1995 Honda Civic Sedan EX - My First CarPC - Page 2

seanz0rz · 06-27-2007, 05:26 PM

i purchased a 1.5 inch thick sheet made for a king sized bed. i cut it in half to use for my mattress here at school, the rest i put into seat cushions and such. i had a little scrap left over, i sliced it length wise to make a .75 inch thick piece and used that for my car pc.

im not sure of your options in brazil, but i know others that called for the free sample of tempurpedic material. that might work.

good luck.

vladcarpc · 06-28-2007, 02:08 PM

I am thinking about using TinyXP instead of regular WindowsXP.

I've read that its boot time is very fast and it consumes very low memory, so maybe I can remove one of my DIMM memories (was going to use 2x 256MB).

I am trying to download TinyXP now (using bittorrent)...

vladcarpc · 06-30-2007, 07:38 PM

Finally I have all the required parts at hand!

My mp3car.com order was shipped to a friend that were in USA and he brought the package to me, arrived today in Brazil.

Here is what I was waiting:

(Lilliput 8" wide touchscreen, M2-ATX PSU, Car PC Hacks book)

I think that now I am almost READY TO GO!

Also, today I met with a friend that owns a car sound store, I presented my diagram and he said that it needs improvement.
He will help me redraw the installation diagram (cabling, fuse, etc...) and very soon I will take the car there to plan/measure for the console fabrication. He is very experienced in fabricating consoles for car audio and dvd screens.

Here is more pictures of the items I received today:

vladcarpc · 07-01-2007, 07:49 PM

Today I tested the Lilliput (attached as a secondary display for my notebook). It works very well. It has a very nice appearance, looks like a good quality product (I thought it was going to have a cheap look but I was totally wrong. It starts with the nice box, all accessories and the screen itself is very nice).

I didn’t test it on the CarPC yet because its Sunday and my CarPC "test environment"

is at my work (using a part of the desk on my cubicle). I have a baby and it wouldn't be safe, his curiosity won’t leave my CarPC alone on the home table.

I will take the lilli and m2-atx to the office tomorrow and will try it on the CarPC when I have time.

I have programmed the auto power on feature, following the instructions of this thread.

The only thing I am worried is about setting the proper resolution 800x480. My IBM T60p notebook doesn’t have this resolution available, I've tried Ultramon and Powerstrip but no luck. I think its a limitation of the ATI Mobility FireGL V5200 card. But that is not a problem, since I will not use this as the CarPC. I was just anxious to test the touchscreen and see if the resolution is good (it is).

I hope that the onboard VGA adapter that I have in the CarPC supports that resolution. I will test tomorrow or the other day.

You can set any resolution and the lilliput will "stretch" it to fit full screen. But to get the best image it is necessary to use native resolution, 800x480.

I also bought that book, the Car PC Hacks, it is very interesting! I recommend it! It seems to have good tricks, and it explains every aspect of the CarPC.

TruckinMP3 · 07-01-2007, 08:55 PM

Great work log.... keep the faith, you will have hurdles and the results are worth the effort

BloodyRootsSP · 07-02-2007, 08:42 AM

There you go Vlad!! The screen is beautiful

Lookin' forward to see it in action.

vladcarpc · 07-04-2007, 05:19 PM

Just a quick update, I am currently trying to set 800x480 resolution on my onboard vga card (Intel 815 based). The guys are being very helpful, very valuable tips on this thread.

vladcarpc · 07-06-2007, 01:12 PM

I am installing TinyXP rev 5 on my CarPC (formatting). It means that I will rebuild from scratch. I've saved many folders to I wont lose all the previous job.

I did a quick test in VMWare and TinyXP is indeed very light. I hope it is compatible with the softwares I'll need to use.

vladcarpc · 07-06-2007, 05:19 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by vladcarpc

Just a quick update, I am currently trying to set 800x480 resolution on my onboard vga card (Intel 815 based). The guys are being very helpful, very valuable tips on this thread.

It works! I am using 800x480 in my Lilliput 889GL.

More details in this post.

vladcarpc · 07-08-2007, 01:24 PM

(edit: Project changed, this preview pictures are no longer valid. See page 4)

Hi there!

Today I took some pictures of the car, BEFORE INSTALLATION BEGINS!

This is my 95 Civic EX AT Sedan

This is where I think about installing the Screen. Will fabricate a console for it.

This is another view of my idea. Note that the screen will use the cup holder and ligher area.

This is where I think about installing the CarPC CPU. I am thinking about installing it on the top of the trunk, because the speakers are large and there is some space between them.
(edit: Changed the trunk layout, see another post on page 3)

I appreciate any feedback! Thanks!

Thanks!

vladcarpc · 07-08-2007, 01:31 PM

Hello again, I am currently testing Destinator 6 for PCs. Its interface is much better! The next step will be integrate that with RoadRunner.

More information on this thread:
http://www.digital-car.co.uk/forum/s...ead.php?t=7114

rodrigoratan · 07-09-2007, 11:22 PM

Hi Vlad, congratulations on your CarPC project progress!

I'm also interested in buying the hardware but right now (in my little precious free time) i'm working in my own 'skin' of RoadRunner (in fact it will be a new frontend, but I will try to keep some kind of compatibility with RR/MediaCar skins) using WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation, aka Avalon, and BASE of Silverlight, the new web user interface plataform by MS) and C# in .NET 3.5

I'm starting the tests embedding D6 inside WPF, now I have a problem that COM objects are layered Windows inside WPF, and like ActiveX on Internet Explorer are ALWAYS on Top, you can't use overlayers.

So I found a way using some hack in .NET to Copy the visual to a BitmapSource of a VisualBrush so I will be able to render it like I wanted in WPF also taking advantage of true 3D rendering, I could make a "Cube-like" interface or something similar easy.

Hope I can soon share my progress with you and other (few yet) brazilian CarPC users.

Cya!

See ya!

vladcarpc · 07-10-2007, 09:36 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by rodrigoratan

Hi Vlad, congratulations on your CarPC project progress!
(...)
I'm starting the tests embedding D6 inside WPF
(...)
Hope I can soon share my progress with you and other (few yet) brazilian CarPC users.

É muito bom encontrar cada vez mais brasileiros interessados no assunto!

Switching back to english

Are you using the destinator.exe (Destinator 6 for PCs) or the Destinator SDK? I followed that thread (see post above) with instructions on how to extract Destinator6 from Centrafuse 1.12, and it works perfect. Destinator6 has a much better GUI. Previsouly I was using Mapmonkey (that uses Destinator3 SDK).

So far the only "integration" I did was changing RR configuration to use "External" (instead of MapMonkey) and point to the destinator.exe.

See the thread I mentioned, there are some discussions about real integration efforts.

When you have time, create a worklog and post your project ideas.

Take care!

vladcarpc · 07-11-2007, 07:12 AM

I decided to reformat and install TinyXP rev 05 again, and then try different settings on the Intel 815 driver.

The reason is that previsously the Intel IEGD driver trick I found in that thread (see post above) allowed me to use 800x480, but the image was distorted. So I installed PowerStrip to ajust the image (shrink in vertical), but its a commercial product, and before I have to buy it there is a chance it will work by adjusting reg keys that the driver installation reads before first boot.

The problem is that I think that these adjustments are only possible thru reinstallation of OS or driver, because it reads the registry keys after the setup completes before booting.

Will post here the .reg file if I find the correct values.

vladcarpc · 07-11-2007, 12:50 PM

Here is some screenshots of my CarPC running Destinator 6 with Brazillian maps, running on RoadRunner (note BMV2 skin on the topbar) and using Destinator6 skin by Nomader (thanks!):

So far, the skin I liked best is DigitalFX 2.0, but I need to spend some time to make Destinator run in this skin.