nobb

Wow, I didnt know there were so many Calgarians with carpcs too. Too bad its fairly warm in Calgary right now...I was hoping for some -40C temps so I can test my new setup.

So greatwhite, did you find a working solution to your weather issues?

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Salmizar

I took Scruit's idea about the CCTV heater and ordered one.

I took the heater and made a bracket that holds it below the HDD about 1-2mm.



I then made a square hole below the drive so the thermal controller switch would come up and sit 0.5mm from the HDD.



I installed a relay which is driven by the amplifier control. This way when the carputer is on, the heater is off. I also installed a internal toggle switch so that when it warms up I can easily disable it.

The unit draws between 220mA and 430mA. So far so good. I will have to wait for a cold snap to see if it can handle the really cold temps (-25c+)

greatwhite

Nah, bee out of country for a while. Back for today and gone again for a couple more weeks.

If this keeps up, it'll be spring before I even get to drive the car again!

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nobb

It got down to -35C and even my automotive grade EE25 wouldnt spin up fast enough to be recognized on the first try. My old Endurastar seemed to have held up better. It seems that that HDD might take longer to spin up to normal speeds because the fluid bearings are too viscous in these temperatures, so one thing you guys can try on your systems is to disable quick boot in the bios. That might give your drive a few extra seconds to spin up to speed.

I am also wondering if maybe a simple script can be made to put on a bootable usb key that would run for an X amount of time, then reboot the system. By setting the boot device priority such that 1. HDD 2. USB, then when the system does not detect the HDD (because its too cold), it will boot from the usb key > run the script > HDD slowly spins up to speed and warms > script reboots system > HDD detected by BIOS > and system boots like normal. No more fussing around with the reboot or heater switch...everything would be automated (in theory).

Salmizar

My earlier attempt with the CCTV heater was not enough to keep the HDD warm in very cold temps.

This was my next attempt. And I am happy to say it works all the way down to -30 without issue.

What I did was buy a 12 volt 150watt heater. Cut out a new side plate for the case out of lexan, leaving a generous hole to expose the HDD.

I positioned the heater about 4' from the case. I wired up the heater to a 20amp relay and then a small 5amp relay under the dash to send power to the other relay when the ignition is on, but turn it off when I flip the switch for the carputer.

When it's cold I always remote start my truck and let it warm up for 5 mins. When it starts, the heater is turned in and begins warming the PC. When I get into the truck I turn on the pc which in turn, turns off the heater.

YaY

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rayjr13

Now I know the °'s in Canada are smaller during the winter but damn, unless your inches shrink in the winter too, you either have the largest carputer (and therefore vehicle) or that's the shortest 4' I've ever seen in my life lol



But I definitely agree a Cold Weather (Cold Weather Booting) thread Sticky would be appreciated in the Hardware discussion.

Salmizar

Bad angle picture. The base where the carputer sits is raised. Here is a better angle. closer to 3' on the bottom of the heater, 4 on the top I would say.

Attached Images

 

rijk

I have a temperature problem as well, cpc shut down when mobo was +4°c
I have a flashdisk as os , i don’t think thats the problem. Bios doesn’t show, but the fan can be heard.
Cpc is now out of the car, want to make a casing to put the cpc in the interior of the car.

The cpc is mounted on the front interior air intake.
Now in the bios, i had the shutdown temp of the mobo on 60°c, could it be that by switching on the temperature sensor with a high temperature shutdown also makes it aware of the low temperature?
Has anybody tried if switching of the sensor in the bios will help?

Cartft have don a test with a jetway started up at –40°c
http://www.cartft.com/community/Story/freeze
So there are cpc,s that can take the cold. (i have a Commell)

Maybe use a heating element of a car-seat around the cpc would worm it up enough

__________________
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Salmizar

I doubt the bios temp settings have anything to do with it, but you never know. Try disabling it and see?

I wouldn't recommend using anything to keep the PC warm when the car is not running. My truck has a 220Ah battery and that still will not provide enough sustained power to keep it warm for more then a day or so. I had considered using a car seat warmer as well, but the power needed is to great.

I have a jetway and aside from the HDD not starting in -30 and lower, the board does post.

I think it's just a temperamental board. Keeping it out of the car can also be problematic because temperatures are much colder then within the vehicle.

nobb

Some motherboards just wont work in the cold. I have tested two separate boards which would fail at -10C and -20C. The fans would power on, but the board would not POST. Or if it did actually POST, it would freeze/reboot sporadically. The problem mostly seems to be capacitor related, because the capacitance can vary alot with temperature. But 4C seems a bit high for a board to fail. Try to enable power on after power loss in your bios. Stupid idea, but it helped my m10k to boot. I also noticed in your specs, you are running the M2. It appears that this power supply might "overshoot" the voltage rails a bit when it gets cold (thats probably why I had to enable the power on after power loss).

http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/powe...tx-jetway.html

Test that maybe? Or try powering on your system with a standard ATX psu to see if it is the power supply's fault.

rijk

I now have a dsx12vd. In the bios after powerloss power up.

the 4C is when it switched off, the cpc didn't start that day it was -4C i had a drive of about 2 hours. Then the car was parked for ca. 0,5 hours and the cpc switched on (the engin nust have warmed the mobo) the temp of the mobo was 35C When i drove back and checked the temp on the dsx12vd the last reading i did was 4C half a minute later the mobo was gone (like someone had pulled the power off)

Have don a test, mobo in the fridge, tempsensors off. No result, fan spins up and no other reaction. Power completly of the system in bios after powerfail restart.
Power back on and it doesn't start up by itself, So startet it by the strabutton on the mobo.
When it started the mobo temp was back up to 22C.

Must be those capacitance. My board only has the p4 connection, so only 12 volts. It has te make teh 5 and 3 Volts by itself.
So in theorie a board with a atx connector should do better?

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HuseyinOzsut

I'm at Turkey and here in winter temp. can drop under -10C at nights and in summer it can be over 35C in the morning. I was using my pc with water cooling, and I'm thinking to place my pc to the car with water cooling and isolate the case by glass wool and rock wool. And In summer I'll remove the isolation. Will that do the trick if I have failures in the winter?

Lithoss

are you saying that you going to try to water cool a car pc? and in sub zero temperatures? uh......?

TruckinMP3

While I would not recommend liquid cooling in the car (water is not the only option) several liquids would work without turning into a solid at lower temps.

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TruckinMP3
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Lithoss

i know you can get some blue windshield washer fluid that looks good in watercooling.. but why in a car?

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