Thread: 1992 Honda Accord - budget carputer

Long time, no post.
After acquiring a new car, fudging around with a $8 mp3 player just wasn't gonna cut it anymore. I needed something to store all my music, and let me get to it quickly. Ipods and the like are out of the question - too expensive.

The solution was to spend as little as possible and still have a decent result.


There's a USB hub under there, and a power switch.

1024x768 VGA LCD non-touchscreen (only $30 off ebay)
800MHz EPIA C3 mini-itx board
384MB ram
20gb HDD
And a 80W Morex car PSU that I never used from 3 years ago.

The frontend you see is something I wrote myself. After looking at roadrunner, I figured it would probably take less time to code my own instead of dorking around with the config files for the former.
- it has to boot fast
- show all my music and let me get through it quickly
- be configurable for whatever crazy input scheemes I come up with
- stop world hunger
- cure cancer



The end result is a compact VB app that takes music info from Windows Media Player, so your library is there the first time you start the program, no config needed.
Likewise, every single aspect of the UI, from the buttons down to the colors, is entirely not customizable.



Runs Windows XP fine - boots in about 35 seconds with the minlogon hack. No need to shutdown - just turn the key off.

I bought a small wireless USB media remote - it's hardcoded for CyberDVD. I had to trap all keypresses to my program and remap them. What a mess.



The screen frame itself I built using a dremel and model glue. I cut up an old floppy case, and spent quality time with a file. Bondoed, spot puttyed, sanded, sprayed with adhesion promoter and finally textured Rustoleum rattle paint.
The frame is mounted via piano hinge on some sheet metal that reaches up, and back where it's screwed into the old stereo mounting bracket.

Sound? Good enough for me. There's a 52Wx4 Sony stereo in there, works fine with my Kenwood speakers. I'm not looking to wake the dead, though it does have a nice kick. There's a bit of noise from the mobo, but inaudible at anything above silence.



Shutting down..



Comments welcome Total money spent: probably around $120 for everything.