Hey, brand new here. Been pondering putting a PC in my car for about 6 years, but until recently all of my cars have been less than reliable so I never got around to it. Well, I just bought my first brand new car, and it's got so much space in it that I'd love to clutter it up with some PC gear.
I'm currently just perusing the old threads to get a feel for what people like and what I might like, but I am 100% open to suggestions. The only things I'm close to certain about are that I'd like to use a Lilliput 7" and an OPUS DC-DC.
My car is a 2004 Hyundai Santa Fe LX. It currently has a Monsoon 6-disc changer in-dash, which sounds great. However, I'm becoming fedup with only having 6 Audio CDs available at once (I got spoiled several years ago with a CD MP3 player), and the reliability when playing burned CDs/CD-Rs/CD-RWs is flaky at best. I have not decided whether I want to get rid of it or leave it and try to pass my PC sound through it. If I get rid of it, I'll also want to add a slot-loading CD/DVD drive to my PC and a tuner.
The vehicle has two 12v power outlets in the dash and one in the trunk. The trunk also has some nice, roomy storage space under the floor, though I'm not certain it would be ideal for the PC placement due to ventillation.
Some shots of my car are here.
I've been very impressed with the crafty ways some people have fabbed their screens directly into the double-din slot, and might end up doing it that way. However, I'd really like to mount it in such a way that I can easily remove it.
Can you elaborate? What are the advantages of being completely headunitless? At the moment I'm not convinced that I want/need to install a separate amplifier and a tuner card for the PC.Originally Posted by antimatter
Why? Movies will be less than 1% of the system's use. Most of the time it will be used for navigation and music.
If there are some simple solutions for 5.1, and there are real advantages, then I'm all for it. Please explain.
Well, I'm not dirt poor, but I would like to be moderately smart about money. The factory speakers (six of them) in the Santa Fe are actually very good speakers, so I won't need to spend more dough on them.
Well then disregaurd my comments and post more about your goals and reasons for putting a carputer together.
I put mine together for everything (music, video, GPS, Games, Apps, Camera's, ODBII, Climate control<--drool, DVD, etc)
So surround sound is key for me and is worth the money and time i spent to get it and get it the right way.
So analize your goals and search for solutions.
-Jesus- King of Kings Lord of Lords
No, no I didn't mean to be a jerk. I was sincerely asking for your opinion. Getting rid of the head unit is probably the best way to go, I just want to make sure to do things right and weigh all my options.
Climate control sounds cool. The Santa Fe has a pretty sophisticated AC control system, but I'd love to hear about what you've done with yours. Got links or other threads I can read?
I didn't take what you said as you were being a jerk. Honestly there is a wealth of information here and pretty much everything has been discussed and found solutions.
Thanks for posting in the right forum.
The only drawback to losing the head unit is radio. This can be solved by XM radio or by using one of the front ends that support radio such as frodoplayer or mediacar. Both support Radiator. Frodoplayer supports it nativly and mediacar supports it through "confused" mediacar radio suppliment.
You will need to get an amp if you want to lose the head unit anyways but you can get an amp off of ebay for pretty cheap. I bought the d'artigan 5.1 800wrms amp for a couple hundred.
There is really no simple solution to surround sound. Some use external usb cards to creat surround sound (there are many drawbacks for this). I used an external DSP (panasonic CYAC300EX) It was made for the car and also offered a 1 din 1" thick controll unit. It is nice to have an external volume control unit at times. Mainly i use the onscrene buttons but since i use digital audio the mute button does not work (in media car)
I decided to use digital S/PDIF from my EPIA M10000 becasue of noise/grounding issues of the onboard sound card.
Learn to use the search button alot and search out any problems before you post beause the people around here including me will get on you for that.
I have posted a guide to how i installed my surround sound setup and can answer any questions that you may have but do some searching first all the answers are out there.
-Jesus- King of Kings Lord of Lords
You can get an LCD housing here: http://www.digitalww.com/indashhousing.htm
Although, I think having the LCD fabbed flush into the dash is much nicer, but then of course it is not so easy to remove.
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