Complete bolt in Screen/CPU/HD/PS - indash - Page 4

nkotch · 02-19-2006, 05:43 PM

Have you done anything different or modded the actual antenna to be matched to your wifi card? I wouldn't just straight up hook an FM car antenna to be used as a wifi antenna. FM is in the Mhz and receive only, wifi is way up at 2.4Ghz and transmits so it needs a matched antenna system. If you run it on your car FM antenna you run the risk frying your wifi car, or at the least getting worse reception....because since it's not matched to your wifi car and meant for different frequencies you will lose a lot of the already minimal transmitter power those cards put out.

Emo · 02-19-2006, 11:41 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by nkotch

Have you done anything different or modded the actual antenna to be matched to your wifi card? I wouldn't just straight up hook an FM car antenna to be used as a wifi antenna. FM is in the Mhz and receive only, wifi is way up at 2.4Ghz and transmits so it needs a matched antenna system. If you run it on your car FM antenna you run the risk frying your wifi car, or at the least getting worse reception....because since it's not matched to your wifi car and meant for different frequencies you will lose a lot of the already minimal transmitter power those cards put out.

Does all that even matter since they both are just pieces of wire wrapped around a stick? The difference between the 2 is just the hardware that they are connected to. The FM receiver picks up the FM signals and the wifi gets the wifi ones..

that's my way of seeing it. I may be wrong as always but you decide

and by the way, about the whole debate on the foam, I still have the pink foam under my mobo on my desk and it's been running without any problems

-Emo

nkotch · 02-19-2006, 11:52 PM

Yea, it'll matter. With your FM radio it's ONLY receiving the RF signals, but with a wireless card it's receiving AND sending RF on the antenna. If it was just receiving then there really be any "danger" of frying the card, the only problem would be "bad reception" of the wifi signal....because each antenna is made to receive a certain frequency (or range of frequencies), the car antenna works best when receiving frequences from 87-107 MHz or so, but it's not going to be as sensitive to receiving 2.4 Ghz that 802.11g/b is on.

Get's a little trickier with sending because the when a radio transmits it's made to transmit on an antenna with a certain resistance/impedance, say 50 Ohms.... if the antenna is different from that then it's kind of analagous to hooking up your 4 Ohm stereo amp to a 1 Ohm sub or a 10 Ohm....things will get hot and not work as well, or you'll lose power and it still won't work as well. I think in one of the FAQs they cover this question.....I know I've seen a couple threads about this before.

I guess we learn something everyday because I had never known about the "pink foam situation" before these past few threads......will be carefull with new parts from on.

blk02si · 02-20-2006, 12:25 AM

Well the install is almost done!! My camera ran out of batteries after 2 pix

But anyway I left most of the trim off so I can get some pics of my wiring and such tomorrow. But yes im so happy, everything works great. I spent most of the time doing the audio tuning. It sounds SOOOO good! I could not get the m2-atx remote to work. It won't turn my amp on. I wired the amp remote to a different switched source and it works fine. Still need to work on that a bit. Yeah the wifi antenna idea was kind of an after thought. I have no real need to have wifi in the car but thought it would be worth a $10 adaptor to see if this type of idea would work. I finished up my install about 12am so i have not even taken the car on a test run yet. Ill let everyone know more information and get the pics up tomorrow. For now im off to bed, carPC waiting in the garage for its inaugural run in the morning

mikeyr68 · 02-20-2006, 06:02 AM

Believe it or not, the wife talked me into it. I'm passing on the Alpine and going with the PC. She liked the idea of being able to replace the screen if the screen goes bad, or replace the motherboard, etc., instead of repacing the whole radio. She won't admit it but there's gotta be some "wow" factor in there as well. Thanks again for answering my questions! I haven't quite decided on a motherboard yet but I'm really liking the everything in the stock location idea. Does the 1ghz via chip have enough HP? I mostly work with Xenon's and P4's all day, are guys (gals) trimming down XP to make it snappier on the VIA? Taking out unneeded services or processes?

mike

Emo · 02-20-2006, 09:18 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by mikeyr68

Does the 1ghz via chip have enough HP? I mostly work with Xenon's and P4's all day, are guys (gals) trimming down XP to make it snappier on the VIA? Taking out unneeded services or processes?

mike

What do you mean by HP?

But there are versions of XP out there that are already trimmed down enough so they can run (there's a thread around here with "Tiny XP" where the installation is only 200MB and when you actually do install windows, it's running on 50MB of ram and minimal stuff)

I personally did not like that very much so I went with a regular XP and then I tweaked it on my own. I used WinXP Manager and wow..

that program can transform XP however you want.. so now, with Hibernating, I shut down in 5 seconds, and from a cold start it takes about 20 seconds to be inside of XP all ready to go so I'm happy...

-Emo

mikeyr68 · 02-20-2006, 10:34 AM

HP = horse power. I'll look that up on the Tiny Xp install. I was trying to keep it to under 40 GB with a few movies and my music. I have a 40 GB notebook drive that I was planning on using.

blk02si · 02-21-2006, 11:36 AM

Well Im still working on getting my new pics up. Ive been so damn busy with work and school and trying to catch up on sleep the past couple days I have not even had the time to crop and upload them. The WiFi to the OEM antenna does not work as suggested by others. It will sometimes detect networks but it will not connect. Ive got the wifi hardware disabled for now untill I pull it back out and get the right antenna. Ive got a 15db Gain directional wifi for home but its like a satallite dish, and won't really work for a car. Ill have to pull it eventally anyway as I plan on adding a dvd drive, OBD2 harness and if i can find it, a FM usb tuner. Ill reroute the USB tuner antenna to my OEM antenna then. Stay tuned for pics of the install. .

blk02si · 02-23-2006, 03:56 PM

Well finally got some pics here at work. I have some more of the wiring job at home. I also bought a 10" JL audio subwoofer and alpine amp from my buddy. This is in the trunk awaiting installation. (just another thing to do) But yeah everything came out really clean, i was proud of my work. Amp is under the seat, which i had to remove to install, and will also have to pull it again to wire the sub amp. Anyway here are the pics. Ill get some up soon of the PC while it running in the dash soon I promise!

BTW: HEADUNIT-LESS is the only way to go!!!

Magnezium · 02-24-2006, 12:02 PM

Very nice... I want to do this with a Din 1/2 later... This was very useful. Thanx.

mikeyr68 · 02-24-2006, 08:12 PM

Looks fantastic! I've ordered the motherboard and psu and have the Alpine amp as well. The last main component will be the screen. I should be deciding on that one soon. I hope it turns out half as good as yours looks. It's sure does look stock. I'm also working on a Roadrunner skin that will look like the old Shaker 500 when done. Keep up the good work.

Mike

mikeyr68 · 02-24-2006, 08:21 PM

Forgot to mention a little tid-bit of opinion. I think the dash looks great, but the wires in the console? It seems that everybody spends 100's of hours on one thing only to cut it short on some little detail. Have you thought about putting in an RJ-45 jack vs. the cat-5 cable coiled up in there? Wire it in reverse so you could just use a standard patch cable when connecting it to a laptop or other PC. I'm not sure 100% what I'm going to do with the USB but that is where I'm going to but both links, in the center console. That one might be a little tricky. Some of the IBM towers at wrok had a USB jack in the front that would just need a roughly cut rectangle and then they would snap in flush. Anyways, great job and thanks for the ideas and help.

Mike

blk02si · 02-26-2006, 05:47 PM

Yes the coils in the glovebox are kind of unfinished but you cannot see them with the box closed. I've tried rj-45 splice connectors but they seem to really slow down TCP communication. This way I have a direct crossover cable to plug into my laptop and transfer files at 5-10M Mbit/sec. My main way to do any major software updates on the car pc is direct network with my laptop. Ive got quite a few usb connectors I could mount from all my motherboard purchases lately, but the one coming into the center console is a female plug so I can just plug any usb hardware into it. I also have one more usb port right next to my knee down by the drivers legs. You cannot see it, its hidden behind the factory trim. Probably use it for the USB FM tuner as soon as I find me a D-link.

Erazor983 · 02-26-2006, 07:10 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by blk02si

Yes the coils in the glovebox are kind of unfinished but you cannot see them with the box closed. I've tried rj-45 splice connectors but they seem to really slow down TCP communication. This way I have a direct crossover cable to plug into my laptop and transfer files at 5-10M Mbit/sec. My main way to do any major software updates on the car pc is direct network with my laptop. Ive got quite a few usb connectors I could mount from all my motherboard purchases lately, but the one coming into the center console is a female plug so I can just plug any usb hardware into it. I also have one more usb port right next to my knee down by the drivers legs. You cannot see it, its hidden behind the factory trim. Probably use it for the USB FM tuner as soon as I find me a D-link.

Splicing data is a big no no. The fact that you got any signal out of a spliced cable is pretty amazing. Something along the lines of this with a pigtail and an RJ-45 on the other end should work well for a remote jack.

USB is even easier since you probably have one of these laying around in a spare parts box. Least I have several from other motherboards.

blk02si · 02-27-2006, 07:49 AM

Major software updates today. Ive been testing new software and im going to load it today. Upgrades will include the newest release of roadrunner, 5 rr skins (CFX is awesome!!), frodoplayer 1.10, iGuidance 2.1 GPS software, and a few new music albums. Ive gotta say iGuidance seems much better for the car than the bloated S&T 2006. It loads faster, has great TS controls even if its unbedded, starts GPS tracking on launch, superior options and configurations. Im really diggin it. Time to go uncoil that RJ-45 and get some data flowing through it. Since Im doing all this new software I will have to get pics of it running in the car. Stay posted