Thread: Complete bolt in Screen/CPU/HD/PS - indash

sorry to turn the debate back on, but i figured i'd do a google search on it
http://www.google.com/search?q=condu...en-US:official

looks like the black foam is definatly conductive, the pink foam is "esd" anti-static.......seems like it is conductive, just enough to disipate a static charge....which might be enough to destroy some electronic components if your attempting to run something on top of it.

Lol...I'll blame his stubborness on his two years of Engineering school. I had three years of engineering school and thought the same way...

took a while to prove it, but most of that pink stuff is conductive - especially the stuff that comes with mobos.

Anyway, it's all fun talking about this stuff - don't worry, we can get an admin in here to clean up your thread once the debate dies (if it ever dies).
BTW - if you haven't noticed, all this useless banter has happened because you stopped posting pics of your sweet car! I want to see more!

Also, just remember that we're having fun with the foam comments

Very nice install so far!

So are you planning on using the car's OEM radio antenna as the Wifi antenna?

Yes I have modded my wifi card so that it plugs into the OEM antenna. I am not going to have FM for awhile but thats what all the mp3's are for. I can always add it later. So far the install is going great!!! I have all the wiring done and the whole bolt in unit, is well, bolted in and running!! Booted perfect the first time! I am running the m2-atx off the OEM radio power, so far so good. (that circuit is rated at 20 amps) M2-atx will draw 15 max. No sound yet though, I took a little break and am going back to install the amp and the GPS in awhile. Road runner looks so much more at home in the dash of a ride instead of sitting on a desktop! Anyway like I said foam is in the junk now, the M2 is mounted on 1/2" standoffs, above a grounded piece of .063 finished aluminum. For the sake of how many people believe that the infinate resistance foam is a threat to live circuits, I promise I shall never run my electronics atop that material again. Not even for short testing. All right. Time to pull my drivers seat and mount me an amp. Ill have pics up hopefully later on tonight. Ive been snapping them as I go.

Have you done anything different or modded the actual antenna to be matched to your wifi card? I wouldn't just straight up hook an FM car antenna to be used as a wifi antenna. FM is in the Mhz and receive only, wifi is way up at 2.4Ghz and transmits so it needs a matched antenna system. If you run it on your car FM antenna you run the risk frying your wifi car, or at the least getting worse reception....because since it's not matched to your wifi car and meant for different frequencies you will lose a lot of the already minimal transmitter power those cards put out.

Originally Posted by nkotch

Have you done anything different or modded the actual antenna to be matched to your wifi card? I wouldn't just straight up hook an FM car antenna to be used as a wifi antenna. FM is in the Mhz and receive only, wifi is way up at 2.4Ghz and transmits so it needs a matched antenna system. If you run it on your car FM antenna you run the risk frying your wifi car, or at the least getting worse reception....because since it's not matched to your wifi car and meant for different frequencies you will lose a lot of the already minimal transmitter power those cards put out.

Does all that even matter since they both are just pieces of wire wrapped around a stick? The difference between the 2 is just the hardware that they are connected to. The FM receiver picks up the FM signals and the wifi gets the wifi ones..

that's my way of seeing it. I may be wrong as always but you decide

and by the way, about the whole debate on the foam, I still have the pink foam under my mobo on my desk and it's been running without any problems

-Emo

Yea, it'll matter. With your FM radio it's ONLY receiving the RF signals, but with a wireless card it's receiving AND sending RF on the antenna. If it was just receiving then there really be any "danger" of frying the card, the only problem would be "bad reception" of the wifi signal....because each antenna is made to receive a certain frequency (or range of frequencies), the car antenna works best when receiving frequences from 87-107 MHz or so, but it's not going to be as sensitive to receiving 2.4 Ghz that 802.11g/b is on.

Get's a little trickier with sending because the when a radio transmits it's made to transmit on an antenna with a certain resistance/impedance, say 50 Ohms.... if the antenna is different from that then it's kind of analagous to hooking up your 4 Ohm stereo amp to a 1 Ohm sub or a 10 Ohm....things will get hot and not work as well, or you'll lose power and it still won't work as well. I think in one of the FAQs they cover this question.....I know I've seen a couple threads about this before.

I guess we learn something everyday because I had never known about the "pink foam situation" before these past few threads......will be carefull with new parts from on.

Well the install is almost done!! My camera ran out of batteries after 2 pix But anyway I left most of the trim off so I can get some pics of my wiring and such tomorrow. But yes im so happy, everything works great. I spent most of the time doing the audio tuning. It sounds SOOOO good! I could not get the m2-atx remote to work. It won't turn my amp on. I wired the amp remote to a different switched source and it works fine. Still need to work on that a bit. Yeah the wifi antenna idea was kind of an after thought. I have no real need to have wifi in the car but thought it would be worth a $10 adaptor to see if this type of idea would work. I finished up my install about 12am so i have not even taken the car on a test run yet. Ill let everyone know more information and get the pics up tomorrow. For now im off to bed, carPC waiting in the garage for its inaugural run in the morning

Believe it or not, the wife talked me into it. I'm passing on the Alpine and going with the PC. She liked the idea of being able to replace the screen if the screen goes bad, or replace the motherboard, etc., instead of repacing the whole radio. She won't admit it but there's gotta be some "wow" factor in there as well. Thanks again for answering my questions! I haven't quite decided on a motherboard yet but I'm really liking the everything in the stock location idea. Does the 1ghz via chip have enough HP? I mostly work with Xenon's and P4's all day, are guys (gals) trimming down XP to make it snappier on the VIA? Taking out unneeded services or processes?

mike