Aussie Offroad Carputers

**rodweb** · 08-04-2008, 04:51 PM

Hi all, a couple of us on this forum from Australia decided it would be good to rise a thread for those interested in a carputer for offroad use. So if your idea of going for a drive in a car take you places like this:

or this:

this is the thread for you so you can showcase your work, share supplier information and the like. So how about introducing yourself, your rig and your carputer on this thread. So here goes:

My name is Rod and I live in Brisbane. I have a 2007 Hilux 4 door ute that I bought new in February after the steering failed in my little Suzuki pictured above on the highway at 100 kmh which hurt a bit and prompted me to buy a brand new fourby!

So here it is:

Doesn't look anything special, but there is about $10k of extras on it and the suspension is still stock!

I am modifying an old HP Nx6120 laptop with no keyboard and 9 vertical rows of busted pixels on the screen to drive my carputer. My plan is to use a Xenarc screen in the dash, Silab radio and a Amp behind the back seat. I am using Roadrunner as the front end and will stick with the brushed metal skin.

My current project is working with Bugger to skin OziExplorer (see http://www.oziexplorer.com/ ), the most popular topographical mapping software out there and we are getting close to make that work. Ozie is not a very well behaived program for car use and it has been hard work, but we are nearly there! Check it out on this thread OziExplorer

By the way if you have Ozie, you will probably want a copy of NatMap raster premium which will give you a 2gb, 1:250,000 topographical map of Australia ( http://www.ga.gov.au/nmd/products/maps/raster250k/ )

Whilst this is an old thread, it has got a new lease of life over the last couple of weeks!

I will post a few details about suppliers etc I have found later.

Cheers

Rod

**Woofnstuff** · 08-04-2008, 06:58 PM

so solid state hard drive in it then?

and i guess the passenger cant watch movies while your driving

**rodweb** · 08-05-2008, 04:39 AM

No on both counts mate.

Would love a solid state drive, but space might have been a bit restrictive with the amount of maps required. Next one will be, but I did replace the HDD before I started.

For those of you looking for a Silabs USB radio source, I got mine from Farnells ( http://au.farnell.com/ Product Code 1186925) Cost was $70.40 delivered in about a week. Had troubles with the RR Silabs DLL but have got IceRadio working well and it's skin is a good match to the brushed metal skin!

Rod

**millsy** · 08-05-2008, 06:51 AM

Hi all,
I have a ford explorer, my screen is molded in, have a 2.0 p4 board,250 gig h/d,m2 atx power supply,silabs,use FI as front end,silabs works great,also use a free capture program called Debut for recording trips,etc.Mostly use Destinator for turn by turn navigating.I run two batteries and run my comp off the second battery and put it into standby when i turn the car off so it it comes back up in seconds,i also leave my holux gps on all the time so it is always ready to go.
I use a 1.4 gig laptop with ozi for real time tracking tracks etc, much easier to see.It is great to see excellent work going on with ozi,would be great to get ozi embeded in FI.
I also belong to Digital car UK, also have a lot of good stuff for carputing.

**rodweb** · 08-05-2008, 09:30 PM

Milssy

Did you have to modify the dash to get your screen in? Could you post a pic? Not looking forward to hacking up the dash of mine. This may entail relocating the A/c controls.

**Bugger** · 08-07-2008, 06:15 AM

Hi All...

Name's Justin and I reside in the Northern suburbs of Melbourne. I've got myself a "new" 4by. 1989 GQ patrol wagon with the mighty TD42 and aftermarket DTS turbo running ~12PSI. Mods a many on the way...

I'm the fool who started the work on the OziExplorer skin... Thanks go to robweb for picking up the graphics and working on this skin with me.

The carputer currently consists of my home laptop sitting on the back seat running on it's dual batteries (up to 12hrs per charge). I do however have plans:
8" screen fitted in pod to live on dash which will also hold second UHF - 90%
Via 1.5GHz microATX system with CF 8GB - almost got funding
mouse GPS receiver - got already for laptop
RoadRunner front end with Brushed Metal skin (to be modified to take out video etc) - 60%
Power supplies for PC and screen - thinking about it

I'll edit this post on the weekend and put up some pics of my GQ.

**rodweb** · 08-07-2008, 07:40 AM

Sounds petty cool Justin, I was going to go the CF way until my laptop died so am using it for now. I did play around with minlogon etc (I installed the XP embedded demo to get the DLL's) and think it would be good, but Nliteing WinXp might take some time. Note XP does not support more than 2gb SD cards I found out the other day when I bought an 8gb one for my camera, there is a service pack to enable this, but very patchy hardware support. I bought a USB reader with HDSD support which fixed that. I have a supplier somewhere for bootable CF cards, I'll try and dig it up.

The stuff on the forum about installing minlogon is not quite right, there is a better way, but I got to remember how again! Start at a service pack folder, then DLLcache, then sytem32 from memory.

Rod

**Bugger** · 08-07-2008, 08:29 PM

I'm looking at using CF to IDE adaptor so the OS doesn't even know about it... fully bootable then too

**millsy** · 08-08-2008, 12:31 AM

I didnt have to hack a great deal,7" screens are spot on for a double din, problem is americans always do something different a gave us a din/half in the fords, as i dont use a headunit i now have room in my modified console ( not quite finished) to put my two way radio and the power/ reset/ usb port.

**rodweb** · 08-08-2008, 06:27 AM

Millsy, thanks for showing me your dash. Very similar to the Hilux one, did you remove the Xenarc fascia?

Just a few Aussie links I have unearthed for hardware which might be handy

Wireless networking:
I have a home network with wireless, so am thinking of adding a network card. This will allow me to remote into the CARPC from my PC using MSTSC which works quite well.

PCMCIA Wirelsss network card with external antenna socket $45 – one of the recommended ones out there:
http://www.techtopia.com.au/product_...roducts_id/875
They also do pigtails to suit various applications including Bigpond 3G wireles cards.

Outdoor antenna to suit from same site $45
http://www.techtopia.com.au/product_...oducts_id/1013

Here is a cheaper indoor antenna
http://wifitech.com.au/catalog/produ...d0ec51bd3c03a2
(Jaycar also do one for $20) and I’ve got a couple in the house.

CF Adaptors and Cards
CF Adapters – cheap as chips also ones for laptops, might look more closely at these…
http://www.darkwire.com.au/index.html

CF Adapters (more expensive) also available here:
http://www.mittoni.com.au/flash-card-adapters-c-27.html
These guys also do bootable CF cards:
http://www.mittoni.com.au/flash-memo...1_253_210.html

Silabs FM radio
http://au.farnell.com/ $70.40 delivered

The RR Temperature sensor kit
reasonably priced (look for K145) $39.60
Additional DS18S20 sensors available same place $13.20
http://ozitronics.com/data.html#k145

Cheers, hope these help you out!

Rod