Thread: 2006 VW Passat Variant CarPCed (56k beware!)

Originally Posted by andro

Johnny: standard WinXP Pro there (with Centrafuse - these pictures are now getting really old since CF looks much better now, IMHO )

BTW, welcome, nice to see Montenegro here as well!

Thank you!

The reason I asked is b/c, I was working a while ago on a similar project, which btw was never finished, due to fire on my old car, I was planing to use my laptop insted of making a whole new CarPC, didn't know what program to use to navigate the touch screen easy.

Is "Centrafuse" a program that you're using to navigate through the screen? Looks great btw, I can only immagine how it looks now.

Regards,
Johnny.

06 Passat 2.0T

Originally Posted by Roadwarrior

Hello folks.
This is my first post but i have been lurking around here for some time.
Actualy this post that you Andro made here about the passat made me decide to finaly switch from my 2002 MMC Galant to the 2005 FSI PASSAT that I have now. I had CarPC in my Galant but in that setup I used LCD that came out of the dash.
I have few questions for u Andro.
I was wondering where u took the power from the car for the computer? Did you take it straight from the battery or did u hook into somewhere else?
And do you have any pictures of that?
Also do you know how many extra amps its possible to get from the car without starting to "hurt" the altinator and the eletrical system?
With thanks to my mentor in CarPc for Passat
sjonni

Hey Sjonni, first a big welcome here to Iceland
I'm glad to hear I was the reason you decided to switch

The power is taken directly from the battery since this is the only 100% sure way some electronics won't cut power to the PSU during cranking (and the standard constant power line for the radio, I think, isn't strong enough). And, since the power line from the battery was already conventiently located nearby (oh, look, there's a nice amp dangling here from the other back seat oh, hm, didn't we just install that minutes ago? ), I used it for the PC too. I was worried a little there could be interference between the amp and the PC, but everything is OK.
Just tell me, what picture could come in handy to you, I can make it. Though there isn't much to it - a strong cable connected to the battery, a big fuse dangling off it and then wired through the car... and it just magically pops out just below the amp

The alternator has around 140A available, if I remember correctly, and this is 140 constant amps, which an audio installation will never take. I've seen people do ridiculous things in their cars and only in really severe modifications you'd have to start using additional batteries and upgrading alternators and so on. If you throw in an amp and a pc or so, you will surely do no harm. I can tell you this from personal experience My PC is taking some 5-6 amps (this is including display) and my amp, well, nothing constant, but some 20A or so spikes when you crank it up. I don't think the whole car electronics including ventilators and so on takes more than, let's say, 50A (headlamps some 10A, cooling vents also something like that (when max powered), and this and that, and I think I already exagerrated a lot. So you've still got quite some power left to play with (has somebody already done some math about this?)

Well, I have a M1 ATX also and a 2x100+1x300w (RMS) amp, so yes, you should be fine
Just don't forget to show us your project

Originally Posted by Roadwarrior

I am now starting to worry if I have big enough power supply for my carpc. I have SP1300 mobo, 100gb 2.5" HD 7"Xenarc touchscreen display. On the USB side I have Garmin GPS, CD rom, HQCT, Linksys USB network device and Creative SB Live USB. To power those I am gona use 2x 4port USB hubs that I will connect on the 5v power outlet on the M1-Atx and on the 12v outlet I am gona connect the Xenarc display. To much??

I was facing the same dilemma: I have SP13000, also 100G 2.5" HD, 7"Xenarc TSV, SB Xtreme Music and DVDRW inside the case; on the USB side Garmin GPS, another Sirf3 GPS from Haicom, a WiFi dongle, a Bluetooth dongle, one 4port hub also powered from the M1ATX, and an USB wireless keyboard (when I need something more serious to work with the PC), and an mini USB wired keyboard (for stupid non-touch screen friendly nRoute), and probably something else that I don't remember right now
If you have everything already assembled, why not do a simple test, like I did: use an amp meter and try to make the PC suffer as much as you can. This way I've seen I'm maxing out at around 60W, so I still got some room left for the M1ATX and I'm happy now
Though I have an M2ATX lying around just in case I once figure out that I'd rather have some more power, on the other hand I've read of some problems with these here, that's why I'm slightly reluctant just to exchange it in my system.

Also do you have any problem in frosty conditions with your harddrive or are you using CF solution?
Here in Iceland is actulay wery mild climate, even better than in NewYork in the winter time but some times the frost goes below -10° on celcius and i have encounterd some problems with my harddrive in that conditons

I think it happened once in heavy winter that it didn't boot up normally (it was approx. -18°C), and it also happened in the heat of the summer, when the car was standing outside in hot sun for the whole day, almost 40°C outside, black car, you do the math but I think the problem was in the almost melting ( ) motherboard, not the disk, since things started up fine, just with no video. A/C on max, waited a minute or two, powered down the PC and started up again, and all was fine again.