Thread: 2006 Infiniti M35 Sport Carputer

Originally Posted by Caelric

That HDTV antenna, it came with your HDTV USB tuner, or is it something that you bought separately? I ask because my HDTV PCI card that I use did not come with an antenna, and I have not found a decent antenna yet that isn't too big for my needs.

Yes, it came with another tuner I had, the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950:

http://www.pcalchemy.com/product_inf...acturers_id/10

According to the site above,

* The WinTV-HVR-950 includes a portable ATSC digital terrestrial antenna, which can be used up to 10 miles from an ATSC transmitter. When using the WInTV-HVR-950 in the home or office, we recommend a high gain roof top ATSC digital antenna.

10 miles is not much, and haven't yet tested at that distance, but 4times that. Not good enough. But when close to the city, I believe it will be good enough, I've seen reviews using the card with notebooks inside hotels, saying the antenna is good enough for all the local channels.

Monitor install: I just bent some metal brackets from the OEM unit to make some room for the Xenarc, which is actually smaller than the stock OEM.




Nice fit, great! In the picture below you can see the OBDpros unit, to gather information from the ECU about the car state, etc. Also it can clear the "engine light" thingy, if needed (I needed already, when I plugged the battery back without the radio/a/c unit connected...The OBDPros unit is the black box with the blue sticker below the monitor.



This is the view from below, at the top, again the black box is the OBDpros unit, and the black box with the WHITE sticker is the PAC Audio unit, to get the signals from the computer and send it to the Headunit. Here is the pic:



I used double side tape to fix those to the metal brackets that were already there.

I used the 2MP Logitech Quick CAM pro 9000, with Carl Zeis 2.0/3.7 aperture, and rightlight technology, great for dark/night scenes. Also HD video to boot (960x720). The microphone is great, i did some recording with the open windows at 40mph, I could hear everything clearly later...

As it turned out, though, this camera ended up working better in the back seat, but this I save for another post, since the one who will replace this will have similar functionality, only better outdoors. The fast Carl Zeis lens worked much better in the high contrast back seat, to work as a baby cam (since I have a newborn, who rides facing backwards). Really, this "rightlight" tech is not hype, it did work better in high contrast situations (say, sunny outside, dark interiors). Anyway, here is my first attempt.


http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/we.../3056&cl=us,en


Camera facing the passengers:



Rotating towards the front, standard view. First, rotate the rearview mirror slightly towards the driver's door:








Rearview mirror back in place, camera fully tucked behind.




Outside view:





The circular led on the camera faceplate looks extremely cool when lit (it is optional, you can disable that with the software). Can't wait to record my first conversation with the authorities, and I'm sure I'll post many cool real world situations wherever I met them: this camera will work non-stop from the moment I turn on the car, recording the last 30 minutes of everything it captures continuously, archieving it whenever I hit the appropriate button.

I couldn't make it without the Capture! software, got it here:

http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/soft...recording.html

Today is a sad day: 100F+ (39C) here in the bay area, my carputer didn't work. Too hot? How? What?

My hunch is that the DSATX gave up...The hard disks are rated for 60C-70C operating, so it can't be that. I doubt that inside the trunk it can get higher than 50C.

I'll have to investigate that. That sucks man. All the car electronics work fine, not mine...

Well, this is the first video recorded on the car with the DVR functionality. A family picnic at the Mt. Diablo summit, 3,849 feet, all recorded by the USB Cam referred above:

This was the first test for the DVR software I use (Capture!, found on these forums). When the computer boots up, it starts recording the front USB feed with no input from me whatsoever. It records up to 10 30min files, after the 10Th is finished, it erases the first one and starts all over again, or it starts a new one when the computer boots. For now I chose to compress the video in real time with the FFDShow codec, DivX. By mistake in the config files, I was too conservative on this one and the video was recorded at 320x240. The top resolution for the camera is 720p, but I think I can record 640x480 DivX. I'll try 720p later, must give me good blow ups for things like license plates, etc, but I'll dare not compress that in real time. As long as that does not hurt my I/O subsystem, taxing my HD with the huge files, I don't care. I have a 500GB HD there for things like these anyway.

So here is the video. I edited the original 45 min to 8 min, and as I said before, I didn't pick up the sound right (lots of wind noise from the A/C, feedback, I think the levels were wrong, have to check that later), so I changed the soundtrack.

This is video, 8 min lenght. My host re sized it to 1MB/sec when converted to flash, it looks much better playing from the computer. I guess with youtube it would be worse, what do you guys think?


P.S. to admins:
I couldn't again embed the videos, according to my host, one of those codes should work, still, no luck. I don't want to give you more work, just to make sure it's supposed not to work anyway.
The "regular" code:
<object width="678" height="506"><param name="movie" value="<A href="http://babi.phanfare.com/video/3;40424211;"></param><param">http://babi.phanfare.com/video/3;40424211;"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://babi.phanfare.com/video/3;40424211;" width="678" height="506" wmode="transparent"></embed></object>

Java:
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="<A href="http://babi.phanfare.com/video.js?v=3&id=40424211&width=678&height=506&wmodetran sparent=1"></script><noscript><object">http://babi.phanfare.com/video.js?v=3&id=40424211&width=678&height=506&wmodetran sparent=1"></script><noscript><object width="678" height="506"><param name="movie" value="<A href="http://babi.phanfare.com/video/3;40424211;"></param><param">http://babi.phanfare.com/video/3;40424211;"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://babi.phanfare.com/video/3;40424211;" width="678" height="506" wmode="transparent"></embed></object></noscript>

Not bad at all! By the way, what song is that that you mixed in?

I'm referring to the first song, BTW.

Thanks,

Which one? First, the Bravery, "Time won't let me go", and then Hot Hot Heat, "Bandages".


I also managed to get the RRearth to work for me, good.

Now I think I can move this on to the completed worklog.

Cheers,

My host can be a bit slow, and I'm not happy with the quality. So I just uploaded the video on Youtube, FWIW.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8oa53aj888[/media]