New project, planning stage

**digital79** · 05-18-2009, 11:53 AM

Hi,

Just starting my 1st carputer project. Will be located in a trunk of a 4DR sedan. Ambient temperatures range from 20F in winter, to 120F in summer.

I am planning on using TEC for summer, resistive heaters for the winter, air cooling for mid-months.

I will need a thermal management system, it will be based on Arduino with 7 temperature probes

outside air
inside trunk air
inside car air
inside case air
TEC cold side
TEC hot side
resistive heater

Arduino will be monitoring temperatures, and depending on the case, it will either use TEC, heating or ambient air.

Case also be insulated as much as possible, to allow for energy efficient heating and cooling.

I will be using 2 TEC modules, ~65W each. 2 will be used for rapid cool down, then only 1 for temperature maintenance.

System will also be integrated in my audio setup. I'll be using KX for DSP and tri-amping (hi, mid, sub).

So far I've picked CF for FE.

I'm also planning on having a 4 way camera setup

left front bumper
right front bumper
reverse
front night vision with IR illumination

Bumper cameras will be used when pulling out from a tight spots, reverse is self explanatory, night vision too.

GPS navigation is a must, so is WiFi and bluetooth. OBD2 will come later on.

Let me know If you see any issues with this approach, thanks.

**rizaydog** · 05-20-2009, 01:42 PM

That is some serious climate control for a pc. It sounds good, but you might be going overboard. Unless you have a really big budget and don't care how much you spend. I have had issue with cold weather. It gets -30f here in the winter, and a a stardard hd would not boot at that temp. They make automotive grade hd's that work great. I got one made by Toshiba, cant remember model number. I used it all last winter without any probs. As far as heat, I have two fans in my case. One blowing in, and one out. My pc is in the dash behind my lcd. No probs with heat yet.

If you have the resources, go for it.

**digital79** · 05-20-2009, 01:48 PM

Originally Posted by rizaydog

That is some serious climate control for a pc. It sounds good, but you might be going overboard. Unless you have a really big budget and don't care how much you spend.

I'm concerned about the amount of time it will take to develop, as money wise it should not be that expensive (<150$).

I think I am going a little overboard... I'll probably simplify that design once I start.

I'll only have the computer in the sealed air space. PC's power consumption is ~50W, I assume 50% is heat, so even with that, I don't need much cooling after all. I just need to bring the air inside of the PC compartment to ~ 80F in summer, ~60F in winter. TEC's hot plate will be on a massive heat sink (8.5" x 12") to dissipate heat into the trunk. It should be fine. If the heat sink will get too hot, I can pull in the cabin air I guess. That's why I need 7 temp probes.

For winter, I'll have a couple resistors heating up the air space, I still need to calculate how many Watts I need for that air volume. Hopefully low enough to have a couple 10Ah batteries powering it up trough the night. All depends how good I insulate it.