maded

Hello everyone, I've been prowling around MP3Car.com for the better part of 2 years and have just realised my setup thanks to all of you. The discussions and pictures posted by members were a great source of motivation and ideas.

I have a MacMini installed in the passenger footwell of my 2004 Chevy Aveo (it's a 1.4 not a 1.6) connected to a Xenarc 700IDT, a Blaupunkt ODA Surround amplifier via TOSLink runs all 5.1 channels.

I use a Carnetix P1900 to supply power to the Mac, but have decided to dispense with the sleep mode stuff because I don't drive very much nor trust my car's battery and would rather live with a slightly longer bootup than not being to crank when i really need it :-p

My question is - is there a script or a program I can install on the Mini's dock so I can initiate shutdown? The reason I ask is because my really fat fingers sometimes find it hard to jab at the upper left corner of the screen when I'm trying to park

Thanks in advance for your input!

bpwned

Hi there,
did you know that the P1900 has a deadman timer that can cut the power to your mac after 72h of sleep? That way your battery will definately not be drained. If you want to use that, I suggest you use http://www.jinx.de/SmartSleep.html

Anyway, back to your question: You could create an AppleScript to do the job.
This thread is not exactly on topic, but I suppose it will give you enough information to solve the remaining problem :-)

Alex

California_2006

Hi maded,
"Dockables" is probably what you are looking for:

http://cocoaapp.com/products/dockables/

a Freeware collection of scripts that do this job nicely.

Bugbyte

I use SleepTimer. I set it to shut the Mac down after sleeping for 1 hour or more under the assumption that I'm done for the day if I do it that way.

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maded

Thanks everyone for your advice, i'll try the applescript first (I'm not an accomplished Mac programmer) and when all else has failed, Dockables.

Will also upload shots of my install when i get some done.

onepuff

I use a widget called deep sleep.

http://deepsleep.free.fr/

It puts the mac into hibernation. It boots up much faster than a cold boot and the mac consumes no power when in deep sleep. You can set it to use the mac's power button to go into hibernation, so you could use the p1900 sleep function.

Jirka Jirout

How much faster? It takes my mini about 20 seconds to fully wake up from hibernation and it takes about 45 seconds to boot.

Besides I do not think you can put a Mac directly into a deep sleep. What you can do on some models is enable the deep sleep and then the Mac will enter it automatically if the power is removed. But I may be wrong.

onepuff

I run parallels so i can run some datalogging software for my car so it takes forever for me to boot up cold. Check out the widget i linked. You can set the type of sleep(deep or regular mode) for the widget and the normal mode of putting the mac to sleep i.e. power button or through the apple menu. It works very well for me.You have to put the computer into deep sleep before removing the power though as far as i know.

Jirka Jirout

It works this way:

1. You issue a sleep request
2. The mac dumps the RAM to the HDD and makes a notes the computer went to sleep (in NVRAM)
3. The computer goes to *normal* sleep with RAM powered - if you wake the computer now, it will wake up normally within a few seconds.
4. If you remove the power, the computer turns off (and is in what is called deep sleep)
5. When you reconnect the power and eventually press the power button, the Mac checks whether there is the sleep entry note (created in step 2). If it is, it takes the RAM dump and restores it. If it is not, it enters the regular boot sequence.

bpwned

That's how I've configured my Mini! (P2140 sends it to sleep when I turn off ignition, then cuts power after 1h, the Mac automatically saves the session to HDD and starts again where I left off).

Read here to see how to enable safe sleep: http://andrewescobar.com/archive/200...leep-your-mac/ or just use http://www.jinx.de/SmartSleep.html (I do)

maded

The thing is, I usually keep the mini in the car only during weekends. Rest of the time I bring it back to my apartment. So a convenient shutdown is what i'm after.

onepuff

Well i meant that you have to put it to sleep at the least not necissarilly(totally botched the spelling of that) deep sleep. I just meant that you can't just pull the power and it will deep sleep.

To the OP. You might think about making a dock for the mini. Mine is in my project page here. http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/show...liput-7-a.html

I take mine in the house pretty often too and the little connector for the macpac power button wasn't gonna cut it. The little solenoid i used to press the power button has been working perfectly for about a year now. I also don't have the p1900 hooked up to the car ignition switch just cause i hate the carputer turning off when i stop at the gas station or the store. The Optima yellow top battery is awesome by the way.

onepuff

You could also just get one of these.

http://www.ergonomictouchpad.com/

Would make it easy to get to the corners of the screen for you and be a pretty simple install. The thing works great!

maded

bpwned, the link worked a charm...

do shell script "shutdown -h now" password "YourAdminPwd" with administrator privileges

was the way to go. THanks a bunch!!

bpwned

Cool. Glad to hear that.