Thread: AUDI A3 CarPc with Dell C600 in the glove compartment

My car:

- Audi A3 1.9 TDi 110 PS

My PC:

Laptop DELL C600
- Proc.: 850MHz PIII mobile with intelligent cooling system
- Memory: 384MB RAM
- HDD: 40GB 5400RPM 8MB cache – quite fast
- WiFi: Intel PRO/Wireless 802.11 b/g
- DVD optical drive
Display
- Hami 8” VGA with TouchScreen
Power supply:
- original Dell power supply adaptor
- power inverter 12V-220V 200Watts
Additional devices:
- Bluetooth: USB Bluetooth
- DSP: Sound Blaster Audigy 2 PCMCIA – very nice thing :]
- Tuner TV/FM: AverMedia Cardbus Plus PCMCIA
- Hub USB with 4 sockets
- GPS receiver Nokia Bluetooth or Navibe USB
- Remote control Pioneer
- Antenna WiFi 5dbi

Audio system:

- Amplifier Blaupunkt GTA400 Flash
- Capacitor Dietz 1F
- Loudspeakers SinusLive: SL-160 and SL-F160 – high quality loudspeakers in my opinion

Installation:

The main purpose of my installation was to minimize costs of system (what doesn’t mean I used the worst materials of course), and because I have work, studies and a girlfriend I had to minimize time I spent with my carpc.
The first thing I made was installation of loudspeakers. I used quit good and strong loudspeakers to achieve possible strong and low bass. Places where loudspeakers was installed were precisely soundproofed. I didn’t use subwoofer because I need maximum place in my trunk, but I thing that sound is enough high-quality and quite noisy . An amplifier and capacitor I installed in trunk.
The next step was installation of display. I had to rebuild all central part of dashboard because of large size of my display. The display is solidly installed to reduce risk of robbery. A frame around display was made with using original parts and a special foil.
The last step of may installation was heart of system, that is PC. I decided to use laptop in my system because of a lot of advantages: small size, low consumption of energy, built-in intelligent cooling system 2,5” HDD which is much more resistant to shocks than 3,5” HDD and much more.
The solution of using laptop let me to install it in dashboard what reduced amount of wires and reduced noises. I have optical drive, touchpad and USB slots in front of car also.
To install laptop I had to rebuild the glove compartment. I used special springy materials to reduce shocks. Laptop is without display and battery of course. In place of battery I installed USB hub with additional power supply and ps/2 slot.
The installation of capacitor wasn’t caused by high power consumption of amplifier but to supply computer and display when engine is starting (computer turned off when engine was started without installed capacitor).

Now I’m testing different software and try to solve some problems with combination hardware-plugin-front end. I would like to use Centrafuse for my Front End, but I’ve got problems with software to my tuner TV/FM: AverMedia Cardbus Plus PCMCIA which I could use in CF. I would like to use my Audigy 2 DSP mixer instead of CF mixer, but I see it isn’t easy too .

For the future I planned to install OBD2 interface, reduce noises and made an unit for steering power.

I described my system very short, but everything was much more complicated in reality. If you have any ideas or questions please e-mail me or post replay in this thread.

(I'm from Poland and I don't know english well, so sorry for my spelling errors )

That’s my work: