocating the amp or changing your ground. If none of these work, it's safe to say you have an issue with the amp and get it looked at.

Step 4:

If no whine is detected from the above, its the RCAs or the source. You can use your shorting plugs on the source ends and determine if the RCAS that are picking up interference. If they are, look for a screw that has gone through the RCAs or consider rerouting them. It could be a lousy pair of RCAs so you may want to have another pair to test with.

Step 5:

Let's suppose that the RCAs are not the culprit. That leads us to the last unit, the PC. Keep in mind that the PC was NOT intended for the environment we are putting it in. There are MANY factors that can cause havoc with the pc and you may NEVER eliminate the noise (component related).

Plug a set of headphones into the output of the sound card.

Do you hear the noise?

Yes?

Well then we know that there is something internal to the PC that is picking up EMI or a ground trace is burned up. We can check the later by swapping sound cards.

If its EMI, you may need to relocate the PC or ground the chassis.

It has been shown that low quality sound cards will cause this issue as well as power supplies. One recommendation is to pick up a Xfi as it seems to be well isolated but for many this is not an option. The message here is try not to skimp on this area. Many users report noise issues with the integrated sound card that never go away until an upgraded sound card is added. Its due to improper shielding and sometimes you just cant get it far enough away from EMI sources. Sometimes, power supplies are not designed to properly shield the EMI they produce. The first DSATX caused this but have subsequently been redesigned.

Conclusion

This system is simplistic as its more of a methodology than a checklist. As you add on USB sound cards, things get much more complex. There are several posts to help out so search. Hopefully you will have an idea on the methodology behind troubleshooting and you can adapt these methods to help you locate and isolate the problem. Once you have isolated it, you can further search the forum for more details on how to solve it.

Article written by Will Albers

How do I Connect my CarPC to My Audio System?

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:36:09 GMT

How do I get sound from my sound card to my car speakers?

It's quite simple. You do NOT need a sound card with RCA outputs.

However, if you find a sound card with RCA outputs, PLEASE post it up!

This is what you'll need to get stereo sound from your PC to your speakers in your car. This is assuming your using a headunit that has aux-in (may need seperate adapter, check with your manufacture) or you have a amplifier running the the speakers already:

Here's a 5.1 Example:

Using exsisting Headunit:

For those who have an FM Modulator, here's how its done:

Sell your FM modulator
Sell your head unit
Use that money for an amplifier

Q and A

Q: Aren't amplifiers expensive?

A: Amplifiers range in price a great deal.

Q: But amplifiers are hard to set up!

A: If you have a computer set up, you're ready to go for an amplifier.

Q: What if sound quality isn't that big of a deal to me?

A: Save yourself some money and use an amp. Maybe you're not an audiophile, but you'll thank yourself in the end for using an amplifier.

Q: I want to keep my head unit so I can use radio. How can I do this?

A: Currently, there is not a solid FM radio available for the computer. If you still want a head unit, you can use the plugs mentioned above to go from your head unit to the line in port on your sound card. In fact, many external sound cards (Anything in Creative's Sound Blaster USB line) will automatically forward the line-in port to the line out, whether the computer is working or not.

Article written by ppgt94, lgbr

Even more FAQs

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:35:33 GMT

The FAQ Emporium is an entire forum on mp3car dedicated to even more FAQs about in-car computing. For a guide to the most popular of the FAQs, go the the FAQ to the FAQ's: http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/faq-...-faq-faqs.html

Will xxxxx Power Supply Work with My System?

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:35:13 GMT

Will xxxxx Power Supply work with my system? The main factor in determining power needs is your CPU. Some CPUs draw lots of power, namely P4 and Athlon64 units. The CPU is the biggest variable in systems, as far as power consumption. Step 1: Look up your CPU on Chris Hare's PROCESSOR ELECTRICAL SPECIFICATIONS page. He lists the electrical specs of just about every CPU produced in the past ten years or so. Look at the Max Power Dissipation column. That's the peak power usage of the CPU under heavy load. Using this figure in your calculations will allow power overhead for the CPU to perform any tasks you throw at it without choking off your power supply. (Note: He has divided this page into two pages, with older CPUs being listed here.) Step 2: Now that you know the max power draw of your CPU, you need to know how much power the PSUs provide on the 12v rail. The 12v rail is the one that will provide power to the CPU. It's stepped down to 1-2v (typically) with more amperage so the CPU doesn't burn up. There's circuitry on the motherboard for this. Typically, the PSU will tell you how many amps it will output on the individual rails. To calculate wattage output, you multiply amps by volts (A x v = w). If the wattage output of the PSU on the 12v rail is less than the max dissipation for your CPU, it won't work. Some will argue that the PSUs put out more than they are rated for, blah blah blah. This may very well be true, but do you really want to gamble that a $100 PSU will work for your desired setup based on a couple of watts difference? The other thing you need to consider is other 12v devices. There aren't that many. 3.5" HDDs, full-sized optical drives, case fans, external audio like a Creative SB Audigy NX, possibly an LCD screen, etc. There are other power calculators that will give you power usage estimates for these devices. These need to be added to the total wattage load on the 12v rail to determine if the PSU will suit your needs.EXAMPLE:Let's say you want to use an Opus 150w PSU with a P4 2.8C CPU. If you look up that CPU on Chris Hare's page, you can see that the max power usage is either 68.4 or 69.7w, depending on flavor. Let's call it 70w for simple math. ALWAYS ROUND UP!!!!So you look up the specs for the Opus 150w and it says that the output on the 12v rail is 5A. 12v x 5A = 60w.You'd get 60w out of the Opus PSU and the CPU requires 70w. It's not going to work, so there's no point in calculating how much power the other components are going to draw from the 12v rail, as the CPU itself uses more than the PSU can supply.See? It's simple!Please note that the range of AMD AthlonXP CPUs are the exception to this rule. They draw their power from the 5v rail instead of the 12v rail, as do most other CPUs. As such, this method of determining an appropriate power supply won't work. A similar method for calculating the dar on the 5v rail would neeed to be used.Step 3: Each PSU lists the rail, amperage output and total watts for that rail. All PSUs also have negative 12v rails and a 5v standby. For the purposes of calculating whether a PSU will work with a given system, these aren't necessary, so aren't listed here. Links are provided to the manufacturer's website for each of the products listed.Opus Solutions 90w 12v rail = 2.5A (30w) 3.3v rail = 6A (19.8w) 5v rail = 6A (30w) (Note that the Opus 90w PSU is no longer in production. It has been replaced by the 120w unit. Information on the 90w is included here because there are plenty of them around and can be purchased used.)Opus Solutions 120w12v rail = 3.5A (42w) 3.3v rail = 8A (26.4w) 5v rail = 8A (40w) Opus Solutions 150w 12v rail = 5A (60w) 3.3v rail = 10A (33w) 5v rail = 10A (50w) Opus Solutions 250w 12v rail = 10A (120w) 3.3v rail = 15A (49.5w) 5v rail = 15A (75w) Opus Solutions 320w 12v rail = 15A (180w) 3.3v rail = 15A (49.5w) 5v rail = 15A (75w) Mini-Box M1-ATX 12v = 2A (24w) 3.3v = 10A (33w) 5v = 10A (50w) Mini-Box M2-ATX 12v rail = 8A (96w) 3.3v rail = 8A (26.4w) 5v rail = 8A (40w) Mini-Box M3-ATX This is a very small PSU, similar to the PicoPUS, but accepts a wide range of inpuyt voltage. It is rated for 125w total output, but Mini-Box provides no details as to the voltage output for each rail. zootjeff's DSATX 12v rail = 12A (144w) 3.3v rail = 10A (33w) 5v rail = 12A (60w) Keypower KP-DX250H 12v rail = 10A (120w) 3.3v rail = 14A (46.2w) 5v rail = 25A (125w) (It's important to note that the Keypower states lower efficiency (60%) than the other models and does not include the other features such as startup/shutdown controller and battery protection that the othyer DC-DC power supplies provide) Mastero v4.5 (sproggy) +5vdc @ 12A 60W +3.3vdc @ 12A 39.6W +12vdc @ 10A 120WNote: This is a make it yourself design. Most of the required info is on Mastero's site linked above. PicoPSU-60-WI - This model DOES regulate 12V, however the current is very low. Only for use on Epia boards (mobos using 5V for Vcore), and laptop drives. 12V rail = 0.4A (4.8W) 5V rail = 6A (30W) 3.3V rail = 6A (19.8w)PicoPSU, PW-200M and Carnetix Power Supplies explained PicoPSU-120 & PW-200M These units are designed to power a miniITX motherboard, such as the VIA EPIA-series motherboards. They are small (especially the PicoPSU), which gives them a decided advantage for vehicle installations, where space is usually at a premium. However, these units do not regulate the 12v line. That means that whatever voltage goes into the power supply is also fed to any 12v devices that are connected to the power supply. You might be asking why this is so bad, since a car's electrical system is also 12v. True, but the car's electrical system fluctuates quite a bit. The power output will drop to around 9-10v when you crank the engine, as most of the power is fed to the starter. When the car is running and the battery is fully charged by the alternator, the voltage typically runs around 14v or even higher. When the voltage drops below a certain level, a motherboard will simply shut off. When the voltage is too high, it will destroy components. The advantage to these tiny PSUs is that there's no maximum output for the 12v line, because it's not regulating it. The maximum is only determined by the components it's made of. However, in a vehicle, you want a steady, regulated 12v current going into one of these power supplies. One maker of regulators specifically for vehicle computing applications is Carnetix. Mini-box.com is also producing new versions of the PicoPSU line that accept a wider range of voltages, which are more suited for a vehicle environment. they have the same features as the PicoPSU above, except for the ability to accept a range of input voltages. Because of the low output wattage, the PicoPSU is only suggested for very low-power systems such as those based on the lower-end Via C3-based motherboards like the M10000. PicoPSU-60-WI 60 watts / 80 watt peak 6-26V wide input There are also 90w & 120w variations of the PicoPSU WI series, but they are not as well-suited for a vehicle application, as they require a minimum input voltage of 14v & 12v respectively. Because the voltage of a typical car 12v electrical system will drop below the 12v threshold, these are not recommended. Carnetix Power Supplies Carnetix realized the shortcomings of these widely distributed micro power supplies and made a product to work in conjunction with them. The term 'power supply' isn't entirely accurate. They act more as a regulator to provide a consistent 12v stream of power to a PSU that isn't regulated, such as the PW-200M and others. The CNX-P1260 provides 5A of 12v current, for a maximum output of 60w. The CNX-P1290 provides 6.3A of 12v current, for a maximum output of 75.6w. It also provides 3A of 5v current (15w) for those devices that require it. They also make a different product line that includes the CNX-P1900 and P2140. These are designed for mini-PCs like some small formfactor HP units, Mac Mini, Cappuccinos and the like that have a 'transformer brick' type of power supply. They also work very well with many models of laptop that require a single input voltage. The CNX-P1900 & P2140 provide a user-selectable consistent voltage of 18v, 19v or 20v, as well as a secondary output of 12v, 13.5v or 5v. For building a system based on one of these miniature systems or a laptop, these power supplies will give you all the bells and whistles as the better ATX power supplies from Opus Solutions, including a startup/shutdown controller, acceptance of a remote turn-on from a car stereo or car alarm and more. CNX-P1900 +18v @ 6.32A (113.76w) or +19v @ 6.32A (120.08w) or +20v @ 6.32A (126.4v) [Primary output] +5v @ 3A (15w) or +12v @ 3A (36w) [Secondary output] (Be aware that use of the secondary output at 12v will detract from the current available on the primary output!) CNX-P2140 +12v @ 11A (132w) or +18v @ 7.5A (135w) or +20v @ 7.5A (150w) [Primary output] +5v @ 3A (15w) or +12v @ 3A (36w) [Secondary output] +5v @ 3A (15w) or +12v @ 3A (36w) [OPTIONAL third output] (Be aware that use of the secondary output at 12v will detract from the current available on the primary output! The CNX-P2140 also has the ability to accept 24v input to allow for greater primary output amperage. Consult the user manual for more details.) Carnetix has gone to great lengths to write an excellent document about how to choose the correct power supply for your vehicle PC project. It's freely available on their website here: http://www.carnetix.com/regulators/h...coose_psu.html Can I use a microATX motherboard? Sure you can. The form factor of a motherboard has little to do with power draw. MiniITX motherboards are popular because of their small size. The EPIA line of miniITX boards are also low-power motherboards, making them ideal choices for a vehicle installation. However, microATX, Shuttle, FlexATX and even full-sized ATX boards are all perfectly fine for a vehicle and can be powered, so long as you follow the guidelines above and have the available space in your vehicle for the larger motherboards. Article written by DarquePervert.

Hooking Up Your Power Supply in the Car

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:34:47 GMT

Connecting Your Power Supply in the Car

WARNING!FROM THE FACTORY, THE POWER WIRES ARE NOT ALWAYS RED. The statements made in this FAQ are made as a general statement. ALWAYS double check your wire polarity before making any connections.

The stock head unit connector on your car has the following:

12v line from the battery
12v acc line
Ground
Lines out to the speakers (usually 4 pair or more)
Other miscellaneous wires for various other functions

You cannot draw your power from this connector because the wire is not thick enough for the amount of current you will have to draw. If you do, you will end up burning up the wire and possibly causing a fire in your car. This is why you must run large cable (8 to 10 gauge) from your battery. You only need to run the positive wire (+)(12v)(red) because the negative (-)(ground)(black) is connected directly to the chassis of the vehicle, so the entire metal frame of the car acts as one big ground wire. This is why you can connect the ground to (almost) any bare metal on your car.

If you are going to be powering more than just your computer off of this wire, it is wise to increase the size of the wire as necessary for the additional components.

It is important to note that in general, a cars chassis is only equivilant to a 4 gauge wire. If you are using something bigger than a 4 gauge wire (2 gauge or 1/0), you need to run a wire directly to the battery. It should also be noted that many of today's cars are made out of unique materials. These materials are designed to keep road noise to a minimum in these newer vehicles. These new materials do not conduct electricity as well as previous materials. As such, many install shops have run into problems with equipment not working properly. If you run into this issue, it is recomended to test resistance between the ground on the battery and the ground on the car. It probably shouldn't be more than a few ohms of resistance. Another way to test for this is to test voltage drop. If the voltage at the battery is 12 volts between the two terminals and the voltage between the terminals on the amplifier is, say, less than 11.5 volts, then you are having a resistance issue and should check the construction of the chassis and the materials used.

Determining The Proper Size Wire For Your Install

There are some important things that you need to know before you buy wire:

The length of your cable run (approximate is okay, just overestimate)
The total load on the cable in amps (figure out the most you�ll use at one time)
The acceptable voltage drop for your components (There will be a voltage drop)
- It simply depends on how much drop is acceptable. Considering your car's voltage will be fluxuating from <7V on a cold start to >14.5V while running, you need to make that decision for yourself, this is the hard part. Usually it's determined from the minimum supply voltage listed on the spec sheets, but if that minimum voltage is below your car's minimum starting output then either the spec sheet is lying, or you need a new battery with lower internal resistance.

Values 2 and 3 will give you a number of acceptable ohms for the cable, and cable resistance is based on cross-sectional area, length and conductor material. You'll probably be using oxygen free copper (OFC), you know the approximate length and the acceptable resistance, from that you can determine the cross-sectional area and therefore the wire gague.

The chart below can be used to determine the proper gauge wire for the distance you are going to be running:

When installing your carputer, you will need to identify the acc line behind the factory radio. You will have to either:

Tap this lines
Find a corresponding plug
Cut the connector off altogether

WARNING!

You must make sure that you TAPE OFF ANY UNUSED WIRES (with black electrical tape) and LEAVE NO WIRE EXPOSED. This is absolutely critical.

In order to identify which line is which, you will need either a volt-meter, or multi-meter, or a 12v test light. If you are technologically uninclined, it is suggested to use the test light. They only cost a dollar, and their operation is simple. You connect one end to a ground and the other end is a probe with a light in it. When you probe a voltage source, the light lights up. You could also connect the wire to a positive line and probe for a ground, but you will not be doing that.

Now, with the test light, connect the wire end (usually has an alligator clip) to some bare metal someplace on the body of the car. Turn the ignition on (engine does not have to be running), and begin probing the wires if you find one that lights up the light, then shut the ignition off, if the light goes dark, you have found the acc line. If the light stays on, it is the 12v (positive) line, but you won't be using it anyway. If it is not the acc line, turn the ignition back on and move onto a new wire, and so on, until you identify the acc (accessory) wire.

NOTE

Red wires are almost always 12v positive wires while black wires are almost always negative ground wires.

Make sure you identify the 12v positive, the negative ground, and the acc lines. Tape off the 12v positive and ground wires because you will not need them, as you will be running new ones.

Determining Proper Fuse Size

Use the chart below to determine what size fuse you should use under the hood on the wire that goes from the front of the car to the back of the car.

The reason for fusing the wire under the hood is to protect the wire as it travels through the car. This fuse is not necessarially there to protect the equipment, it's there to prevent the wire from getting too hot and catching on fire. If this happens you will probably have a major fire on your hands if you have not properly fused the power wire for your equipment under the hood.

Do I Need to Upgrade My Battery and/or Alternator

One of the first questions asked by individuals looking to install a CarPC in ther car is if they need to upgrade their battery and/or alternator.

The chart below will tell you if you need to upgrade your battery:

The chart below will tell you how much spare amperage you will need for the draw you are adding to your system:

Article written by da_kooz, RedGTiVR6.

Powering Your CarPC Outside of the Car

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:34:23 GMT

How do I power my car PC when it's not in the car?

So you've got your computer put together (or it arrived UPS) and you're ready to load the operating system, front end, navigation application, support software, and maybe even a pretty skin for the front end. But it's raining outside and you really don't feel like sitting in your car for a Windows installation. You also want to test the shutdown capabilities of the PSU to make certain it's all setup the way you want it to behave.

You can use a spare ATX power supply to provide 12v to the power supply. This FAQ will show you how to accomplish that so you can tweak and customize your vehicle computer inside.

If your system uses an inverter

If you are using an inverter, there's generally no problem. You simply unplug the power supply you are using in the car, bring it indoors with you and plug it into the wall socket.

If you are using a DC-DC power supply

DO NOT PLUG YOUR DC-DC POWER SUPPLY INTO THE WALL SOCKET.

You have a couple of options:

Option 1:

Unhook the DC-DC power supply from the carpc and use a normal ATX power supply (110V - US & 220V - Europe) hooked to the wall with the ATX plug connected to the carpc motherboard. This method is explained in detail below.

Option 2:

Leave the DC-DC power supply connected and provide 12V DC power to it by using an AC/DC converter (pictured below).

Make sure the AC-DC converter provids enough amperage to power your system. A 10 amp system can supply 120 watts (12V X 10A=120W), a 15 amp system can supply 180 watts. In truth, these power supplies often are rated at 13.8 volts, giving 138 watts and 207 watts, respectively.

These AC-DC converters come in various shapes and sizes and run about $100 at Radio Shack.

Option 3:

Required components

(1) ATX power supply that provides sufficient power on the 12v rail. Typically, 10A-15A should be sufficient. You can get the ratings from a sticker on the side of the power supply.
(1) 3-pin HDD pass-thru adapter like this one.
(1) low-voltage switch that will maintain on/off state.
(1) paper clip or something to start the computer, if you do not have a momentary switch handy.
(3)Terminal connectors that are suitable for your DC-DC power supple or shut down controller.
14AWG wire (thicker wire may be used, but it may be unwieldy to work with)
Method of connecting wires (solder/heatshrink or crimp connectors are preferred)

Background Information

An ATX power supply provides 12v DC power to the motherboard and to components like hard drives, optical drives and the like. This is the same input voltage that is required for your DC-DC power supply or shutdown controller. To utilize the 12v DC from the ATX power supply, you need to do two things:

1) Wire the DC-DC power supply's inputs to a 12v source from the ATX power supply. The easiest place to get the 12v is the HDD connector.

2) Fool the ATX power supply to believe it's connected to a motherboard and powered on, so it will supply 12v

In addition, you'll want a switch in order to simulate turning ignition on and off to insure that the shutdown capabilities of your DC-DC power supply (or standalone shutdown controller) work the way you want. A paper clip can be used here as well. You just need something to momentarially short the two pins.

The hard drive molex connector provides power in two voltages, +5v and +12v. The yellow wire is 12v and the red wire is 5v. The two black wires are both grounds. The yellow wire will provide power to the DC-DC PSU, as well as to the ACC line for startup/shutdown control.

This procedure assumes that you have your computer assembled properly and the DC-DC PSU or ShutDown Controller setup is wired correctly to the motherboard, including the two-wire connector that goes to the power switch header on your motherboard!!!

Assembly

Connector to fool the ATX power supply

1) Cut the three-pin fan header off about halfway along the wire.

2) Strip the wire that goes to the outer pin and connect it to the unused outer pin on the 3-pin fan header.

Connector for the DC-DC PSU

1) Cut the female end off the pass-thru connector as close to the female end as possible. Discard the female connector.If you would like to keep the female connector for any reason, do not cut so close that you will not be able to splice onto the remaining wire.

2) Extend the yellow (+12v) and black (ground) wires to your desired length. Six inches or so should be more than sufficient.

3) Attach terminal connectors to the extended +12v and ground lines.

4) Connect the thinner wire that went to the HDD connector to the input side of the switch.

5) Connect another wire to the output side of the switch and attach a terminal connector to the other end of that wire.

6) Connect the +12v, ground, and switched lines to their appropriate terminals on the DC-DC power supply or shutdown controller, it matches the following diagram:

Usage

You now have two connectors. One is connected to your PSU at one end and a HDD connector to the other end. Make certain this is wired up first. Also, make certain the switch is in its off position.

The other connector (the 3-pin fan header) goes into the ATX connector that would normally go into the motherboard. The two outer pins of the fan header should fit nicely into pins 13 & 14 of that connector. You can locate the correct pins in this diagram:

The wire colors may or may not be the same!

Plug the ATX power supply into the wall and turn it on, if required.

At this point, cross your fingers, pray to your deity and turn on the switch in your homemade adapter. When the switch is in the on position, you should get +12v to your IGN line of your DC-DC power supple or shut down controller, which should send the pulse to the motherboard and initate booting of the PC.

Artile written by KByrd, evandude, BugByte, DarquePervert

How to Pick a Power Supply

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:33:35 GMT

Picking a Power Supply for your CarPC

Before you start, you need to answer a few questions first.

What's the total power required for your system?

This includes motherboard, fans, CPU, RAM, HDD, floppy, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, DVD-RW, CD-RW, ALL serial and USB devices such as GPS receiver, IR receiver (IRman), USB hubs, serial hubs, thumb drives, memory card readers, LCD monitor, VGA monitor, character LCD screen, ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that is connected to the motherboard and the PSU.
How often do you listen to your system while the engine is not running?
What programs will you be using?
How much can you spend?
What electronic skills do you have (can you solder, read diagrams)?
How much room do you have for the PSU?
Where do you live, How's the weather?

Shopping

Once you've answered all the questions then you can shop.

Find ALL the power supplies that you could possibly order either online or mail order. This is where you have to do A LOT of search on the forum to see what are all the possible PSU candidates. You should draw a chart for comparing specs. You should try to find the following specs from ALL the PSU candidates:

Maximum output wattage
Maximum output amperage for 12V, 5V, 3.3V, -5V, -12V, -5vSB
Minimum/maximum input voltage
Efficiency
Temperature range
Dimensions

Maximum Output Wattage

Things to remember about TOTAL wattage:

It is important to remember that while all power supplies list Total Wattage, that figure is a combination of all the wattages available on the various voltage rails (rails=wires) of the power supply. You CAN NOT exceed the individual rails wattage maximum. Here are specifications for various types of processors and their power draw.

So, while your system may not exceed 150 watts, you can still draw too much power from an individual rail. In many cases, this situation happens because of a power hungry video card. Use this this power supply calculator to figure the wattage drawn on EACH RAIL. If your system draws too much power on one of the rails, it will not work. Sometimes it will not turn on, other times it will start up and then shut down quickly. Occasionally, it will start and then shut down during boot or shortly thereafter. This can occur even if your TOTAL system wattage is less than that of the power supply's rating.

Output Amperage

The power supply output amperage depends on what components you have. You will want a power supply with a high amperage rating on the 12V line and 5V line if you will be powering a LCD screen, a hard drive or two, a CD drive, and all of the USB components that are so common.

Input and Output Voltages

The input voltage should be as low as possible on the minimum side. This allows your PSU to supply a regulated power to your computer during engine start ("cranking") even if your battery is low and it barely cranks over. If the PSU has a high minimum input voltage like 9 or 10 volts, your carpc will reboot every time you start your car. Maximum voltage input should be as high as possible. When the engine is running, the alternator puts out 14.5v-15v at highway speed. When you're charging the battery using a plug in the wall charger, the charger can put out 16-17 volts when the battery is fully charged. If the maximum input voltage is 14v or 15v on the PSU you run the risk of frying the PSU. Today's car electronics are made to operate at as low as 7 volts to as high as 20 volts. That's why no matter what happens to the alternator or the battery, your car's computers and electronics will operate like they should.

Efficiency

Too often people overlook power supply efficiency. Efficiency can be defined as how well the unit can convert input power into output power. Power can not be created or destroyed. This is a basic law of physics. It can only be changed from one form to another.

We will use car audio amplifiers for this example.

Class AB amps are 50-60% efficient. That means a 1000watt amp actually takes 2000 watts of power from the battery and converts 1000 watts into music and 1000 watts into heat. Class D on the other hand is more efficient at 85-95%. A 1000 watt class D amp takes 1100 watts power from the battery and converts 1000 watts into music and 100 watts into heat. A power supple acts the same. A power supple that is not very efficient will take more power to do the job than a power supply that is more efficient. A more efficient power supple uses less power and saves battery power. This means you can use your car pc longer with the car off. This is an advantage of a DC-DC power supple even if it's a less efficient power supply.

Using an inverter and AC power supply

A typical 120V ATX power supply is about 70% efficient and an inverter is about 90-95% efficient. Let's do our math backwards. A 250watt AC ATX power supple takes 357 watts of input power if it is rated at 70% efficiency. That means the inverter has to produce 357 watts to power the 250watt ATX power supply. The inverter, at 90% efficient would require nearly 400 watts to convert to 357watts of AC power to power a 250 watt AC ATX power supply. Most of the inverters have a minimum input voltage of 10V. That means every time you start your car, the PC will reboot.

Tank Circuits

In order for a tank circuit to work, you would need a 500 watt diode or a 40 amp diode. Diodes have a .7 volt drop when you run power from anode to cathode. If you go with an AC power supply and an inverter, your whole power supply from the battery to the motherboard will yield a 60-65% efficiency.

Temperature Ranges

If you live in the desert, you'd probably know that during summer time a car's interior could get as hot as 160 F or higher. What does this mean for a power supply?

Electronic components in a power supply such as caps, transformers and, coils might not be rated to tolerate the temperatures inside a car with windows up during summer time.

Dimensions

The dimension of the power supply is important to consider if you don't have a whole lot of room to work with. If you have the room, by all means buy the biggest power supply you can find.

Shutdown Controller

A shut down controller is only as good as how your programs react when you hit the soft-off power button. Some programs such as OBD-II data logger and Street Atlas 2003 Plus will not shut down after you have pushed the power button. It always ask if you want to save the current map or if you want to exit and save the data that's being logged. Some programs will freeze up (Winamp2.83 with Ao plugin) when you hit the power button. In this case, a shut down controller might not be the answer for you. You still have to stop the program manually or the computer will wait for the 60 seconds or 2 minutes for the shutdown controller to cut power to the power supply and cause the computer to scan disk every time you boot.

What about hibernate and suspend to RAM?

It all depends on how your hardware reacts when it's being waken up. Some hardware drivers will not work after being put into hibernate or suspend mode.

Cost

Cost is an issue for most people. Some people would just spend the money and buy the Opus with warranty and call it a day since it's made for car use. Some people would just build one from a diagram. It's not that hard if you can read the diagram and know how to solder.

With all that said, you should go back and look at all the specs of all the power supplies and then decide on which power supply is the best for you.

Common Misconceptions About Electricity

Wattage

Will a high wattage power supply damage a low wattage electrical device? Your electrical devices, whatever they are, will only draw as much wattage/amperage as they need. That means a 10 watt device is easily powered by a 100 watt power supply. If the wattage rating of the power supply is too low, the device won't work. However, if the wattage rating of the power supply is higher, the device will only draw what it needs.

Voltage

THIS IS DIFFERENT THAN WATTAGE. Do not power a device that requires 5 volts with 12 volts. IT WILL DEFINITELY FRY IT. This is the reason that voltage regulators are recommended on all senstive electronic devices such as motherboards and LCD screens. The regulator supplies a stable voltage to these devices and prevents higher voltages and surges from frying your expensive goodies. The rule of thumb with voltage is: For the most part, voltages must be equal. That means a 12 volt device should get 12 volts. A 5 volt device should get 5 volts, and so forth.

Undersupplying a device (e.g. supplying 5 volts to a 12 volt device) will generally NOT harm the device, although it is unlikely to work properly, if at all.

Article written by cproaudio, WiredWRX, BugByte

Power Supplies Explained

optikalefx — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 16:09:14 GMT

Introduction

Powering the car PC setup is possibly the most critical step in building a stable and working system. If the power system does not work properly, supplying both stable voltage and clean supply, free of voltage spikes, the result will be a system that freezes randomly, shuts down unexpectedly, or worse, damages your PC components or display.

Most car PC hobbyists purchase the components from a professional source rather than build their own. While building your own power supply can be done, it takes considerable time and effort and the savings is negligible over the cost of a new power supply.

What are the components that need to be powered?

Not all of these components are power related but are often confused as part of the power system. Here is a set of requirements for a PC power system:

Battery --> Voltage Regulator --> PC Startup/Shutdown Controller --> PC Power Supply --> PC

NOTE: Many "Power supplies" incorporate regulation, startup/shutdown, and power supply all into a single box. See the table below for more information, or if you are unsure, post a question in this sub-forum asking about the product you intend to buy.

The regulator is not, per se, a power supply component. It's job is to REGULATE the power that comes from the battery and alternator to ensure that voltage spikes that could damage the computer don't get through. It also may supply additional power if the voltage momentarily drops below 12 volts, as when starting the car (known as "cranking").

Rule of thumb: If you need over 320 watts of power, you are looking at using an inverter. If you need less, you may be able to use a DC-DC converter.

Words of wisdom: You need BOTH power regulation AND a power supply if you want your system to work properly and reliably.

Power Rails

The image below shows the various rails on a power supply. In this case, it's a theoretical 150 watt power supply. Note that the power supply breaks the 12 volt input into varying voltages for use by the computer.

These are known as RAILS.

Note also that each rail has a rating in amps. For example, the 12 volt rail in red shows 12 volts, 5 amps. Multiplying the volts (12) times the amps (5) tells us that this rail can supply 60 watts of power. In contrast, the 5 volt rail below it (in yellow) can only supply 10 watts of power (5v X 2A).

Consequently, putting a device that consumes 15 watts on the 5 volt rail would be likely to cause problems with powering your system, even if the total power draw of your system is under the 150 watt total of the power supply. MANY NEWBIES ARE BITTEN BY THIS PROBLEM.

Most often, it involves adding something like a PCI video card that draws too much for that rail. They are then confused about why their system won't start even though the power calculators show them under the total PSU wattage.

DC-DC Converters

A DC-DC converter does exactly what it says. It takes in DC power of a certain voltage (usually 12 volts) and outputs not just 12 volts but other voltages, commonly 5 volts and 3.3 volts. Your computer needs several voltages to operate, not just 12 volts. The DC-DC converter supplies each of the various voltages needed to run different parts of the computer including disk drives, USB ports, etc.

A DC-DC converter is more efficient than an inverter, discussed below. However, there are several types of converters and an explanation of the differences is beyond the scope of this discussion. Go to the wikipedia for more information on regulators.

What makes choosing a DC-DC converter so confusing is that they often combine different functions in the chain shown above, into a single product. This makes comparing features difficult.

Most commercial units have other features such as low battery monitoring to shut your PC down if the car is off and the PC is turned on or in standby mode. This prevents the PC from draining the battery.

Other devices such as digital startup/shutdown controllers (DSSC’s) or power controllers (CarPC EZ) are not PSU’s but control the sequencing and control of power, such as preventing “thump” when the amplifiers in the car are on but the PC hasn’t yet powered up. These are not strictly DC-DC converters but they work with the components in your system to control the power flow.

User feedback (qualitative) indicates that the Opus is the “Cadillac” of converters, followed by the M1-ATX. The Carnetix is used in conjunction with an existing power supply, such as one that comes in a Casetronix case or a PW-70 type supply. The ITPS is inexpensive but widely regarded as worthless. Here is a link to how to wire an Opus to your car. The other devices are wired in a similar fashion.

All regulators cause the voltage input to drop as it feeds through the regulator. The ITPS is particularly egregious in this regard as it drops voltage by approximately 1.5 volts. When the car is operating, the alternator generally puts out 13.5 volts. This drop then supplies 12 volts to the system. However, when the car is off, the voltage is only 12 volts from the battery and the ITPS only supplies 10.5 volts to the system. This is not sufficient and can cause random freezing and cause failure of data writes to the hard drive. However, the ITPS is an old design and is not very common any more.

Inverters

Inverters are a cheap and easy way to power your computer. An inverter takes DC power from your car and converts it to 120 volt AC power, just like in your house. To use the inverter, simply plug in your home power supply to the inverter. The power supply converts your AC power BACK into DC power that your computer can use. Naturally, converting DC power to AC just to convert it back to DC is inefficient and the inefficiency manifests itself as heat. Many also report that inverters introduce noise in your audio lines, distorting the sound. In addition, the manner in which inverters convert DC power to AC power can be unacceptable to certain computers and they will not work with an inverter. In addition, automatic startup and shutdown of the PC by an inverter requires additional hardware such as a DSSC (see above).

However, inverters are easy to install, inexpensive and many will survive crank, making them popular among many members. It doesn’t really matter how one powers the computer, though. What works for one may not work for another.

Here's the answer to one of the most FREQUENTLY asked questions about inverters:

Do they draw power when the car is off?

The answer is yes and maybe.

Read about it here.

Calculating how much power your system draws

1. Carpc's calculator

2. JS custom PC's power calculator

3. Oh my god my arm fell off's power calculator

4. Erol's power calculator

5. Extreme Outer Vision

Here are electrical specifications for a large variety of processors.

"But wait!" you say. Here's a PW200 that claims 200 Watts of power!. WRONG. They are making claims that are at best misstatements, and at worst, outright lies. The PW200 gets to 200 watts by simply routing 161 watts of UNREGULATED power straight to the 12 volt rail! here is a an explanation of what is going on. Short answer: this regulator only puts out 60 watts of regulated power. So beware.

Links to some articles explaining power supplies:

HardwareDecrets.com

ExtremeOverclocking.com

Article written by BugByte, WiCKeD 5.9L

Radio install help

marklazer — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 03:19:06 GMT

Hello, I have a 2002 Cadillac Deville, I installed a aftermarket radio The name brand is Innovatek 901GPS I bought a Pac os2-gm32 I really like the radio and it works great. It has radio,gps,dvd,tv, backup cam, etc. But when I shut down the radio the radio lights stay on, the radio turns off but the lights stay on. Now on the pac harness has a orange illumination wire wich I did not hook up do to my radio not having an illumination wire. And my radio has an anttenna wire but no amp trigger wire. So I wired the amp trigger wire and the antenna wire from the pac to the antenna wire on the radio, could this be the problem? Should I move the amp trigger wire from the pac harness to my ignition wire on the radio instead? Thank you in advance!

900 MB CD-r

jrocca — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 10:38:34 GMT

Hey all, i'm looking for 90/99 min, 900 MB cd-r. I know they are out there but can't find them in the USA.
Anyone know where I can get some?

thanks
JC

Innovation Grant

Heather — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 11:52:48 GMT

How the Grant works:
The goal of the grant is to support the innovations for mp3Car forum members.

Forum members post in the mp3Car Innovation Grant forum here about something they are working on related to car computing. They can request up to $100 work of a physical or software and including shipping, which will be used by the grant recipient to further their innovation.

Each month, moderators select a forum member to receive the grant.

There are no strings attached, however we kindly ask that the forum member post in their worklog or some other location on the forums how they used their grant.

List of recipients:
Jul 2009: Chunkyks - Sheeva Plug - for development of an open source and Linux based obd2
Oct 2009: kev000 - Sheeva Plug - for Linux Ice development work
Nov 2009:Jebus - Andrea Electronics Superbeam Array Microphone Bundle for new Voice Recognition app for Ride Runner
January 2010: malcom2073 - BoomzBox HDRadio

BoomzBox HD

ssteger — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:05:43 GMT

Installation Instructions

DISCLAMERS:
*The HD Radio, HD Digital Radio and HD Digital Radio Alliance are word marks and trademarks of iBiquity
Digital Corporation, used under license by the HD Digital Radio Alliance. All rights are reserved.
*All products are tested and verified 99.9% before shipping.
*While every effort has been taken to provide a quality product, we cannot guarantee the product to function
correctly if installation is not done according to the instructions in this guide.
*We are not liable for misuse of this product. Misuse includes improper installation.
*Limited 2 year warranty.

ITEMS INCLUDED:
1. BoomzBox HD Radio tuner.
2. BoomzBox computer interface box.
3. 6 foot A to Mini-B USB cable.
4. 2 foot mini-din 8 to mini-din 8 cable.
5. 2 Pin Connector.

The Custom Title Elite

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:01:49 GMT

Custom Title Elite

The Custom Title Elite are a small group consisting mainly of users who have been around for a while and attracted the attention of the Moderator/Admin Frodo. (See The Frodo Era in the My Thread Mafia group)

How they came to his noticed varied from a simple innocuous comment in a thread to a downright case of begging for a custom title.

An example thread http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/off-...le-flac-3.html

However Frodo wasn't the first Admin/Moderator to dispense customer titles, a former admin bgoodman also dished some out, but he has since stepped down and no longer dispenses them.

After a forum upgrade some of those that had Custom Titles have since lost them.

The Custom Titled
* Enforcer - Confusion Master
* Quattro - I see dead kittens
* 0l33l - My Village Called
* Cris - Tainted Love
* ccsnet - The Vauxhall Vectra Project
* rustyboxx - Poet Laureate
* antimatter - Jesus Freak
* ODYSSEY - Unregistered User
* Motoko - Rub One Out
* WebDog - Well, He asked for it
* Question - I've got no answer!
* Stevieg - See me in my wet t-shirt
* Rafster - The lavendar tie just made it obvious
* meddler - It ain't easy being green (note: due to promotion this has changed to "It ain't easy being a green moderator")
* frodobaggins - 9 Fingered Administrator Lesbian (note: this has now changed to "I'm sorry, and you are....?")
* kevinlekiller - Takes it in the Rear
* Wiredwrx - Calm Down Or Get A 2 Week Vacation -Love The Forum Policeman
* thanatos106 - Para Laura
* Grayscale - Clover
* JC-S60 - cheap custom title
* Peoples - My man uses Levitra
* pimpJ - Whistle Tip
* RedGTiVR6 - Female
* Pudge - Phat Boy
* Chris31 - Chester
* wizardPC - forum jackass
* lgbr - Top Ramen
* veedubya - "Speaker of the Truth"
* shizzle - my nizzle
* lagunaICE - Of Ice and Men
* ibrennan - Gender is Questionable
* gospeed.racer - FLA
* Bugbyte - super duper moderator
* mp3oplecarrier - n00b 4 life
* judoGTI - It's not really that small...No, seriously.
* AUSI319 - Started best thread ever
* monkeyracer - Wants to make it harder
* truckinmp3 - Self proclaimed spoon feeder
* Pudge - phatboy
* Lopan - LAME :)
* Achiever - underarchiever
* GizmoQ - The Last Good Gremiln
* danielkh - SD beats everything. So there.
* Tidder - Originally mister fun-pantz, then no title, now Wal-Mart Greeter
and
* kiltjim - who has no user title whatsoever.

The Usual Suspects

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:56:38 GMT

The usual suspects are a small but merciless group who jump on a new thread, usually started by a newbie, and proceed to 'bash the n00b' with indications that the question has been asked many times and that they should have searched before posting.

To be continued. . . . .

My Thread Moderator Note

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:56:02 GMT

Undoubtedly, the My Thread Mafia will continue their revolution against us (the moderators and followers). Frankly, we hope they do. It keeps things interesting around here. It's not a full month unless Motoko gets banned for having an obscene avatar. But really, The My Thread Mafia has not been active for the past month, bringing peace and balance to the force. Now we mods have only the deletion of spam and settling of petty arguments over who got ripped off in the forum or who's not being nice to n00bs. It's not much, but it's a living. We suspect that the group is planning an attack anytime soon, but we will be ready to fight full force.

My Thread Mafia Crime Members Listed Alphabetically

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:55:15 GMT

* 2Fast
* 2k1Toaster
* Anky1
* blurp
* CCSNET
* Edrex
* Enforcer
* JC-S60
* jjh221
* kevinlekiller
* Lostreception
* MC_Stoo
* Meddler
* Motoko
* ODYSSEY
* P3rv3rt B3ar
* Quattro
* Rafster
* ~Rob
* Rob Withey
* rustyboxx
* sama
* Scouse Monkey
* Spaghetti
* Tidder
* tj!2k4
* turbocad6

The My Thread Mafia during the Rep era a k a Rep Club

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:47:57 GMT

At the beginning and during the Rep era a small subsection of mp3car members deliberately used the newly added "Rep" system for fun. Their crimes against humanity included beefing up each other's rep. The goal was to be the first to get the most "danglies". The one and only rule of RepClub was "Do not talk about RepClub".

The Rep Era

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:47:26 GMT

A short period of time where the forum had a reputation function for each member allowing each member to either give a negative or a positive "rep" to a fellow member. Reps where either given on how good an answer to a reply was or how well a transaction went in the 'For Sale' section and more. Depending on how many "reps" a member got, they would start collecting gold "danglies" underneath their name showing a visual amount of how positively repped they were.

Chumba

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:46:39 GMT

Chumba is a reference coined up by the My Thread members meaning the act of anal sex between a man and a woman.

Uses of the word as an example include;

* "I had the best chumba last night guys!"
* "Wow! Wish I could give her chumba!"
* "Guys how do I go about giving chumba?"
* "My girlfriend got chumbafied on friday night"
* "Chumba!!!1"

REMOVED

The Frodo Era

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:46:15 GMT

During the early era of the thread where the My Thread Mafia members and moderators were on a peaceful standoff. Frodo was a very active member later becoming a moderator him self but still retaining his human emotions, feelings and thoughts. Recently he has vanished and has not been seen or heard from. Some members say since his departure the harmonious stalemate between the My Thread Mafia and the moderators has deteriorated ever since. Most members are eagerly awaiting for his return which they hope will once again strengthen the peace between these two giants.

The My Thread Mafia

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:45:52 GMT

The My Thread Mafia is the main parent group. They stand to fight for freedom, free thinking, liberty, love and against n00b bashing mods through out the forum. Though their numbers are substantially small they have made a huge impact on the forum and have freed hundreds of oppressed members.

The term "My Thread Mafia" was coined by Bugbyte, a moderator on the mp3car.com site, in a note to other moderators describing the tendency of some members of My Thread to mob certain threads that expressed opinions that My Threaders disagreed with or criticism of My Thread or My Thread participants.

Historical Significance

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:45:21 GMT

My Thread is responsible for a number of famous forum terms and occurrences including Chumba, Rep club, and the temporary ban of My Thread founder Scouse Monkey.

My Thread

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:44:33 GMT

My Thread is a continuous running conversation in the Off Topic section (recently moved to Deep Off Topic) of the mp3car.com forum. Begun by user Scouse Monkey on the 31st of March 2005 to consolidate conversations in one place rather than in posts all over the forum. At MP3Car.com, My Thread is periodically renewed and enumerated when approximately 2500 messages are posted due to the size of the thread slowing down the forum response time. The current My Thread is in its 12th iteration. Posts in My Thread, like all other Off Topic posts, do not increase the post count of members.

Anyone is welcome to join in on My Thread, but the My Thread Mafia insists that all newcomers read every post in every iteration of My Thread before posting. This represents approximately 46,500 posts (80,000 if you include Digital-Car), only a few have managed to complete this monstrous task which shows how well members must be skilled in order to join the My Thread Mafia. In addition, reading or joining in on My Thread requires a sense of humor and one should not be easily offended.

* My Thread!!!
* My Thread!!! pt 2
* My Thread!!! Pt. 3
* My Thread!!! Pt.4
* My Thread!!!! Pt. 5
* My Thread!!! Pt. 6!
* My Thread!!! Pt. 7! - The Return???
* My Thread!!! Pt. 8! - The Love Thread!
* My Thread!!! Pt. 9! - MT continues so MT critics: STFU! :)
* My Thread!!! Pt. 10! - Stop slacking you guys
* My Thread!!! Pt. 11! - Just for you guys!
* My Thread!!! Pt. 12! - Happy 2008 everyone!

* My Thread ! - UnModerated Thread @ Digital-Car

My Thread Mafia

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:39:30 GMT

My Thread
Historical Significance
The My Thread Mafia
The Frodo Era
Chumba
The Rep Era
The My Thread Mafia during the Rep era a.k.a. "Rep Club"
My Thread Mafia Crime Members Listed Alphabetically
My Thread Moderator Note

Infamous User Groups

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:37:13 GMT

My Thread Mafia

The Usual Suspects

The Custom Title Elite

Car Computer Stores

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:36:01 GMT

Maui Activities and Tours

Maui Activities

Books on Car Computing

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:30:42 GMT

* Build Your Own Car PC, by Gavin D J Harper, Ed McGraw-Hill
* Car PC Hacks, By Damien Stolarz, Ed O'Reilly
* Geek My Ride: Build the Ultimate Tech Rod, Ed John Wiley & Sons

Links to Articles on Mobile Computing

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:28:54 GMT

HowStuffWorks, "How Car Computers Work"

Web links That Have Useful Mobile Computing Information

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:26:53 GMT

(Websites with information resources only, company advertisements not allowed)

Car Computing Web-Sites in English:
* MP3Car Website - Wiki hosting site. Vast forums
* Digital-Car UK - The UK Car PC Community
* Dashboardmonkey.com - A community of carputer builders and their blogs
* Mobile Effects - CarPC Info
* The Vauxhall Vectra CarPC - As seen in books ( ie CarPC Hacks ) and on / offline publications such CNET - Also all major CarPC news feeds live.

Car Computing Web-Sites not in English
* PCCar - Russian CarPC Site
* Bil-PC.no - Norwegian CarPC Site

Mp3Car Google Meet Map

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:21:11 GMT

The Mp3Car Google Meet Map is a project dedicated to easing the finding of nearby meets to Mp3Car forum users. It was originally created by Nick (Reno91011), an Mp3Car 2008 summer intern. You can find a forum thread to discuss the map at http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/mp3c...back-here.html

The meet map is used in order to easier find nearby meets and people on the Mp3Car forums. The boxes with text fields and buttons above the map are used to refine the searches. The upper box is used solely to find meets, while the lower box is used to find meets and people within a specified mile radius of the flashing question mark. The search fields are relatively self-explanatory, with one corresponding to locations (city, state, zip, and country), while also allowing for searches of meets based upon the date. The "Meet Search" will find all meets that pass the search details, while the "My Meets" will find all meets that pass the search details and also have the currently logged-in user as one of the attendees.

The second box is used in conjunction with the flashing question mark found in the middle of the map. By putting in a number (for miles) in the textbox next to "Search Radius (Miles)", the map will display all of the meets within that radius when you click on "Meet Circle". If you were to click on "Member Circle" instead, it would find all of the members within that radius who have added their location in the Member Map found at http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/vbgooglemapme.php. This search function is also able to be refined by using the second group of date textboxes.

A user can sign themselves up as attending, tentatively attending, or maybe attending a meet by finding a meet they want to go to and clicking on the meet marker or its name in the right-hand column. A user then goes to the attendance tab and clicks on "Edit Your Status" to go to a form that allows for a comment and attendance status to be input. After saving the changes, the user will be marked as attending.

FOR ORGANIZERS:

First, email forums@mp3car.com to be put into the organizer's group.

Admins, Super Moderators, Individual Forum Moderators, and the newly created group of Organizers are all able to create and edit meets, as well as edit an individual user's comments in their attendance status. The Meet Creation page is relatively straight-forward. Fill out the top form with the main information, move the marker on top-right map in order to choose where the meet will be and then click on the button underneath the map to get the markers latitude and longitude automatically placed into the right field, and fill out the rest of the form as necessary. However, before creating a meet through this form, a new thread should be started in the meets area so that it can be linked to correctly. The button to the left of the "Details" tab textbox is a simple way to get all of the information from the above fields into the main area, while the "Attendance" tab is not editable since it is system generated.

Editing a previously created meet is very similar to the creation of a new meet. Only a Super Moderator, Admin, Individual Forum Moderators, or the meet's original creator can edit a meet. This means that one Organizer leveled user cannot edit another Organizer leveled user's meet. The administration of a meet is very straightforward since it is used solely to edit the comments of another user if that person used inappropriate language.

It isn't necessarily the most complex system possible, but it should hopefully be a solid starting point for further customization based around what organizers and attendees need.

*Add a place to your meet:
** Enter this code in the tab details section: Place: enter your place here

All about Bondo

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:16:26 GMT

Introduction
Many users ask: How do I use body filler (or Bondo as it's product name).

Using body filler for the first time can be quite an intimidating feat. Without it, molding your screen to your dash can be quite difficult.

This is a basic guide to using body filler for the first few times. It is by no means all inclusive, but it should help get you started and help to ease some of the tension you may have

Most body filler is essentially a fiberglass (polyester) resin. Many people wonder about the ability of todays body filler to adhere to various metals and plastics. With current technology, adhesion is just as good, if not better, than many of the epoxy adhesives out on the market.

One of the first steps that should be taken every time body filler is to be primered is to completely prep the surface that you are applying the body filler to. This includes:

- cleaned surface (many times, an alcohol pad will do the trick)

- sanded (a very rough surface makes for better adhesion) with 40 grit sand paper

- dry (moisture will prevent a bond from forming between the body filler and the material you are trying to bond to)

- nonprimered (many times primers contain chemicals that will prevent a bond from occurring between the body filler and the primer its self)

About Body Filler
There are two parts to body filler.

The filler its self:

And the catalyst (MEK):

The product you get from mixing these two is the result of a chemical reaction. Heat is a byproduct. The hardener (MEK peroxide) is mixed in with the resin and the chemical reaction begins.

Important Information
The surface of the area you are working on needs to be at least 64 degrees Fahrenheit (17.8 degrees Celsius). If it is not at this temperature, you risk the mixture curing from the outermost surface area inwards. This can mean that moisture and various solvents can cause bubbling, adhesion problems, and downright frustration at a later time. This could be minutes, days or week later, but it will happen. The ideal temperature for using body filler is between 72 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit (22.2 to 26.7 degrees Celsius). We all know that ideals are hard to come by. If your surface is cooler than the minimum recommended surface temperature, you can heat your work piece to the desired temperature. Just remember, you can get too hot.

One solution that many people resort to is using more catalyst than normal. While a minimal amount more is ok, as with everything, you can use too much. If you mix it too hot, you will cause the body filler to become brittle. This will cause cracks, chips, and peeling, which all can lead to big headaches. Keeping a good cure time will allow the gases to escape and will give you time to work out air pockets while applying with your spreader.

The recommended amount of hardener is 1.5 to 3%. Great, but how am I supposed to apply that in the real world?

One tip I've heard for mixing is as follows:

On the pallet or board that you mix your Bondo or filler on, put the amount you are going to mix up in the form of a circle. With your spreader or mixer divide the circle in half, 50%. Divide the half in half, 25%, half again, 12.5%, half again, 6.25% half again, 3.125% (this is the maximum) half again, 1.5% (this is the minimum).

Between coats of filler, do not wipe with solvent (thinner), because solvent will be absorbed into the filler.

Roughen the area where you are going to be applying body filler and then be sure to use an air hose, or compressed air of some kind, to clear off all of the dust. Mix up some body filler and apply it, being sure not to make any one layer more than �� to 3/8�.

Mixing Body Filler
Here is an example of a pallet used to mix body filler on:

Many people turn to a glazing putty to fill in pin holes or other minor imperfections in their work. Just remember that if you use this over something that didn�t have any hardener in it, it will absorb any solvent or thinner into the uncatalyzed product, and not the catalyzed product. This will cause the uncatalyzed product to swell a bit from any solvent absorbed. It will then shrink, exposing any imperfections in the putty finish.

To prevent this from happening, it is recommended that you use a two part system the whole way through.

One very important thing to note is that if you have ANYTHING that moves, even in the slightest, it will cause a problem in the future, usually, in the very near future. Yes, body fillers do have the ability to flex some, however, a crack will end up showing up later.

If you end up with a few cracks, there are a few options for you. First, you will need to remove ALL of the old body filler before going another step further. You will need to start over from scratch as mentioned above.

Some notes for mixing your body filler:

Do not use cardboard for mixing your filler. Cardboard could have been anywhere and could have any number of things absorbed in it, it can also absorb some of the solvent in the resin. The number one reason for not using cardboard for mixing on is that the styrene will cause any chemical that�s already on the cardboard to come out and be mixed into your body filler. There are some products available for this kind of thing, Clean Sheets is one that comes to mind.

Regarding what grit sand paper to use, I found this handy guide:

-16 to 36-grit for grinder discs for paint removal and bare metal Bondo prep

-24 to 36-grit for roughing out the filler with an air file sander or hand board

-60 to 80-grit for smoothing out the rough scratches from the previous operation and shaping finer contours

-80 to 180-grit for further smoothing in preparation for high-build catalyzed primers (with hardener), or 240 to 320-grit for lacquer-based (non-catalyzed) primers

-320 to 600-grit for final sanding prep before paint, following the manufacturers guidelines on their product information sheet

-600 to 2000-grit for sanding clear coats for re-coating clear, or for removing minor surface imperfections prior to polishing and buffing

Pictures of the process
You�ll want to buy a bunch of these. The nitrile gloves tend to be a better glove.

Getting the body filler out of the jug.

Body filler waiting for catalyst.

Body filler with catalyst ready to be mixed.

Use Professional Audio VST plugins for tuning inside Winamp

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:10:12 GMT

VST effects plugins are professional audio software plugins the allow you to alter/change audio in real time. They work with a variety of programs including Winamp when you have it setup properly.

For even more advanced ideas on tuning see the Software Options for Tuning thread or even better the WIKI PAGE. ASIO opens the door for even better tuning combined with VST plugin effects. For now, we will focus on the easier part.

1) Download and Install Winamp if you haven't already. Do not launch the program yet.

2) Download and install the Winamp VST plugin Bridge. This will be needed to use VST plugins inside winamp.

3) Unzip/Copy/install the plugin into the Winamp plugin directory.

Example location: ''C:\Program Files\Winamp\Plugins''

4) Open/Launch Winamp and select the menu �options�, then �preferences�. You can also right click in the box showing track time and do this as well.

You should now have a window that looks like this:

5) Scroll down to �DSP/effect� and select the "VST host DSP"

Now you are ready to use VST plugins. For example if you want to use a 31 band EQ found here:

Free VST 31 band EQ

Download a VST plugin and put it into a folder you can find easily. You will need to browse to this folder later.

Back to Winamp...

6) Click on �Configure active plugin�

7) Then click in the vst plugin box and �load dll�

8) Browse to the same folder where you unzipped/copied/installed the EQ plugin and select it.

9) If all is well the EQ should pop up and you now have a 31 band EQ for Winamp.

Then you should be able to play with the vst plugin you selected. It�s easier to use winamp specific plugins available from their website, but the VST plugins are professional based plugins used for many different programs. In winamp you can only use one vst plugin at a time unless you can get the VST plugin chainer working.

'''For more info on VST and VST effects or where to find VST effects, click here'''.

Working with Windows Media Player and StreetDeck to manage MP3s

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:03:21 GMT

StreetDeck has an abstraction layer over the WMP. GetWMP() is a function off the MediaController that really is just a quick hack that gives you direct access to the media player backend because we haven�t built all the same functionality into the StreetDeck SDK yet. StreetDeck should respond to some WMP events like play, but only if it is the currently selected media manager.

To play anything in StreetDeck, you have to convert the playlist to its format.

WMPLib.IWMPPlayer wmp = (WMPLib.IWMPPlayer)app.MediaController.GetWMP();
WMPLib.IWMPPlaylist Album = wmp.mediaCollection.getAll();

if (Album != null)
{
StreetDeck.AudioPlaylist SDPlaylist = app.MediaController.MusicManager.NewPlaylist("Test ", null);
StreetDeck.MusicManager mm = app.MediaController.MusicManager;

//We need to convert the WMP playlist to a streetdeck playlist before being able to set it
for (int i=0;i {
WMPLib.IWMPMedia wmpMedia = Album.get_Item(i);
StreetDeck.AudioMedia SDMedia = mm.NewMedia(wmpMedia.sourceURL);
SDPlaylist.AppendItem(SDMedia);
}

//StreetDeck will automatically append any set playlists, so we should clear the current list first
mm.CurrentPlaylist.Clear();

//Set the new playlist, this actually appends the playlist to the current playlist though
mm.CurrentPlaylist = SDPlaylist;

//This will load the first the first item in the playlsit and the music manager
mm.CurrentMedia = mm.CurrentPlaylist.Item(0);

//Show the music module
module.Exec("CMusicModule");

//Start the media playing
app.SendFunction(StreetDeck.enumSDFunctions.eFunct ionPlayModuleMedia);
}

Automatically registering Addins with StreetDeck

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:02:17 GMT

About addins in StreetDeck
StreetDeck will attempt to load an addin if it is in the Addin sub folder of a script project using the filename of the addin as the Prog ID. i.e. suppose you have a script project created in the StreetDeck development enviornment that is refereneced by the GUID {A42819EF-8B34-48C2-80CF-3B8754FD7F1B}. This script project hosts a .Net addin that compiles to a dll file in the Addins sub folder and has a Prog Id of Test.Addin. The path to the addin should be something like \StreetDeck\Scripts\{A42819EF-8B34-48C2-80CF-3B8754FD7F1B}\Addins\Test.Addin.dll

StreetDeck will attempt to create the addin using
CComPtr pController;
pController.CoCreateInstance(L"Test.Addin");

Auto Registration of Addins in StreetDeck
When StreetDeck starts up, it will check every GUID based script sub folder in the \StreetDeck\Scripts path for an addin sub folder. If the folder exists, it will enumerate all .dll files that do not contain the word "Interop." in it. For each dll in this list, it will check to see if the dll is registered by calling the windows API function CLSIDFromProgID. If this function returns any result other the S_OK, it will attempt to register the dll using regsvr32.exe and wait for a result. If the registration fails, StreetDeck will then attempt to register the dll using regasm.exe

Preventing StreetDeck from auto registering a DLL
Sometimes it is necessary to place a dll in the addins sub folder for support of the addin that is not actually a StreetDeck addin. For example, .Net based interop libraries. To prevent StreetDeck from attempting to register these files, they can be renamed so they don't have a .dll extension, they can be renamed so they contain Interop. (Case Sensitive) in the file name, or they can be moved from the Addins directory, any of which will prevent StreetDeck from attempting to register the dll.

Available Command Line Flags for use with App GetFlags and App GetFlagsEx

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:58:52 GMT

About GetFlags and GetFlagsEx
As of version 1.1.0.1, StreetDeck exposes the GetFlags and GetFlagsEx functions that return a bitwise OR of the following flags set that determine how StreetDeck operates. Most of the flags are set by the command line through a corresponding command line parameter. (i.e. using -RouteXMAudio on the command will result in (App.GetFlags() & 0x08000000) == TRUE;)

Showing the StreetDeck help screen using the -? command line parameter will give a description for all available command line parameters.

It is not possible to set flags after StreetDeck is running.

Some flags will be set by StreetDeck internally, not just be the command line. (i.e. CAPPDATA_VERBOSE will be set regarless if the -Verbose command line parameter in the Debug version of StreetDeck.)

No all command line parameters set a Flag.

StreetDeck stores flags in two 32-bit unsigned integer since there are more then 32 flags. GetFlags returns the first integer and GetFlagsEx returns the second.

BitWise Flags returned by GetFlags
1. define CAPPDATA_VERBOSE 0x00000001
2. define CAPPDATA_RESETCONFIG 0x00000002
3. define CAPPDATA_AllCOMM 0x00000004
4. define CAPPDATA_LOADWIZARDS 0x00000008
5. define CAPPDATA_NOTHREADS 0x00000010
6. define CAPPDATA_NOVOICE 0x00000020
7. define CAPPDATA_ALLOWMEDIADUPLICATES 0x00000040
8. define CAPPDATA_TESTMODE 0x00000080
9. define CAPPDATA_DISABLEINDEXING 0x00000100
10. define CAPPDATA_DISABLEPOWERBUTTON 0x00000200
11. define CAPPDATA_FORCE16BIT 0x00000800
12. define CAPPDATA_GDIMODE 0x00001000
13. define CAPPDATA_SLOW 0x00002000
14. define CAPPDATA_NODELAYLOAD 0x00004000
15. define CAPPDATA_FAKEDATA 0x00008000
16. define CAPPDATA_NOMOUSECONSTRAINTS 0x00010000
17. define CAPPDATA_DISABLEMULTIMON 0x00020000
18. define CAPPDATA_DISABLESCRIPTING 0x00040000
19. define CAPPDATA_DISABLEWINDOWHOOKS 0x00080000
20. define CAPPDATA_NODELAYCOMPONENTS 0x00100000
21. define CAPPDATA_EXTRASECURE 0x00200000
22. define CAPPDATA_IMPORTSKIN 0x00400000
23. define CAPPDATA_NOBACKGROUNDMP3 0x00800000
24. define CAPPDATA_DISABLEGESTURES 0x01000000
25. define CAPPDATA_FLIPSCREEN 0x02000000
26. define CAPPDATA_FORCEEUROPE 0x04000000
27. define CAPPDATA_ROUTEXMAUDIO 0x08000000
28. define CAPPDATA_VMOD 0x10000000 //Set to true if we detect this is a vmod

BitWise Flags returned by GetFlagsEx
1. define CAPPDATAEX_VWMODE 0x00000001
2. define CAPPDATAEX_UPNPCLIENTONLY 0x00000002
3. define CAPPDATAEX_UMPC 0x00000004
4. define CAPPDATAEX_MIDDLEEAST 0x00000008
5. define CAPPDATAEX_FAKEGRACENOTE 0x00000010
6. define CAPPDATAEX_PARROTBLUETOOTH 0x00000020
7. define CAPPDATAEX_STATICBACKGROUND 0x00000040
8. define CAPPDATAEX_G4DONTFORCEDVDCODEC 0x00000080
9. define CAPPDATAEX_VMRDVD 0x00000100
10. define CAPPDATAEX_DONTROUTEINFILLRADIO 0x00000200
11. define CAPPDATAEX_RADIOTUNEEVENSTATIONS 0x00000400
12. define CAPPDATAEX_DISABLEAUTOUPDATER 0x00000800
13. define CAPPDATAEX_SIRIUS 0x00001000
14. define CAPPDATAEX_EMBED 0x00002000
15. define CAPPDATAEX_HDRADIO 0x00004000
16. define CAPPDATAEX_PROMPTPASSENGERMODE 0x00008000

Integrate a windows application into a DigitalMod Addin

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:22:19 GMT

The following tutorial discusses how to embed a typical window (HWND) into StreetDeck. It applies only to version 1.0.7.6 of StreetDeck and later.

This is NOT the preferred way of integrating with StreetDeck. Ideally you should create a module or overlay and place controls on it using the StreetDeck development enviornment. This will ensure your DigitalMod matches the look and feel of whatever the current skin is and can take advantage of all of StreetDeck's functionality including gesturing.

In cases where certain functionality can not be duplicated in the StreetDeck development envoirnment or where you are integrating an exsiting application, it may be required to embed a window as is into StreetDeck. This is possible with the module method "HWND CreateHostWindow()." This method will create a window the size of the current module that will have portions cut out of it where overlays are visible and will show through the host window on top of it.

Starting a New Addin Project in StreetDeck
This project will build upon the basic tutorial of Building a .Net Addin for StreetDeck. Please complete or download this project before continuing.

Creating the Host Window
After you have created a module in your addin, to embedd a window, you first need to create a host window in StreetDeck that will contain and be the parent window for the window or form in your addin.

Add the following code after the CreateModule call in the OnConnection event in your addin.

//Create a host window to put in general windows inside the program
int hWndHost = (int) module.CreateHostWindow();

Embedding your window
Create a new windows form in your visual studio project by right clicking on your project and going to "Add | Add Windows Form..."

Type a unique name for your new form, i.e. "EmbeddedForm" and click "Open"

Double click on your form and edit its properties. Set ShowInTaskBar=False, ControlBox=False, FormBorderStyle=None

Add a single button to the form and set the caption to "Go Back"

Double click on the button to add a button1_Click to your form.

Now go back to the class where you create the StreetDeck module and inside the class declaration right above the Constructor, add the following windows API declarations.

[DllImport("user32")] public static extern int SetParent(int hWndChild, int hWndNewParent) ;
[DllImport("user32")] public static extern bool EnableWindow(int hWnd, bool bEnable);

Finally, below the CreateHostWindow call, add the following call to create and embed the form we just added to our project into our host window.

//Create our embedded form and embed it inside of our host window
EmbeddedForm embeddedForm = new EmbeddedForm();
embeddedForm.TopLevel = false;
embeddedForm.Show();
SetParent((int) embeddedForm.Handle, hWndHost);

Communicating between your form and StreetDeck
The easiest way to allow your form to send functions to StreetDeck is simply to expose the app and module members of your main class as public. To do this, just add public to the StreetDeckApp and ScriptModule declarations in your Class1 class as follows:

public StreetDeck.StreetDeckApp app;
public StreetDeck.ScriptModule module;

Now add a varible to store a pointer to your main class from your form as follows:

public Class1 m_Parent;

In your main class, before the embeddedForm.Show(); call add the following line to set the pointer back to main class from your form.

embeddedForm.m_Parent = this;

Finally, add the following line to the button1_Click function in your form that you created earlier to tell StreetDeck to go back to the previous module when it is clicked:

m_Parent.module.GoBack();

Additional Notes
Note, gesturing will generally not work within your module with a form embedded since all mouse inputs will go to your host window first. You can enable gesturing in StreetDeck by disabling your host window by adding the following call after you call CreateHostWindow(); This will prevent all mouse inputs from getting to your form so you will no longer be able to click buttons on it, however, you will receive events from StreetDeck in the module.OnMouse... events when your host window is disabled.

EnableWindow(hWndHost, false);

Example Project
This project is a Visual Studio 2003 C# projects.

To use this project, both the sdz project must be installed and the source code downloaded. To install the sdz file, simply double click on it, or drag and drop it onto a running instance of StreetDeck. For the c# project, you will have to change the output location and debugging options in the visual studio project properties for the dll after downloading to match the installed locations on your computer.

This project uses the same sdz as Example1. You should just simply replace the StreetDeck.TestAddin.dll in the Addins sub folder with the one you compile for this project.

[Example 1 SDZ] [Media Manager C# Project]

StreetDeck DigitalMods Addins

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:18:43 GMT

DigitalMods(TM) are the way in which you can add additional functionality to StreetDeck.

DigitalMods can be created with the StreetDeck development enviornment that is included with every copy of StreetDeck, including the trial version. More information on creating DigitalMods can be found on the StreetDeck Developers Table of Contents.

Official StreetDeck DigitalMods
The following are DigitalMods created by StreetDeck.com.

* Weather Forecast based on your GPS Location
* In depth information about the satellites your GPS location is based off of

The following are DigitalMods created and uploaded by other StreetDeck users.

Although now a helpful historical list of previous DigitalMods created and posted, all of the files hosted have been temporarily moved over to the Official Streetdeck forum athttp://www.streetdeck.com/Forum in the Digital Mods and Updates section.

* Auto Night Mode/Gamma Control
* Find points of interest using Google Maps
* GPS Gas Price
* Volume Auto Hide
* Nav Zoom Auto Hide
* Weather 2.0
* Find points of interest using Google Maps(New version)
* * [URL="http://www.streetdeck.com/sdzupload/VE_Cache.sdz" target="_blank">Virtual Earth Cache Builder DigitalMod
* Destinator Mapping solution DigitalMod (website reports it has been removed)
* Simple Easy Clock v1.1
* Weather in Metric units (Celsius)
* * [URL="http://www.streetdeck.com/sdzupload/GPSTimesync(1.1.1.0_01).sdz" target="_blank">Sync computer clock with GPS
* Get movie times on the go
* Simple calendar

Uploading your own DigitalMods
Please see the rules for adding a DigitalMod to this page here.

Additional Information

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:09:12 GMT

Please see the following [page] for more information on creating a generic COM server.

More Information on building DigitalMods in StreetDeck

StreetDeck DigitalMods (Addins) other people created.

Integrate a windows application into a DigitalMod (Addin) Tutorial.

Example Project

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:05:18 GMT

All projects are Visual Studio 2005 C# projects.

To use these projects, both the sdz project must be installed and the source code downloaded. To install the sdz file, simply double click on it, or drag and drop it onto a running instance of StreetDeck. For the c# project, you will have to change the output location and debugging options in the visual studio project properties for the dll after downloading to match the installed locations on your computer.

Example 1: Basic StreetDeck Addin This is the project created in the tutorial above and is the most basic addin you can create. [UL="http://www.streetdeck.com/update/developer/Example1.sdz"][Example 1 SDZ][/URL] [C# Project]

Example 2: Comprehensive StreetDeck Addin. This is a project that demonstrates some of the most common things you would want to do with the StreetDeck SDK including creating controls, working with the navigation engine, sending functions to StreetDeck, Text to Speech, and Playing videos. [Example 2 SDZ][C# Project]

Distributing and registering Your Addin

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:01:46 GMT

After you have created your addin, you should package it into a StreetDeck sdz file so it can be distributed and registered properly by StreetDeck. Since your addin is a COM object, it must be registered using regasm.exe (for .Net COM objects) or regsvr32.exe (for Non .Net languages). When an SDZ is extracted and imported by StreetDeck it automatically calls regsvr32.exe and regasm.exe /codebase on every .dll in the Addins sub folder for the addin. You MUST make sure you addin binary resides in this folder before exporting your addin. As long as it is, it will be automatically registered when an end user double clicks on the sdz file or otherwise imports it into StreetDeck.

To package your project, startup StreetDeck in developer mode. Now start using your addin in StreetDeck such that a screen shot that describes your addin is on the screen. A screen shot will be taken of the StreetDeck render window when you package your project. Next, select File | Package for Distribution. Then select your project from the list. All files and sub folders in your project's folder will be packaged into the specified sdz file. You should make sure your project has no dependancies outside of the project folder needed on the destination machine. If you need to register additional dependencies besides just your addin, you can do so by implmenting the CustomRegister and CustomUnregister events in your addin's class.

//
// This is called when the Addin is registered, you should register anything else the
// addin needs to be installed to work here.
//
[ComRegisterFunction]
public static void CustomRegister(Type t)
{
}

[ComUnregisterFunction]
public static void CustomUnregister(Type t)
{
}

Debugging your Addin with StreetDeck

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:59:32 GMT

To debug your addin as it runs in StreetDeck, you should right click on your project in the solution explorer and click Properties.

Under the Application tab, you must make sure the name of your .dll matches the ProgId of your com object. Set the Assembly name to match whatever you put for the ProgId of your addin. i.e. StreetDeck.TestAddin

Under the Build tab, set the output folder to your script directory, i.e. My Documents\StreetDeck\Scripts\\Addins. You should also have Visual Studio automatically register your addin for you by checking the Register for COM interop setting.

Finally, under the debug tab, you should set the working directory to your installed StreetDeck location (usually C:\program files\StreetDeck). Set the command line arguments to -testmode and under the Start external program option browse to and select the StreetDeck.exe file.

You should now be able to run and debug your project.

When the StreetDeck starts up, you should be able to go to DigitalMods and choose your project from the list which will take you to a module in the project. If an overlay is in your addin and is set to visible, it will always be visible whenever StreetDeck is running.

Building the Addin in Visual Studio

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:56:42 GMT

Start up Visual Studio 2005.

Create a new C# project by going to File | New | Project.

Choose Class Library from the list of C# projects.

Type a unique name for the project such as "StreetDeckTestAddin" and click 'Ok'

Add the following line to the top of the class file to include the COM interop services.

using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

Add a reference to the StreetDeck COM server by right clicking on the references folder in the solution explorer for your Addin project and choosing Add Reference then choose the Browse tab.

Select the StreetDeck.exe file usually located in C:\program files\StreetDeck and click OK

In the solution explorer, expand the properties folder and double click on AssemblyInfo.cs. Find the line where it says [assembly: ComVisible(false)] and change false to true so that it can register itself as a COM object.

In the solution explorer, double click on Class1.cs and add the following lines within the name space brackets.

[
GuidAttribute(""),
ProgId(""),
ComVisible(true)
]

Run the GuidGen tools by going to Tools | Create GUID. Generate a new Registry Format GUID and copy it. Place the generated GUID in the GuidAttribute quotes and add a progid which should be the human readable addin name followed by a . and the class name. i.e. After the changes the lines should look similar, but not exactly like the following, your GUID MUST be unique for each addin you create. Using the GuidGen tool assures the GUID will always be unique.

[
GuidAttribute("69CECAE8-7125-4cf4-8026-AF40503CC406"),
ProgId("StreetDeck.TestAddin"),
ComVisible(true)
]

For your addin to be loaded by StreetDeck, it must implement the StreetDeck.IDualStreetDeckAddin interface. To do this, change the automatically created Class1 interface to look as follows:
public class Class1 : StreetDeck.IDualStreetDeckAddin

Every addin should also implment the OnConnection and OnDisconnect events which are called when the addin is loaded and unloaded by StreetDeck they are the first and last events respectively. In the OnConnection event, you should create all Modules, Overlays, and Media Managers your addin will use and any other initialization your addin needs. NOTE: The methods to create these objects will unconditionally fail outside of the OnConnection event. You should cleanup everything allocated in the OnDisconnect event.

The following code implements the OnConnection event. On the first line of the event, we save a pointer to the app object given to us in the OnConnection event to a class member. The next line creates a module where we can place other panels (controls). We then create a single button panel in the new module and set the caption to say "Show Overlay". Next we create an overlay panel that will be shown when the button is clicked and sign up for the OnExec module event to process the button click.

StreetDeck.StreetDeckApp app;
StreetDeck.ScriptModule module;
StreetDeck.ScriptOverlay overlay;

//This OnConnection event is where we create all of the modules and overlay streetdeck needs
//This example creates one module and one overlay
void StreetDeck.IDualStreetDeckAddin.OnConnection(objec t o, StreetDeck.enumAddinConnectMode e)
{
//Save a pointer to the StreetDeck App object for future reference
app = (StreetDeck.StreetDeckApp)o;

//Create a single module that will show and hide an overlay
module = app.CreateModule("ModuleName");

//Create a button on our module that will show and hide the overlay
//We can create the button panel at the start of the client area by using the
//app.GetSystemMetric call. The width and height are ignored for buttons which take
//on the width and height of whatever the button class (skin image) is.
StreetDeck.Panel btnShowOverlay = (StreetDeck.Panel) module.CreatePanel(StreetDeck.enumCreatePanelType. eCPTButton, "BUTTON.LISTITEM_HIGH",
"ShowOverlay", // This is the function name that will be given back to us in any OnExec
// call and for all intents and purposes is the name of this panel
app.GetSystemMetric(StreetDeck.enumSystemMetrics.e SMGenericModuleClientX),
app.GetSystemMetric(StreetDeck.enumSystemMetrics.e SMGenericModuleClientY),
200, 200);
btnShowOverlay.Caption = "Show Overlay";

//Create an overlay that will contain the other controls. Overlays are global and will be shown
//above every other module
overlay = app.CreateOverlay("OverlayTest");

//Register for the OnExec event where we will process the button click event
module.OnExec += new StreetDeck.IModuleEvents_OnExecEventHandler(module _OnExec);
}

In the OnDisconnect event, we simply unregister for the events we registered for.
void StreetDeck.IDualStreetDeckAddin.OnDisconnect()
{
//Unregister the events
module.OnExec -= new StreetDeck.IModuleEvents_OnExecEventHandler(module _OnExec);
}

Finally, in the OnExec event, we process the button click event. Notice that we check that the Description parameter matches the function name we specified for the button exactly and we are looked for the select event which is sent when the button is pressed.

//The OnExec event for the module is where events from controls on the module are processed.
//Some of the events are also recieved by the controls themselves and can be processed in
//either place. You should return true if you process them here.
public bool module_OnExec(string Description, StreetDeck.enumExecMessage eEM, int wParam)
{
if (Description == "ShowOverlay")
{
if (eEM == StreetDeck.enumExecMessage.eEMSelect)
{
overlay.Visible = !overlay.Visible;
overlay.MsgBox("Overlay Visibility Changed!", "Button Clicked");
return true;
}
}

return false;
}

Thats it! Your addin should now compile and be runable. Pressing the "Show Overlay" button may not appear to do anything since no controls have been created on the overlay, but it is hiding and showing the overlay. You should experiment with creating different controls on the Overlay to get a feel for building StreetDeck addins.

Making a MediaManager DigitalMod Addin

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:46:47 GMT

The following tutorial discusses how to create a media manager and the associated overlays. It applies only to version 1.0.7.6 of StreetDeck and later.

A media manager is a media playback object used to play audio and video in StreetDeck. This media manager only implements audio playback. Playing back video is probably not possible yet as of version 1.0.7.6.

Getting Started
This tutorial will build upon the basic tutorial of Building a .Net Addin for StreetDeck. Please complete this project before continuing as this project will assume you are familiar with creating modules and overlays.

This tutorial will create a media manager that controls playback of windows media player. This is not a very practical example as StreetDeck already implements a media player media manager and this example contains more limited functionality then the one in StreetDeck. It is only used here for ease of demonstration. A better real world addin would be one for a specific internet radio application or Sirius radio.

Unlike some of the earlier tutorials, this tutorial will not walk you through creating a media manager, but rather explain the already created example to you. The easiest way to create a new media manager will simply take this example and modify it for your needs as thier is alot of events implemented that will be exactly the same for every media manager. Make sure you change GUID and Prog Ids when modifying the example.

To successfully build this addin, you will also need to have the Windows Media Player 10 SDK. Available here: http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...layer10sdk.exe Be sure and download the Media Player SDK, not the media format one.

This example will create a single module and a media manager in StreetDeck. The media manager will also automatically create 3 overlays that will be shown when the media manager is active. They can be accessed through the TrayOverlay, MediaControl, and ExtendedMediaControl properties of the media manager. The tray overlay is shown when the media manager becomes active and is never hidden. It usually contains the controls and album art that are shown in the lower left, but it is left up to you to create the controls you want on it. The media control overlay can be used to contain controls used for media playback and the extended media control overlay similarly should contain controls, but more advanced onces used less often. Implementing the media control overlays is recomended, but optional. You should always immplement the Tray overlay though and place on it the status information for the current media as well as a button linked to the eFunctionCurrentMediaOverlay function so that it can show the media control overlay and similarly, the media control overlay should contain a button to show the extended media control overlay. You should use the StreetDeck development enviornment to do this in the skin after you have created your addin and have it successfully running. Creating these controls is possible in code, but is much harder and is only necessary if you need to do some custom rendering, like rendering album art.

The primary module we create for this media manager will just contain a list that contains all media items found in the media player collection. Clicking on an item will load the media manager and play the item. After the item is playing, you will be able to control playback through the StreetDeck functions Next, Previous, Play, Pause, Volume Control, etc since the media manager will implement the event handling for it. You can create as many modules as you need to contain media selection.

Building your First Media Manager
This tutorial will also use the [Example 1 sdz] which contains the StreetDeck script project files. In addition to that you should download the corresponding Visual Studio 2003 C# example [here].

After opening the example project, you should set the output path of the project to My Documents\StreetDeck\Scripts\\Addins\ so that it builds to a StreetDeck.TestAddin.dll file in your script project directory. If you want to create a new project, you should use the StreetDeck development enviornment to do so, then just change the output path to point to the Addins subfolder of the script project.

After compiling the project, it should be fully functioning. You should be able to verify this by starting StreetDeck, goto DigitalMods, choose the example and it should list all the media in your media collection.

Now back to the code. This project has 4 classes and a form. Since the entire StreetDeck UI is rendered in Direct3D and is skinned, we should never show a windows form, however, to take advantage of the media player activeX control, we create a form called EmbeddedForm.cs and added the windows media player ActiveX control to. We never show the form, but we do access the control throughout the project.

Class1.cs is the simply the entry point of the addin. WMProject.cs contains all the code for the project. It creates the media manager and module for the project and handles the events for the one module we have. WMMediaManager.cs handles all the events for the media manager. This is where we respond to the next, previous, play events and return our current media state, volume, and other properties to StreetDeck. WMTrayOverlay.cs handles all events from the Tray overlay.

The code is well documented, you should read through it carefully to complete this tutorial.

Starting a New Addin Project in StreetDeck

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:41:39 GMT

This tutorial covers the most basic addin you can create in StreetDeck. It shows you how to create modules and overlays which allows you to make anything that does not play media. i.e. A weather DigitalMod. If you would like to make an addin that plays media (i.e. a sirius radio DigitalMod) you should read the Making a MediaManager DigitalMod (Addin) tutorial after completing this tutorial. If you don't know what a Module, Overlay, or Media Manager is yet, you should read The StreetDeck Windowing System (Panels, Modules, Overlays, and MediaManagers).

Note that StreetDeck will refer to some things as scripts when in reality, if you are creating an addin, there will be no scripting involved, just compiled code in the COM language of your choice. StreetDeck does also support scripting, that topic is not covered in this tutorial though. Before we get started writing code for your new Addin, the first step is to start StreetDeck in Developer Mode (Start | Programs | StreetDeck | Tools | Development Environment) and then create a new script project by going to File | New | Script Project.

This will automatically create a project and assign it a GUID. This GUID can be the same as the GUID you use to identify your addin to COM (explained below), but doesn't have to be. If we click on the new project in the module browser, the properties pane should be populated with the projects properties. You should fill in all applicable information to describe your addin to StreetDeck. If nothing else, you should at least fill in the Title property for your project.

Note, the value for GUID in the project properties, when your project was created a new folder was created for it under My Documents\StreetDeck\Scripts\ where is your project's GUID. Browse to this folder now by choosing Project | Browse Project Folder from the menu. Note that there is just a single file in the folder now call Project.txt. You should never edit this file directly, rather it is used by the development enviornment to automatically store all the meta data about your project.

To be able to use this project folder for addins, you must create a sub folder call Addins. Your compiled binary (.dll) that implements the StreetDeck addin interface should be placed in this folder and the dll MUST be named after the ProgId for your addin. i.e. for a Prog Id of MyAddin.MyClass the file should be called ..\My Documents\StreetDeck\Scripts\\Addins\MyAddin .MyClass.dll. Create the Addins sub folder now in windows explorer.

Close StreetDeck.

Building a Net Addin for StreetDeck

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:40:33 GMT

The following is preliminary information. 1.0.6.2 is the first version that supports .Net addins. NOTE: At this point, the addin format is to be considered a pre release format and will probably not be binary compatible with the final official release. The methods and parameters should not change, some methods may be added though. What this means is that you can start writing your addin now and it will work with future version, but possibly only if you recompile it first. In any case more then likely no code changes will be needed to get it to work with the final release version.

StreetDeck supports an Addin format, similar, but ultimatly different from Addins supported by many Microsoft products such as the Office suite, Visual Studio, and Mappoint. Basically an Addin is a COM server dll that implements the StreetDeck.IDualStreetDeckAddin interface defined as an embedded interface in the StreetDeck executable.

The following tutorial was created based on Visual Studio 2005 for C#. The process for other versions and languages should be similar.

Starting a New Addin Project in StreetDeck
Building the Addin in Visual Studio
Debugging your Addin with StreetDeck
Distributing and registering Your Addin
Example Project
Additional Information

C Sample App

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:37:31 GMT

C# Sample App

Embed StreetDeck in Another Application

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:31:54 GMT

The following tutorial discusses how to embed StreetDeck into another application. It applies only to version 1.1.0.4 of StreetDeck and later.

About Embedding StreetDeck
There are certain times where only a subset of the functionality of StreetDeck is needed and the rest of the functionality is already provided by another application. In these cases, it may make sense to make StreetDeck a part of that other application by embedding the main StreetDeck window as a child window into that other application and then loading the StreetDeck automation interface to control it through COM.

How to Embed StreetDeck
There are two steps that must be taken to use StreetDeck inside of another application. The first is to startup StreetDeck inside the main window of another application. To do this, StreetDeck has a -embed command line parameter that allows the host program to specify the startup location, startup size, and class name and/or window name of the host window to make StreetDeck a child window of.

Only the location value is required for the -embed command, the size and class or window name values are optional, however, order is important. i.e. The class name and window name, must always be the fifth and sixth parameters of the embed command. Also, if the window or class name includes spaces, you must put quotes around the entire embed parameter list, not just the individual name strings.

Example:
The following example will start StreetDeck embedded in the window with the title StreetDeck Parent Window, at the position 10, 20 with a window size of 320x240 pixels.

StreetDeck.exe -embed:"10,20,320,240,MFCClass,StreetDeck Parent Window"

After you have started StreetDeck, if the parent application needs to interact with StreetDeck in any way, it must connect to the StreetDeck out of process COM server by instantiating a COM client that will connect to the StreetDeck application object (StreetDeck.StreetDeckApp). Note that there can only ever be one instance of StreetDeck running so the COM client will always connect to the one and only one instance of StreetDeck, if there is not currently an instance running, this will startup StreetDeck, which is undesirable to us since it is not include the embed parameters and not embed in a host window so it is always important that we start StreetDeck prior to attempting to connect to the StreetDeck application object.

Most programming languages support COM in some way to allow you to connect to StreetDeck. The following are examples of instantiating a StreetDeck application object.
VB Script Example:
Set o = CreateObject("StreetDeck.StreetDeckApp")

C# Example:
StreetDeck.StreetDeckApp app;
app = new StreetDeck.StreetDeckAppClass();

C++ Example
IDualStreetDeckApp* pApp;
HRESULT hr = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_StreetDeckApp, NULL, CLSCTX_LOCAL_SERVER, IID_IDualStreetDeckApp, (LPVOID*)&pApp);

Example Projects
C# Example Project

System Metric Values

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:26:22 GMT

System Metric values define integer values that are used for various reasons, but mostly for positioning in StreetDeck. Most values are constant and will never change throughout the life of the program and most can be set in the skin through the StreetDeck development environment. The values for the system metrics can be quiered through the App.GetSystemMetric call in the API.

The descriptions for the values appear below.

eSMGenericModuleListX = "The left position for the left control list in generic modules"
eSMGenericModuleListY = "The top position for the left control list in generic modules"

//The actual position of the application
eSMAppX = "Always 0"
eSMAppY = "Always 0"
eSMAppHeight = "The width of the application."
eSMAppWidth = "The height of the application."

//The position of the client area of a generic base module
eSMGenericModuleClientX = "The left position of client area in the generic module."
eSMGenericModuleClientY = "The to position of client area in the generic module."
eSMGenericModuleClientWidth = "The width of the client area for the generic modules."
eSMGenericModuleClientHeight = "The height of the client area for the generic modules."

//The position of the client area of a generic settings module
//These are the same as the generic base module positions
eSMGenericSettingsModuleClientX = "The left position of the client area for settings modules"
eSMGenericSettingsModuleClientY = "The top position of the client area for settings modules"
eSMGenericSettingsModuleClientWidth = "The width of the client area for the settings modules."
eSMGenericSettingsModuleClientHeight = "The height of the client area for the settings modules."

//The position of the body area of a wizard page
eSMWizardPageClientX = "The left position of the client area in the wizard pages."
eSMWizardPageClientY = "The top position of the client area in the wizard pages."
eSMWizardPageClientWidth = "The width of the client area for the wizard pages."
eSMWizardPageClientHeight = "The height of the client area for the wizard pages."

eSMListEQLeftOffset = "The left offset in the list item at which the spectrum analyzer should be drawn"
eSMListEQTopOffset = "The top offset in the list item at which the spectrum analyzer should be drawn"
eSMListEQRightOffset = "The right offset in the list item at which the spectrum analyzer should be drawn"
eSMListEQBottomOffset = "The bottom offset in the list item at which the spectrum analyzer should be drawn"

eSMListEQNumBars = "The number of spectrum analyzer bars to be drawn in the list item."

eSMListEQUpdateInterval = "The amount of time between updating data for the eq for the list item."

eSMFileScrollListXBorder = "The horizontal border between items in a file scroll list."
eSMFileScrollListYBorder = "The vertical border between items in a file scroll list."

//Gesture configuration
eSMGestureTimeOut = "The amount of time after an mouse up is Received and a mouse down isn't that must elapse for recognition to begin."
eSMGestureDragSize = "Minimum amount of pixels that must be covered with the mouse button down to be considered a gesture drag."

eSMFunctionNameTimeOut = "The number of milliseconds after the fucntion name is shown to wait till it fades out"

eSMInfoMessageTimeOut = "The number of milliseconds after a message is displayed before it starts to fade out"

eSMFastForwardTime = "The default amount of time to fast forward for when the fast forward function is Executed."
eSMRewindTime = "The default amount of time to rewind for when the rewind function is Executed."

eSMFadeInTime = "The number of milliseconds that things shoudl usually fade in for"
eSMFadeOutTime = "The number of milliseconds that things should usually fade out for"

eSMShowStatsTime = "The number of milliseconds stats should be shown for OBD II etc." //
eSMMinMovingSpeed = "The minimum speed in mph to be considered moving."

eSMTextShadowOffsetX = "The X offset that the shadow for text should be offset" //
eSMTextShadowOffsetY = "The Y offset that the shadow for text should be offset" //

eSMNAVDestinationTextureWidth = "The width of the preview created for a destination."
eSMNAVDestinationTextureHeight = "The height of the preview created for a destination."

eSMFileScrollListThumbXOffset = "The amount to offset thumbnail previews in the file scroll list horizontally by"
eSMFileScrollListThumbYOffset = "The amount to offset thumbnail previews in the file scroll list vertically by"

eSMFileScrollListFolderXOffset = "The amount to offset thumbnail previews for folders in the file scroll list horizontally by"
eSMFileScrollListFolderYOffset = "The amount to offset thumbnail previews for folders in the file scroll list vertically by"

eSMFileScrollListThumbWidth = "The maximum width of the thumbnail previews in the file scroll list."
eSMFileScrollListThumbHeight = "The maximum height of the thumbnail previews in the file scroll list."

//The gap between list items
eSMClientPanelGap = "Area between panels in the client area" //
eSMListItemGap = "Vertical border between list items in a list panel"
eSMComboBoxCaptionGap = "Vertical border between the combo box caption and the control itself."
eSMEditCaptionGap = "Vertical border between the edit caption and the control itself."
eSMKeyPadCaptionGap = "Vertical border between the key pad panel and the button for toggling number mode on and off."
eSMKeyValueCaptionGap = "Vertical border between the caption and the value for the key value panel."
eSMButtonGap = "The border between certain buttons, i.e. scroll buttons for the list panels."

eSMSliderPage = "The percentage to move a slider panel when a movement function is used on it."

eSMProgressXBorder = "The amount of border to leave between the start of the progress bar background and the first bar in it."
eSMProgressGap = "The amount of space between bars in the progress bar"

eSMNAVScaleBorder = "The amount of border to leave around the navigation scale panel."
eSMNAVScaleHeight = "The height of the scale for the navigation scale panel."

eSMNumberVolumeIncrements = "The number of increments of change there are between a volume level of 0% and 100%. i.e. 20 would mean a 5% change on a volume function."

eSMListAlbumArtWidth = "The width of the album art that is displayed in large lists."
eSMListAlbumArtHeight = "The height of the album art that is displayed in large lists."
eSMListAlbumArtXOffset = "The horizontal amount that the album art should be offset from the left of the list item position for large lists that show album art."
eSMListAlbumArtYOffset = "The vertical amount that the album art should be offset from the top of the list item position for large lists that show album art."

eSMListEQBarWidth = "The width of each individual bar of the spectrum in a large list."

eSMListAlbumArtTextXOffset = "The offset from the right position of the album art to begin rendering the large list item text at."

eSMVideoOverlayTimeOut = "The amount of time after the video overlay is shown that it should timeout."
eSMMediaChangeTimeOut = "The amount of time after the media change overlay is shown that it should timeout."

eSMListPresetXOffset = "The horizontal amount that the preset button should be offset from the left of the list item position for large lists that have presets."
eSMListPresetYOffset = "The vertical amount that the preset button should be offset from the top of the list item position for large lists that have presets."

eSMListAlbumArtWidthSmall = "The width of the album art that is displayed in small lists."
eSMListAlbumArtHeightSmall = "The height of the album art that is displayed in small lists."
eSMListAlbumArtTextXOffsetSmall = "The offset from the right position of the album art to begin rendering the normal list item text at."

eSMSlideshowOverlayTimeOut = "The amount of time after the slideshow overlay is shown that it should timeout."

eSMListNAVActionXOffset = "The horizontal amount that the navigation action texture should be offset from the left of the list item position for large direction lists."
eSMListNAVActionYOffset = "The vertical amount that the navigation action texture should be offset from the top of the list item position for large direction lists."
eSMListNAVDirectionXOffset = "The horizontal amount that the navigation directions text should be offset from the left of the list item position for large direction lists."
eSMListNAVDirectionYOffset = "The vertical amount that the navigation directions text should be offset from the top of the list item position for large direction lists."

eSMMsgBoxCaptionX = "The X position of the message box caption relative to the top left of the background."
eSMMsgBoxCaptionY = "The Y position of the message box caption relative to the top left of the background."
eSMMsgBoxCaptionWidth = "The width of the message box caption."
eSMMsgBoxCaptionHeight = "The height of the message box caption"

eSMMsgBoxDescriptionX = "The X position of the message box description relative to the top left of the background."
eSMMsgBoxDescriptionY = "The Y position of the message box description relative to the top left of the background."
eSMMsgBoxDescriptionWidth = "The width of the message box description."
eSMMsgBoxDescriptionHeight = "The height of the message box description"

eSMMsgBoxButtonY = "The Y position of the buttons in the dialog relative to the top of the background."

eSMNAVSmallMapX = "The X position of the fullscreen map panel when a navigation overlay is shown."
eSMNAVSmallMapY = "The Y position of the fullscreen map panel when a navigation overlay is shown."
eSMNAVSmallMapWidth = "The width of the fullscreen map panel when a navigation overlay is shown."
eSMNAVSmallMapHeight = "The height of the fullscreen map panel when a navigation overlay is shown."

eSMNAVFullscreenMapX = "The X position of the fullscreen map panel when no navigation overlay is shown."
eSMNAVFullscreenMapY = "The Y position of the fullscreen map panel when no navigation overlay is shown."
eSMNAVFullscreenMapWidth = "The width of the fullscreen map panel when no navigation overlay is shown."
eSMNAVFullscreenMapHeight = "The height of the fullscreen map panel when no navigation overlay is shown."

eSMNAVBrowseMapX = "The X position of the fullscreen map panel when browse mode is active."
eSMNAVBrowseMapY = "The Y position of the fullscreen map panel when browse mode is active."
eSMNAVBrowseMapWidth = "The width of the fullscreen map panel when browse mode is active."
eSMNAVBrowseMapHeight = "The height of the fullscreen map panel when browse mode is active."

The StreetDeck Windowing System Panels Modules Overlays and MediaManagers

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:16:04 GMT

Explaination of Panels, Modules, and Overlays
StreetDeck has a �windowing� concept similar to how windows itself works, however, instead of windows, gui elements are called panels. Every GUI element in the program is contained in a panel. Each button is a panel, a list is a panel, the module that the buttons, lists, or any other control panel for that manner are contained in is also a special type of base panel. There are, in fact, two special types of base panels that are ultimately what contain all other child panels currently visible on the screen. These two types are called modules and overlays.

A module can be thought of as a single screen within the program. i.e. the first screen that the user sees when starting streetdeck is the home module called �CStartModule�, the Music screen is �CMusicModule�, the search for music screen is �CMusicSearchModule�, etc. Only 1 module can ever be visible at once. You can actually see the names of the modules as streetdeck is running by running with the �info command line parameter. Modules can be shown within a StreetDeck script by calling the app.Exec command with the module name. i.e. (App.Exec "CStartModule") Modules are more or less only operational when they are visible. Most events that occur in a module, only occur while that module is visible i.e. the OnTimer event is only sent to the current module. Most of the visible items in the module are other child panels (i.e. buttons, lists, labels, etc), however, anything can be rendered to a module directly like text, a line, a texture, or a shape.

Overlays are similar to modules in that they contain other visible panels, however, any number of them can be visible at once and they do not change when the background module changes. Examples of overlays are the media tray overlay that shows the current album art and has buttons for play, stop, etc. or the Bluetooth control overlay that shows the status of the current phone call and is only visible when a phone call is in progress. Overlays are always drawn on top of whichever base module is currently visible and are shown or hidden based on the state of the system. Like the media tray overlay is only shown when a media item is playing. Certain modules will also hide most overlays depending on how much screen real estate is needed. i.e. the settings modules hide most overlays while the user is configuring options. Overlays are very much like global modules, however, they should never occupy the entire screen like modules, and are usually only partially visible or visible for only short periods of time while events are occuring. They recieve almost all of the same events, however, they recieve them regardless of thier visible state and regardless of which module is currently visible.

The skin and script editor will allow developers to create modules and overlays and add controls to them through the visual skin editor and add code behind the controls in the script editor. Each scripted module or overlay will have exactly 1 script behind it.

Explaination of Media Managers
In addition to Overlays and Modules, StreetDeck has one more base object called a media manager that manages a single type of media that can be played in StreetDeck. Media managers have methods like "Play", "Next", "Select Preset", "Load", "Unload", they generate events like "OnNewMedia" and "OnPlayingStatusChange". A media manager has no front end, it is completely back end, Overlays and modules can communicate with the media manager to show values, like the current play time, or play status and usually have an overlay associated with it that is shown/hidden when the media manager is loaded/unloaded, but generally do not render directly to the screen. Only one media manager can only be active at a time. Whenever a new media manager is loaded, the old one is unloaded first. Examples of media managers within streetdeck are the CAudioManager, CDVDManager, CVideoManager, CXMRadioManager, and CRadioManager. The core media managers are not exposed in the development enviornment directly, but you can add additional media managers to it for different types of media you want to play i.e. Sirius Radio, iPods, etc.

StreetDeck Developers Table of Contents

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:12:47 GMT

The StreetDeck Windowing System (Panels, Modules, Overlays, and MediaManagers)

System Metric Values

Intro to building DigitalMods

Sending Functions to StreetDeck from an External Application

Embed StreetDeck in Another Application

Skin Editing Tutorial Video

Building a .Net Addin for StreetDeck

Integrate a windows application into a DigitalMod (Addin)

Making a MediaManager DigitalMod (Addin)

Available Command Line Flags for use with App.GetFlags() and App.GetFlagsEx()

Automatically registering Addins with StreetDeck

Working with Windows Media Player and StreetDeck to manage MP3s

T-Mobile

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:11:19 GMT

Phone Name: Wing Windows Mobile 6 CE OS 5.2.1235 (Build 17740.0.2.0) - NOT FULLY TESTED

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.0.8
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: Yes
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: T-Mobile

Sony Ericson

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:10:36 GMT

Phone Name: Model s710a - NOT FULLY TESTED

* SD Version Tested On: 1.0.8.4
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Unkown
* Phonebook Support: Unkown
* Battery Indicator: Yes
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: GSM/ Cingular
* Other Notes: Heather S's Phone. Suffered from 'blue tooth was congested' "so I could not have the phone call with the computer and had to switch back but, and I had a tough time switching the call to my handset- as if the button did not work-and would have to wait until it just did it. more testing later. Phone avialble for chuck testing on Monday

Phone Name: sony ericcson K800i

* SD Version Tested On: internal test version
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: Yes
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: my mates (vodafone) did, but mine (orange)did not. in the uk by the way.
* Other notes: nce i had changed setting for saving ram in tinyxp, phonebook managed to save and be viewable. my brother got in my car and he was on his nokia, some how it connected to his phone instead of mine, then stalled, also nav went blank for a while? i struggled to get my phone connected as it would not recognize my phone. it took a restart. other than that, works perfectly.

Phone Name: "Model W610i" - NOT FULLY TESTED

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.1.0
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: Yes
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: GSM/AT&T
* Other notes: Having issue with audio quality of my voice when on call I can hear the person I'm speaking with just fine. StreetDeck was able to import contacts that have more than one phone number entry I.E home, moblie, work etc. Tested in 1.1.1.0 Still experiencing same issue with audio quality of my voice, Will continue testing and post results

Phone Name: W810i

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.1.0
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: Yes
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Yes
* Had to import contact several times untill it was completed. Audio not completly tested yet. Carputer under construction and testing. I have 300+ contacts :)

Lg

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:08:31 GMT

Phone Name: Chocolate

* SD Version Tested On: 1.0.8.4
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: No
* Phonebook Support: No
* Battery Indicator: No
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: No

Phone Name: Fusic

* SD Version Tested On: Internal Test Version 1.1.0.1d
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: No
* Phonebook Support: No
* Battery Indicator: No
* Signal Strength: No
* Operator Name: No

Phone Name: VX8600

* SD Version Tested On: Internal Test Version 1.1.0.8
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: No
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: No

Siemens

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:07:32 GMT

Phone Name: SX66

* SD Version Tested On: 1.0.8.4
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: No
* Phonebook Support: No
* Battery Indicator: No
* Signal Strength: No
* Operator Name: No

Samsung

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:06:35 GMT

Phone Name: M800 Instinct

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.1.9
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: Yes
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Yes

Phone Name: A900

* SD Version Tested On: 1.0.8.6
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: No
* Phonebook Support: Yes* - Numbers Only
* Battery Indicator: No
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Yes

Phone Name: SCH-A930

* SD Version Tested On: 1.0.9.0c
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: No
* Phonebook Support: No
* Battery Indicator: No
* Signal Strength: No
* Operator Name: No

Phone Name: SPH-M610

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.0.1d
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: No
* Signal Strength: No
* Operator Name: No

Phone Name: SCH-I607 (Blackjack)

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.0.0a
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: No
* Signal Strength: No
* Operator Name: No

Phone Name: SCH-A990

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.1.6
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: No
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Yes

Palm

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:03:45 GMT

Phone Name: Treo 650 (PalmOS 5.2 SmartPhone)

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.0.0
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: No
* Phonebook Support: No
* Battery Indicator: Yes
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Yes

Phone Name: Treo 680 (PalmOS 5 SmartPhone)

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.0.1c
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: Yes
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Yes

Phone Name: Treo 700WX (Windows Mobile 5 SmartPhone)

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.0.1c
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: No* - Works after installing jetwaremobile
* Phonebook Support: No* - Works after installing jetwaremobile
* Battery Indicator: Yes
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Yes

-* Requires 3rd party application(http://www.jetwaremobile.com/) for correct synching of call log and phonebook(contacts) synching.

Nokia

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:01:03 GMT

Phone Name: 6133

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.1.0
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Not sure
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: Not sure
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Not sure
* Ohter Notes: Other party has very hard time hearing me. It is extremely choppy (often completely unintelligible). Incoming audio is understandable but choppy.

Motorola

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:00:27 GMT

Phone Name: KRZR K1M

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.1.0
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: Yes
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Yes

Phone Name: RAZR V3

* SD Version Tested On: 1.0.8.4
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: Yes
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Yes

Phone Name: SLVR L7

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.1.6
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: Yes
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Yes

Phone Name: Q

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.0.6
* Dialing/Answering Calls: No
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: Yes
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: No
* Other Notes: Dialing and answering calls works successfully, but streetdeck thinks it doesn't. When you dial the call starts, you hear ringing, but when the called party answers streetdeck thinks the call has ended. The same thing happens on answer.

Kyocera

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:58:52 GMT

Phone Name: Kyocera K612B Carrier= Metro pcs,

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.0.0
* Dialing/Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: No
* Phonebook Support: Partial
* Battery Indicator: No
* Signal Strength: No
* Operator Name: Yes

Htc

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:58:08 GMT

Phone Name: HTC Apache (Windows Mobile 5 SmartPhone) aka Sprint PCS PPC-6700 and Verizon 6700

* SD Version Tested On: 1.0.8.4
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: No
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Yes

Phone Name: HTC Excalibur HTC-S620, (Windows Mobile 5 SmartPhone) aka T-Mobile Dash. Running on Cingular network. Also tested running Windows Mobile 6 and 6.1 beta.

* SD Version Tested On: 1.0.9.6 and up
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: Yes
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Yes

Phone Name: HTC Shadow T-mobile Shadow, (Windows Mobile 6 SmartPhone) aka T-Mobile Shadow. Running on T-mobile network. Also tested running Windows Mobile 6 and 6.1 beta.

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.1.0 and up
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: Yes
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Yes

Phone Name: HTC Tytn (Windows Mobile 6 SmartPhone) aka: Cingular 8525 / XDA trion / MDA Vario II / VPA Compact III / SPV M3100 / Dopod CHT 9000 / Dopod 838 Pro

*
o Note that I've tested with the latest ROM for the Tytn which is Windows Mobile 6. I have not tested with WM5.**
* SD Version Tested On: 1.0.9.9a
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: Yes (but not always accurate)
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Yes

Phone Name: HTC Wizard (Windows Mobile 5 SmartPhone) aka Qtek 9100, I-mate K-JAM, T-Mobile MDA Vario, Orange SPV M3000, O2 XDA Mini S, Dopod 838 or Cingular 8125

* SD Version Tested On: 1.0.8.4
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: No
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Yes

Phone Name: HTC Tytn II (aka AT&T Tilt, aka HTC Kaiser) (Windows Mobile 6 Professional)

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.1.0
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: Yes
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Yes

BlackBerry

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:56:09 GMT

Phone Name: BlackBerry PEARL Carrier= T-mobile, Cingular (T-mobile version Tested)

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.0.6
* Dialing/Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: Yes
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Yes

Phone Name: 'BlackBerry 8300 aka "CURVE Carrier= Rogers (AT&T in the US)

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.0.8
* Dialing/Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: Yes
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Yes

Phone Name: BlackBerry 8830 World Edition Carrier= Verizon

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.1.0
* Dialing/Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: Yes
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Yes

Apple

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:53:32 GMT

Phone Name: iPhone

* SD Version Tested On: 1.1.1.0
* Phone Firmware: 1.1.2
* Dialing / Answering Calls: Yes
* Phone Audio: Yes
* Call Log Support: Yes
* Phonebook Support: Yes
* Battery Indicator: Yes
* Signal Strength: Yes
* Operator Name: Yes

Tested Phones

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:52:56 GMT

Apple
BlackBerry
HTC
Kyocera
Motorola
Nokia
Palm
Samsung
Siemens
LG
Sony Ericson
T-Mobile

StreetDeck Supported Bluetooth Phone List

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:50:52 GMT

The following is a list of supported StreetDeck phones. The list is incomplete and contributed to by other StreetDeck users. Your experiences may vary. If your experience is contradictory to what is found in this wiki posting, please feel free to make a note of it directly in the Wiki if you are sure the problem is not related to user error.

In general, most phones with bluetooth capability should be able to dial and recieve calls. In fact every phone internally tested at StreetDeck.com with bluetooth capability can at least dial, recieve calls, and transmit audio. Importing the phonebook and SMS messaging are dependant on if your phone implemented this feature for bluetooth. This particular support is generally known to be implemented, but may be untested, for all SonyEricson phones with bluetooth, all nokia phones with bluetooth except on series 60, most Motorola phones with bluetooth including the V600 and RAZR models, siemens support varies. You can also import CSV files exported from outlook and manually create phonebook entries directly in StreetDeck if phonebook support is not present in your phone. Also, even though, some phones support phonebook transfer, they do so very poorly sometimes not delivering a name along with the number and if your phonebook allows multiple phone numbers for a single name, the classification of those numbers as office, home, mobile, etc, may not transfer correctly.

If adding a phone to this list, please be sure to place it in alphabetical order under the appropriate manufacturer using the same style as other entries and including all 8 support categories.

Tested Phones

StreetDeck Compatible Hardware

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:49:08 GMT

StreetDeck is compatible with a wide variety of generic Windows XP hardware. The most common hardware or hardware that requires specific configuration for it to work with StreetDeck is covered here.

Infill T3 - All in one car computer
Infill T3. The T3 is an all in one computer that is in a double DIN form factor matching that of a typical automotive radio. It contains a GPS, rear view camera input, radio, amplifier, TV, remote control, touchscreen, built in buttons controls, as well as hardware for monitoring the parking brake, reverse, and headlight status. StreetDeck works on the Infill hardware and is the easiest way to get a complete working StreetDeck compatible system.

XM Radio
StreetDeck is compatible with the XM PCR and XM Direct. To use an XM direct radio with StreetDeck, the XM direct unit must be connected an additional device that will convert it to a USB input. The audio output should be hooked up to your sound cards line input.

After connecting the XM Direct, in StreetDeck, go to Settings | Satellite Radio and choose or detect the COM port that the XM radio is on and select the sound card device and line input. After configuring those 3 settings, you should be able to successfully use XM radio in StreetDeck. If you have not activated your radio only the XM radio preview channel will appear in the station list.

Remote Controls
StreetDeck supports the Infill T3 remote control, X10 based lola remotes, and ATI branded remote wonder.

All remotes require the StreetDeck tray app to be running to work. The tray app should be started automatically with StreetDeck. To use an X10 or ATI remote with StreetDeck, you must first download an install the drivers for the remote from X10 Support Page (Note: these drivers also work with ATI remotes). Disable or uninstall all existing software for the remote control as it will coflict with StreetDeck if it also installed. After installing the drivers, run StreetDeck, toggle to windowed mode (Settings | Toggle Fullscreen) and click on the StreetDeck tray app, choose options, then select the option for your remote control.

The 6 user programmable buttons on the ATI remote wonder are mapped to thier respective keyboard keys A,B,C,D,E, and F. The keys will only be sent to StreetDeck. The keys can be programmed to any function in StreetDeck by going to Settings | General | Input Options | Keyboard, then selecting a function. When prompted press one of the remote control keys and the appropriate letter should show up and be bound to the function. Choose save and the function should now be executed when pressing the remote control button.

The buttons are automatically optimized for StreetDeck and can not be changed. If you would like more control over how the buttons are mapped you can install a girder plugin in StreetDeck for the remote.

Cycle through Modules with Gesture Keyboard

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:42:49 GMT

About Module Cycling
Streetdeck offers two different ways of cycling through the primary modules. This is meant to be used with keyboard or remote control hotkeys or through binding gestures to the functions. For example, the primary modules for Music, Video, Navigation, Pictures, Etc. will be switched to each time the Cycle Modules function is executed.

There are two modes of module cycling. The first will simply switch to the next or previous module in the primary module list whenever the Cycle Modules or Cycle Modules Reverse functions are executed. The second will display screens shots of all available primary modules in a 3D circular selection mode when the Show Module Switcher function is executed. When the module switcher is shown, using the left, right, up, down, volume up, volume down, page up, and page down functions will cycle the modules through the switcher. To select a module, use the Ok function or use the Show Module Switcher function again.

Configuring StreetDeck for Module Cycling
By default StreetDeck does not assign the module cycling functions. To bind a keyboard key to one of the module switching functions, go to Settings | General | Input Options | Keyboard scroll down the list to find the 18th item called Cycle Modules Press this list item, then press a key or key combination to bind to it. Choose save and now that keyboard key is saved to the function. To execute the function, press the key and it should switch to the first module in the primary module list. The process is similar for binding the Cycle Modules Reverse and Show Module Switcher functions. The functions can be bound to gestures in a similar fashion tool.

Changing the Modules in the Primary Module List
By default, the following modules will be cycled through by StreetDeck if they are available.

1. CNAVFullScreenModule
2. CMusicModule
3. CXMRadioModule
4. CHDRadioModule
5. CFullScreenTVModule
6. CVideosModule
7. CPicturesModule
8. CFullScreenDVDModule

To change the list of modules to cycle through, an ASCII text file called "modulecycle.txt" should be placed in My Documents\StreetDeck. Each line of the file should contain a single module name optionally followed by a tab and -play. Placing -play only operates on certain modules that have associated media managers and when present will cause the module to load the associated media manager and begin playing media from it. For example the line CMusicModule -play will cycle to the music module and load an mp3 from the music queue to beging playing.

Example ModuleCycle.txt
CStartModule
CVideosModule
CMusicModule -play

Modifying the timing of navigation voice prompts

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:38:02 GMT

This information applies to version 1.1.0.2 and later of StreetDeck.

About Navigation Voice Prompts
When the vehicle is coming up to a turn and there is an instruction to be spoken, StreetDeck will prompt with spoken directions up to 3 times before the turn. The first prompt will be spoken as Prepare to , the second as In , , onto , and finally right before the turn, Turn Type. The maximum number of directions that will be spoken can be configured in navigation settings through the option titled Voice guidance should be given when. If Before the turn only is chosen, only the second prompt will be given.

The distance at which the first voice prompt for the next turn will be spoken depends on the maximum speed traveled on the current route segment according to the following table:

Speed > 61 = .9 miles

Speed > 30 = .5 miles

Speed <= 30 = .25 miles

The distance for the second voice prompt will be at .57 times the distance the first direction is spoken at. The distance for the third voice prompt will be at .1 times the distance the first direction is spoken at.

Modifying the distance at which prompts are spoken
To change the distance at which the next voice prompt is spoken at, the command line parameter NAVSpeakDelay can be used followed by a real number that will multiply the distance at which the voice prompt is spoken at.

For example, -NAVSpeakDelay:2.5 will multiply the the distance by 2.5. This will make the distance when the speed > 61 .9*2.5= 2.25 miles, the distance when the speed > 30 = .5*2.5=1.25 miles, and the distance when the speed <= 30=.25*2.5=.625 miles.

Loading a mappoint map with Avoidance Areas

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:36:02 GMT

This information applies to version 1.1.0.1 and later of StreetDeck.

About Avoidance Areas
Avoidance areas in mappoint allow you to specify regions that the routing engine will avoid when creating a route. StreetDeck can use maps created in mappoint that contain avoidance areas to alter the roads that StreetDeck will use when routing. Note that the portion of the road that travels through an avoidance area will be completely removed from consideration in routing as if that part of the road didn't exist at all. This means that if the avoidance areas make it impossible to create a route, routing will fail altogether.

A map file and therefore avoidance areas can only be specified when starting streetdeck. You can not specify an avoidance area inside the StreetDeck GUI or change the map file once StreetDeck has started. The avoidance areas in the loaded map file should be active until you restart StreetDeck without specifying a map file.

Using Avoidance Areas
To use avoidance areas in StreetDeck, you must use Microsoft Mappoint or Microsoft Streets and Trips to make a map that has one or more avoidance areas. After adding the areas you want to avoid to the map, you should chose File | Save to save the file to a .PTM file.

To load the map with the avoidance areas in StreetDeck, use the command line parameter -Map: where specifies the full path of the .PTM file you created earlier.

Example
Assuming you have a file name C:\Users\StreetDeck\Test.ptm, you would load it in StreetDeck in windows by going showing the Run dialog in windows off of the Start menu and putting in the following in the Run dialog, be sure to include the quotation marks:

"C:\Program Files\StreetDeck\StreetDeck.exe" -Map:"C:\Users\StreetDeck\Test.ptm"

Configure StreetDeck for Kiosk Mode No Settings Changes

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:33:09 GMT

This information applies to version 1.1.0.1 and later of StreetDeck.

About Kiosk Mode
Kiosk mode disables functions and modules that allow the user to change settings in StreetDeck and generic use of the machine as a computer.

It suppresses some message boxes that display errors about hardware failures and just logs them to the log file.

Message boxes that should have a settings button and are still shown, will not have a settings option available.

The following functions are disabled:

1. Settings
2. Toggle Fullscreen
3. Windowed Mode
4. Minimize
5. Sync. Removable Media
6. Sync. Network Location

StreetDeck will always start in fullscreen mode.

The shutdown timeout is disabled

The shutdown selection module is not shown and the default shutdown option is immediatly executed when the module should be shown

Music files will not be automatically indexed on startup

No USB or removable device insertion events are processed. This includes playing content from external media as well as performing upgrades / digitalmod installs on insertion.

Draged and dropped files are not processed.

Running in Kiosk Mode
Use the -KioskMode command line parameter to use kiosk mode. i.e. "C:\program files\streetdeck\streetdeck.exe" -KioskMode

Testing

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:29:55 GMT

After creating your GPSDevice.txt, run StreetDeck with the -verbose command line parameter. When multiple GPS mode is selected a log entry will be made stating "CAppData::PerformGPSStartup - Multiple GPS device file found, configuring primary and secondary GPS devices!" a log entry stating "Found primary GPS device" and "Found secondary GPS device" will be made if StreetDeck was able to match the primary and secondary device strings specifed to devices connected to the computer.

Example GPS Device txt file

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:29:14 GMT

In this example, 2 USB GPS devices are hooked up to a computer. They show up in the windows device manager under the Ports (COM & LPT) tree item as Prolific USB-to-Serial Comm Port (COM7) and Microsoft USB GPS Port (COM6). A GPSDrive.txt file is created and placed in program files\StreetDeck. With the Microsoft GPS specifed as the primay GPS. The contents of the file are as follows:

Microsoft USB GPS

Prolific USB-to-Serial Comm

Configuring StreetDeck

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:28:27 GMT

To use multiple GPS devices with StreetDeck, you MUST use two different GPS devices with unique device names. A text file called GPSDevice.txt should be created and placed in the Program Files\StreetDeck directory. The file has 2 and only 2 lines. The first line of the GPSDevice.txt file contains the name of the GPS device as shown in the windows device manager for the primary GPS device and the second line is the name of the secondary. The device names are case sensitive. You may also specify a partial device name as long as the partial names are still unique to the device. This is the recommended procedure as the device port numbers which are included in the GPS device names may change.

About Multiple GPS Support

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:27:43 GMT

Multiple GPS support was added for the special use case where a UMPC with a built in GPS is used with StreetDeck and docked in a car that has a second USB GPS receiver attached to the docking station for use while in a vehicle.

When configured for multiple GPS use: If the primary GPS is present or becomes present after a USB device insertion notification, it will automatically be selected as the GPS signal StreetDeck uses. If the primary GPS device is not present, it will use the secondary GPS device for the GPS signal StreetDeck uses. If neither the primary GPS, nor the secondary GPS is present, StreetDeck, will look for network broadcast packets. All GPS selection settings made in settings will be overridden by the GPSDevice.txt file.

Configure StreetDeck to use Multiple GPS devices

ssteger — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:26:59 GMT

The information in this post applies to version 1.1.0.1 and later of StreetDeck.

About Multiple GPS Support
Configuring StreetDeck
Example GPS Device.txt file
Testing

Configure StreetDeck for Demonstration Mode

ssteger — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:24:29 GMT

Command Line Parameters

StreetDeck can be launched using command line options enabling or disabling various features in StreetDeck. The command line options can be used in a windows shell or in the target line of the StreetDeck shortcut.

Fake Data

There are a number of options in StreetDeck that allow you to configure it so it can be used to demonstrate the features without actually hooking up the hardware. Most of these are configured independently of each other so you can use some real hardware and some faked.

To fake Bluetooth control, use the command line parameter -fakedata

To fake a rearview camera, create a WMV format video called Rearview.wmv, place it in the "\Program Files\StreetDeck" directory and use the command line parameter -fakedata. This only fakes camera 1 and will overide any other device set for the camera. Here is a samplerearview.wmvthat can be used.

To fake radio, download and select the radio faker plugin (Settings | Radio | Radio Plugin = Faker Radio Plugin). This will only fake tuning, it will not fake audio so nothing will be heard.

To fake OBDII data,downloadthe plugin and copy the dll to the \My Documents\StreetDeck\Plugins\OBDII directory. In StreetDeck, select the OBDII faker plugin in (Settings | Vehicle | OBDII Options | OBDII Plugin = OBDII Data Faker). The faker plugin will use random data, some of which may not be respective of actual values seen.

To fake GPS data for simulating navigation, create a GPSSim.txt fileand place it in the "\Program Files\StreetDeck" directory, then select "Use GPSSim.txt" from navigation settings (Settings | Navigation | Select the GPS device or other GPS source = Use GPSSim.txt). Here is a sampleGPSSim.txtthat can be used.

DigitalMods

DigitalMods(TM) add extra functionality to StreetDeck.

SatInfo displays current GPS satellite information.

Weather displays weather information.

Examples shows examples of the various controls and events available for DigitalMods.

StreetDeck FAQ

ssteger — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:19:04 GMT

Most of the StreetDeck FAQ is still on the Mp3Car.com forums here

Configure StreetDeck for Demonstration Mode

Configure StreetDeck to use Multiple GPS devices

Configure StreetDeck for Kiosk Mode (No Settings Changes)

Loading a mappoint map with Avoidance Areas

Modifying the timing of navigation voice prompts

Cycle through Modules with Gesture / Keyboard

StreetDeck Table of Contents

ssteger — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:17:14 GMT

The official offline manual can be downloaded from StreetDeck support page

This WiKi page covers more advanced technical topics not covered in depth in the offline manual. Portions of topics in this manual may eventually become part of the offline manual.

StreetDeck FAQ

StreetDeck Compatible Hardware

Use UPnP with StreetDeck

StreetDeck Supported Bluetooth Phone List

Mp3Car Forum Generated Articles

ssteger — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:15:18 GMT

Power a DC-DC PSU on a workbench

StreetDeck Table of Contents

StreetDeck Developers Table of Contents

StreetDeck DigitalMods (Addins)

Use Professional Audio VST plugins for tuning inside Winamp

All about Bondo

Mp3Car Google Meet Map

Where is Armen

ssteger — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:13:01 GMT

UPDATE - DIGITAL WW AND ARMEN ARE NOW OUT OF BUSINESS.

Armen, the proprietor of Digital Worldwide is often mistaken for a scammer or other neafrious individual posing as a retailer due to lengthy times in responding to requests for information from customers. He runs his business all by himself, having to handle phone calls, emails, receiving, shipping and updating his website. The very nature of prioritizing all of these tasks in a business catering to a growing hobby makes him busier than a one-armed paper hanger.

Forum FAQ

ssteger — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:10:08 GMT

* MP3Car.com FAQ - A general FAQ area to help users get started without having to wade through the mass of articles in the FAQ Emporium forum.
* Where is Armen? A thread discussing the frequent disappearances of Digital WW's owner.
* The FAQ Emporium - A forum at mp3car.com with FAQs on all things car PC. If it's not in this wiki, you can find it in the FAQ Emporium.

Valentine V1

ssteger — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:04:18 GMT

Valentine Research manufacturer page has most of the information, however the remote display protocol isn't documented.

Here are my notes:

The remote display uses a string of 73 pulses. A long pulse (250uS?)
is a 1 and short pulse (125uS?) is a 0. Pulses occur every (300?) 500uS and
the group occurs every 50mS or 20 times per second (the 73 pulses work
out to 36.5mS). It needs a pulldown - the actual display uses about
4k, but 50k also seems to work. Note that shorting the wrong pins on
the connector can damage the detector.

If you use an inverting TTL to RS232 converter (e.g. a MAX3232 or Jim Mitchell's circuit Here click on software1 then "Click here for interface cable information" as some nasty javascript redirects the frames), when set to 19200 baud, you will get a stream of 0xe0 or 0xc0 (hexadecimal) characters (zeros), or 0xfc characters (ones). This is because a long pulse is just under 7 bit times, so counting the start bit, it works out to 0xe0 - bits S01234567S are 0000000111 (or 0001111111). Waiting for lots (>30?) of characters below 0xf0, then finding the first one greater than 0xf0 should synchronize things.

01234567890123456789012345678901
+Mcdefao87654321gbKAL^==---vvv?X

M - muted
= - laser ahead (solid)
? - always zero so far
+ - always one
Display Leds:

a L ^
b f A
g K -
c e X v
d o
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Symbols displayed on the 7 segment:
1234567890=ABCDEFGHJLlPou.
(= represents triple horizontal for laser)
(decimal point flashes at startup if Ku is active)

73 bits

long pulse (2/3) = 0, short (1/3) = 1

00 Always 1
01 Sound Muted
02 7 seg lower left
03 7 seg bottom
04 7 seg lower right
05 7 seg upper right
06 7 seg top
07 7 seg - decimal point
08 Signal Strength 8 (max)
09 Signal Strength 7
10 Signal Strength 6
11 Signal Strength 5
12 Signal Strength 4
13 Signal Strength 3
14 Signal Strength 2
15 Signal Strength 1 (min)
16 7 seg middle
17 7 seg upper left
18 K Band indicator
19 Ka Band indicator
20 Laser indicator
21 Ahead arrow
22 Laser Ahead (solid even when bit 20 flashes)
23 Laser Ahead (solid even when bit 20 flashes)
24 Side arrow (all three bits)
25 Side arrow
26 Side arrow
27 Behind arrow (all three bits)
28 Behind arrow
29 Behind arrow
30 Always 0 in current tests (Ku, oather modes untested).
31 X Band indicator

The remainder are always 0

REMOTE AUDIO and GENERAL AUDIO NOTES

(from a connector that went into my laptop with the datastream on the left channel and remote audio out on the right at 48khz)

It uses a greater resistance pullup than the remote display (the rise times are much slower) and this is detected by the main unit and will produce a modified datastream.

There are four basic squarewaves (based on 48khz):

(low,high samples)
A: 28,21
B: 28,12
C: 20,12
D: 11,5

X beep is 70 cycles of A
K and Ka use a composite of 4A followed by 4D, that is four A waves, then four D waves which makes the brap sound.
K beep is 13 cycles of (4A4D)
Ka is 9 * (4A4D), a gap of 1175 samples (note this figure includes the lowtime of the next first wave) then 9 more (4A4D).
Laser is 128A208B (lowtime of first A is 20, not 28:), 128A208B.
Bogey increment is 96C, 2073 samp gap (incl following lowtime), 96C, 8137 samp gap, then resumes radar beeps
Junk (displays J) is 79C, 2558 gap, 79B, 2558 gap, 79A.

The start and mute bits are the same.
The next 16 bits indicate which band and signal level but the pattern isn't straightforward and is very different from the remote display, however if the remote display is also attached, the datastream will be that of the remote display and the remote audio will work.
Another approx 18 bits are used for the bogey count up and junk tones (involving tone C).
(I don't know about the laser).
Following bits are always zero as they are with the remote display.

The timing which forms the Geiger counter effect seems to be a moving average - when the strength bounces between two values the time between beeps will be between.

Other Devices

ssteger — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:00:16 GMT

* Radar Detectors (e.g. the Valentine V1 by using the remote display)
* Add a small printer to print a map for someone else, or print a quick report for work.
* Media players via remote control
* PDAs

Vehicle Control

ssteger — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:59:18 GMT

* Control windows and locks via relays.
* Control Climate Control via software.
* Control exterior show lights (under glows and accent lights) via relays.
* Gain control of ignition timing, air/fuel maps, shift points, boost control, top speed, rev limits, etc. (WARNING: This requires a thorough knowledge of vehicle systems and should only be attempted by qualified individuals)

Cameras

ssteger — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:58:18 GMT

* Display video from car mounted camera for backing up. (infrared cameras are available for backing up at night)
* Record video from a webcam/mini-dv camera and store it to the carpc for later perusal. (good for recording close calls on the freeway - setup a rolling buffer which stores the last X minutes on button press)
* Provide night vision capability with infrared cameras.
* Process video from car in real-time using image recognition software. Capture license plates and store in database with GPS location.

Video Games Emulators

ssteger — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:57:14 GMT

* Play video games
* Run an emulator and have accessibility to any game that you have a backup copy of. This can range from Atari 2600 and Sega Master System to Nintendo 64 and Playstation. The emulator you can run is only limited by the systems resources. Alternately include an actual gaming system in the car.
* Connect a controller from the system of your choice to your CarPC. Microsoft Xbox controllers are very simple to modify yourself and drivers are readily available. If you prefer a controller from another system there are companies that sell them with USB connectivity pre-wired.
* Install multiple monitors and controllers for mobile multiplayer gaming.

On-Board Diagnostics

ssteger — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:54:55 GMT

Normally, this refers to OBD-II, a federally mandated method to access information on internally detected faults and to do tests via a connector (normally SAE standard J-1962 16 pins in a trapezoidal block).

The most common visible effect of this is the "Check Engine" Light (aka MIL light) which turns on when some internal test fails and a diagnostic code is set which can be recalled (and the light turned off) using a scan tool.

Wikipedia has an article on the topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Board_Diagnostics

Note that the connector often provides both information and the ability to control (given the proper interface) even outside the standard diagnostic modes, e.g. vehicle speed and RPM are normally present on the bus. As another example, OnStar uses the air-bag triggered bit to automatically detect an emergency condition.

There are various stand-alone and computer based "scan tools" able to access OBD-II systems.

The OBD=II system only specifies some required request-response methods, but can be implemented over CAN (Controller Area Network), J-1850 (SAE standard, two flavors), or other in-vehicle intermodule bus.

Please help expand this topic

Can

ssteger — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:53:07 GMT

Controller Area Network (CAN)

1. Is a high-integrity serial data communications bus for real-time applications

2. Operates at data rates of up to 1 Megabits per second

3. Has excellent error detection and confinement capabilities

4. Was originally developed by Bosch for use in cars

5. Is now being used in many other industrial automation and control applications

6. Is an international standard: ISO 11898

More info:

Automotive industry portal

CANbus Info

Vehicle Systems Monitor

ssteger — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:50:48 GMT

* Connect with your car's OBD-II, J-1850, CAN, i-Bus, or Consult interface and display real-time data from On-Board Diagnostics. (RPM/Temps/Speedometer/etc.)
* Pull and clear error codes immediately.
* Find 0-60, 0-100, 60-0, 100-0, 1000', 1/8 mi, and 1/4 mi times (Use GPS to mark ideal performance testing sites)
* Find vehicle horsepower and torque
* View live data with graphs of fuel injector pulse widths, knock adjustments, O2 sensors, etc
* Additional hardware modules (accelerometers and gyros) can be used with OBD data to derive and record cornering and handling performance for chassis tuning.

Cell Phone Control

ssteger — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:49:19 GMT

* Hands free cell phone control via software with Bluetooth
* Connect to a mobile phone or other device using Bluetooth (useful for voice and data communications and synchronizing with PDA's, etc.)
* Send & Receive text messages via your connected cellular phone using your carpc
* Enhanced contact list with large pictures

802 11

ssteger — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:47:10 GMT

802.11 is the overall name for wireless internet technology. It is also more commonly known as Wi-fi.

There are several variations. 802.11a was a 5Ghz technology which was rarely used. 802.11b was the first common standard providing 11 Mb/s connections and used the 2.4Ghz band which Bluetooth and other wireless devices such as baby monitor cameras use. Apple's original airport technology was 802.11b. It was superseded by 802.11g (which also supports 802.11b hardware) which runs up to 54 Mb/s. The range is generally a few hundred feet with the speed decreasing as the distance between devices gets larger. Antennas help significantly.

Normally a link with the internet is connected to an Access Point, where any device in the area can connect. Some access poitns are protected by encryption and passwords, and others have gateways which require a sign-on before they can be used.

Wireless Internet

ssteger — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:46:30 GMT

(Note: This topic includes both wireless cellular services such as GSM, Edge, and EVDO as well as local wireless ethernet Wifi (802.11, access point) connections which are different and should not be confused)

* Internet browsing through an eligible cell phone or wireless 802.11 connection.
* Wireless synchronization of files between desktop and carpc
* Wardrive: Use your 802.11 b or g wireless connection and GPS, locate and log locations of wireless access points.
* Use broadband internet phone options with cellular data card (Note that quality will be limited since cellular data normally has high latency).
* Download traffic/weather information from internet.
* Wireless Mobile Routers (e.g. Kyocera KR1) when used with a wireless broadband card can turn your car into a wireless access point.

GPS Tracking Software

ssteger — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:39:46 GMT

* Offical GooPs Site