Hi All,
Been a lurker in here for a while. Just fitted my Carputer and thought i would share a few things i've gleamed along the way.
First off, here is a quick skin i knocked out today, its based on the dash of KITT from knight rider. considering how long mediacar has been around, im amazed there wasnt one already! its basic (GPS, MUSIC & Skin). It was more done for a gag for my mate who is heavily into Knight Rider.
You can download it
HERE
My Carputer is more an experiment on 'can it be done' I drive a (dont laff now) Fiat Uno! its small and crap but its a great toy for playing with stuff like this! anyway, I brought one of these little espresso PCs
Shown Here
Whats great about the espresso, is its very small, comes boxed and ready to go and you can remove all the CD and floppy devices thus saving even more power. I would HIGHLY recommend them for anyone looking for a carputer. I got mine from CPC components in the UK for £175, and thats for the full kit (PC, cdrom fdd dock, leather case, PSU etc.)
Its a tiny little box thats a pokey PC inside, I upgraded the ram, and HDD and piled XP Pro onto it. Hooked it up to a Lilliput 7" and a USB GPS running Prymenav and bobs your uncle.
The GPS integrates seamlessly with mediacar and when you exit the gps panel it remains running and talking in the background.
One problem (which seems to be with many GPS programs) if i leave the GPS running when i do a hibernate it wont reboot, fine if i quit the gps before hand.
Oh, tried the inverter thing. waste of money and time. had no end of problems included (after correctly grounding it to battery and bodywork, more noise than sound coming from the PC which I could also get a ****er off it if i touched the PC and the carpet!
Went with running pure 12v into everything. It all draws next to no power and is stable with the engine off or on. noise practically gone (only remaining is what the PC is producing). I plan to get around that by using a USB sound card.
Anyhoo, thats my news and how you like the skin, it made my mate chuckle (especially if you cue up the knight rider theme in the background!)
Regards,
Mat