Hey everyone, since about a year ago i have bean wanting to install a pc in my car for holding my 70Gb of music and being able to say "my car runs windows xp". In April i got my first car a Nissan Avenir GT4 1998 which has plenty of space and power. After a bit of debating whether i should get a nice new sony head unit i decided to go ahead and build myself a CarPC!
So here it is my worklog so far. vvvvv
Here is a picture of the Navigation system with the crazy integrated climate controls
One of my Objectives was to make the screen removable as i will be traveling to uni everyday and dont want someone stealing my $320 ebay score. but because my climate controls are intergrated into my Xnaivi thing i could not go for any kind of clip or Velcro style mount. as you can see here i decided to remove the lcd and put the mount my touchscreen came with; in the hole that is left.
The hardest part for me was trying to get the computer to turn off when i removed power from the system. it took me a whole day trying to figure something out until i read this
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/powe...ontroller.html posted by Nicorolla. so i used his idea and modified it a little as my cars ignition disabled the acc when cranking and the keyswitch turns off when the engine is running
Finding a DC-DC power supply in New Zealand is not the easiest thing to do but i did end up finding one in Jaycar which was quite amazing! its 205w and uses switchmode Regulators but can only accept about 10.5v at the lowest so keeping it running while the car was cranking is a separate issue..... to get arround this i wired a second 7ah battery in the back with the computer. So what i have it doing is when i switch the key on a relay between my main car battery and this second backup battery is closed by the acc line, then when the car cranks the acc line is always turned off so the radio and stuff is not draining too much power from the battery for the car to start. because of this the relay is opened and the closed again once the car is running and in the mean time the computer is running only of my backup battery. yay another problem solved.
Linear Mode
