Thread: Trailblazer Carputer Project - COMPLETE!!!

Well, after many many months of planning, waiting, anticipating, and finally making it all happen... Here it is: My Carputer!

Specs are as follows:
Lilliput 629 7inch LCD Touchscreen
Gigabyte 7VM400M Mobo
AMD Athlon XP 2100+
512mb DDR 2100 Ram
60gb Western Digital 7200rpm HD
NEC DVD-RW Dual Layer 16x Drive
Airlink 802.11G WiFi PCI Card
On-Board Video and Sound (soon to be upgraded)
USB Bluetooth Dongle by Actiontec
RF Wireless USB Keyboard + Mouse In One (Works Really Well, link)
300watt Standard ATX Power Supply
600watt XOVision Power Inverter
400watt VR3 4-Channel Amp

All of this in a 2002 Chevrolet Trailblazer LS

The first real big challange was trying to figure out how to mount the touchscreen in the dash of the Trailblazer. At first I was going to use the GM Mount from www.humount.com, but I decided against it since it was made for a Xenarc, and not a Lilliput. (But they do have Lilliput mounts now, and the guy that runs that site is very very friendly, and helpful. I think anybody looking to mount a screen in a GM vehicle should give them a try first.)

So instead what I did was use a normal everyday clipboard and cut it to fit, and used that to mount my Lilliput screen to it, and put it in the car. It actually ended up working really well... I had alot of issues with using the dremel to cut it down, but all in all it was worth it.

After the screen was all mounted, everything was pretty much down hill from there. I bought a wiring harness for my car, it plugged right into my factory cables, I ran those directly to my amp, and everything worked just fine. Sounds great on the factory GM speakers believe it or not. Ill add some sub's later on... I probally wont mess with the speakers themselves though since I'm happy with the way it all sounds.

All in all, I am very happy with my install... It works really well, except for not having any actual buttons, which is kind of a pain when your in day to day driving conditions. Ill eventually get a Chevrolet steering wheel with the media buttons on it and wire it up to my carputer. But the next big step for me is trying to get a startup/shutdown controller working for my inverter. That has to be done, because getting out every time I want to start up is really annoying. And ofcourse, painting the clipboard mount for the screen, and building a nicer box for it all to fit in.

Below is the completed shot of the screen mounted in the car. Scroll down to the next post for step by step pictures.... And please, let me know what you think. Comments are most certainly welcome!




EDIT: Finally painted the clipboard black, and added a nice texture. Scroll down for more pictures