Bugbyte's 2001 New Beetle -Mac Mini Install - Page 6

turbocad6 · 08-10-2005, 07:15 AM

I always thought of "adding" a mac mini to my install since I'm really a pc guy, but thought the mini looked awsome to play with.... just couldn't think of what for really.... I think that's a cool idea though

thecolor · 08-10-2005, 10:25 AM

I use both a Mac and PC for design / all the software I need purposes. In conjunction, I've used VNC for oh, 6 years now, both on Mac and PC, and I tell you it is a dream, so convenient, from Mac to pc, to phone, or phone to either of those choices.

However.... on also an inexpensive, quick hardware side for you, I might suggest one simple, inexpensive, and powerless option (in addition to VNC).. a kvm.

With a KVM, you still only need one mouse, one keyboard and only one monitor. Should you go to multiple of any of these items (typically a monitor (in my case my 40 in Flat screen)), you can use a VGA-Y cable for that before each machine (at the kvm side).

This will eliminate any speed issues and screen res issues you might have with VNC.

ON wireless, the least you want to go with a perfect stream is 11mb connection, although doing 24bit color can sludge things enough to make GPS refreshes annoying.

So, it's a thought. You can stick that KVM in the middle of your seats or something like that. If it's a push button kvm, it can be in the dash, whatever suits your fancy.

Either way, VNC is nice to have installed anyhow for troubleshooting when a certain monitor is not working or whatever.

Long explanation, but hope that is helpful.

thecolor · 08-10-2005, 10:41 AM

Now that I think about it.... unless you install a router (wireless hub) in your car (which I recommend anyhow for traffic sharing wireless) using something like a Junxion Box Wireless Gateway www.junxionbox.com you will have to connect via ad-hoc, which can be a pain if you want to switch back and forth to standard wi-fi.

Unless you set up one machine to share it's net connection and leave the other in ad-hoc to that machine, (but then you are limited to streaming through another machine and whatever it's capabilities are, (as well as problems, not up, slowness, etc.)

Just an added thought.

Bugbyte · 08-10-2005, 11:07 PM

I'm not too versed with all this wireless connection stuff so let me ask a clarifying question or two.

1. I can leave the PC in ad-hoc mode and connect to the Mini. Would the Mini need to be in ad-hoc mode too? (I think it might).

2. Could I just put a bluetooth dongle on the PC and make the connection that way? The Mini has bluetooth built in.

I thought about a KVM but USB KVM's are like $70 at the local Microcenter! I'd rather buy a wireless router and set up a mobile hot spot for that kind of cash.

Bugbyte · 08-11-2005, 06:54 PM

Getting very close now. I installed the P1900 PSU into the dash this evening. A couple of screws and it's solid. I also got some 8 gauge wire from Home Depot to supply it. I may have to solder it with my charcoal lighter. My 35 watt soldering iron ain't gonna cut it.

I also caulked the gaps in the dock with silicone last night. Seemed to work but we'll see, won't we?

After that, the only thing left will be to dig out the VGA cable to the Xenarc from the center console. I'll need to install a powered hub but that can wait, actually. I've got an unpowered one I can use temporarily.

Lots of family activities and my wife has the downstairs hallway all prepared for painting this weekend so I may not make it but I'll try to steal a few minutes here and there.

[Edit] BTW, just a little plug for the P1900. On the way out of my workshop to put it in the car I dropped it from waist high onto a concrete floor. After a few choice words, I hooked it up to the DC power supply and the LED lit up, fan came on, and it appeared to work normally. I say appeared because I can't actually test the Mini right now with the dock in the car. But I think it's okay.

replicant · 08-11-2005, 07:49 PM

Looking great bugbyte.. can't wait to see the finished INSTALLED and WORKING product

I know you can't wait either

Bugbyte · 08-14-2005, 11:44 PM

You know it! Unfortunately, due to actual life events I was DENIED the pleasure of getting the install up and running.

I did, however, manage to sneak a little bit of time in and have now run the power from the battery on an 8 AWG wire to inside the dash where I've fused it and connected it to the power supply of the P1900.

I still need to put connectors on the secondary output so that my screen is finally powered by regulated power, but that can wait as long as I remember to insulate the connectors before starting it up.

I was ready to fire this baby up but hadn't had time to do two very important things. First, CHECK EVERY FREAKING WIRE TO MAKE SURE I DON'T SHORT OUT THE COMPUTER BY ACCIDENT. Most often in the past, the last 10 yards is where I lose the game. I get excited and hurry the last couple of steps and fry something due to stupidity.

Not this time. It's already been a complex install and if it fails (which it very well could), I want it to be for a reason other than stupidity.

Tomorrow after work I will check the wiring to ensure that it is properly grounded, the switched power is working right, and the +12v from the battery works. If there are no problems and there is enough time, I'll dig the VGA connector out of the center console, connect it to the screen, dock the Mini and try to fire up the system for the first time.

Did I mention it's hot as a ****** out there? I got no garage.

thecolor · 08-15-2005, 09:54 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by Bugbyte

I'm not too versed with all this wireless connection stuff so let me ask a clarifying question or two.

1. I can leave the PC in ad-hoc mode and connect to the Mini. Would the Mini need to be in ad-hoc mode too? (I think it might).

2. Could I just put a bluetooth dongle on the PC and make the connection that way? The Mini has bluetooth built in.

I thought about a KVM but USB KVM's are like $70 at the local Microcenter! I'd rather buy a wireless router and set up a mobile hot spot for that kind of cash.

You can leave it in AdHoc mode, but yes, both machines will need to be in that mode to server each other. Bluetooth is nice, but restricted to the machines that have them.

And they have to be set up (as most use them securely (which generally requires not only passwords, but software and in many cases for sharing iNet, an accessible mRouter (software) on the machine you are sharing from.

You might be able to find a cheaper KVM, and can get a cheap usb to serial converter for the Mac to use the old style keyboards. Or just get a Bluetooth keyboard and share it that way.

As for the wireless router, I agree, that would be the smartest way to go easiest and nicer for sharing with others around you.

With the router you can pick up on more places, share from more places, and don't need the software generally, as it's already in the machine. Just need a card, which many people already have.

Hope that helps.

Bugbyte · 08-15-2005, 11:15 PM

Success! Today I managed to double check all wiring, connect the P1900 power supply, dock the Mini and start the system! As an added bonus, my Griffin Powermate arrived today (thanks to ChaCha for quick shipping and a product in great shape). In addition, I connected the Xenarc to the P1900 so I'm now getting the extra protection of regulated power to the screen.

Here's a picture of how I wired the 8 AWG cable into the battery:

You can't tell from the photo but there's no room to connect it on the other side of the 50 amp fusible link but approxmately 3 feet down that wire is a 15 amp fuse, so I'm okay. The other thing you can see in that photo if you look closely is a brown 14 gauge wire that runs to my original car PC, the Epia M10000 in the back of the car. It's still functional.

The moment of truth came when I went to dock the Mini in the dash fully assembled for the first time. Would it fit? How hard is it to dock? Will everything line up? I'm pleased to say that it turned out to be pretty straightforward. In fact, I expected to have to jockey it around a little bit to make it work. Not the case. It slips in well and then you just push firmly to seat everything.

Here it is in the dock started up for the first time:

You can see that the power LED is on just below the docking/undocking handle inside the yellow circle.

It sits reasonably far back in the dash and I tried a test fit of the head unit radio bezel to see what that would look like. Here it is:

Now, the bad news is I ran out of daylight and didn't have a chance to dig the VGA connector out of the center console so I haven't tested whether the video is working or not! Considering the crazy quilt home made VGA connector I built, it's anybody's guess whether that thing is still working or not.

Nevertheless, even if that doesn't work, I can fix it. It was pretty exciting to turn the key and hear the "bong!" as the Mini booted. When I turned the key off, it went into sleep mode and is currently spending the night with the power LED pulsing slowly on and off as a test to see if it sucks the juice from my battery.

If I get a chance tomorrow I'll hook up the screen and post pics of the actual system in full operation.

shizzle · 08-15-2005, 11:19 PM

Congrats!

I can't imagine the satisfaction you must be feeling.

Bugbyte · 08-16-2005, 10:56 PM

Dug out the VGA cable from the console this evening and managed to fish it through the dash and connect it to the dock. Turned the key to wake up the Mini and got....AAAH! Checkerboard pattern!

About 3 seconds later the Mini screen appeared and it was complaining that I hadn't attached a keyboard to it. SUCCESS!

I guess it's official now. WOOT!

And just in time for the Saturday car PC meet! I guess I can begin working on upgrading the capabilities of the system one at a time now.

[End worklog]

Mac Mini 1.42
Bluetooth
Wireless
256mb memory
40 gb HDD
DVD-ROM drive
P1900 power supply
Xenarc 8" screen

--------------------
Still installed and functional in the car:

Epia M10000 512mb memory
Wireless
GPS
60 gb HDD
XM Direct
Wireless Gyration keyboard/mouse

turbocad6 · 08-16-2005, 11:05 PM

awsome!.... I was just checking out your install of the atari 800 in that old shelby from the 80's.... nice stuff man.... good luck with it...

NeckPayne · 08-17-2005, 09:56 PM

Sweet dude! All I can say!

Bugbyte · 08-19-2005, 11:25 AM

A couple shots of the system in operation as I close this log out. I'm in that "in between" of having the system working but the car is a mess because not everything is how I want it yet.

Things that are better about my new system:

1. I now have a CD-ROM and DVD drive both in the car and that work properly. Despite purchasing TWO aftermarket CD and later CD/DVD drives on my PC, only the CD drive ever worked and only after requiring 4-5 minutes for some kind of weird time-out of the USB bus that effectively locked the file system during that time.

2. Near instant wake time. About 5 seconds from sleep to music. It's not like I couldn't have done this with the Epia board but it wouldn't always wake up the USB peripherals properly.

3. Music playback sounds better than the Epia and doesn't skip like my old system used to. The former system would briefly interrupt mp3 playback every 4-5 minutes for about a second. This was caused by using a PCI wireless card. I could have fixed it if I'd replaced the card with a USB dongle or maybe tracked down whether it was a driver problem or not.

Things that are worse about the new system:

1. I've gone backwards in capability, at least for some period of time. I don't have my XM connected. Solution will be to use JavaXM for the Mac. Just haven't tried it yet.

2. I cannot control my screen mechanism from the Mac, requiring me to open and close it manually. Solution is to complete my Basic STAMP II circuit that controls the mechanism. I have a prototype and need to finish it so I have push button open/close control.

3. No front end with anywhere near comparable capabilities to FP or CF or RR. Solution will be to help code one, dammit.

4. No GPS. I haven't tried Route 66 for the Mac but already know that it isn't as good as PC programs. Solution will be to try using VNC to connect to the still installed PC and see if I can share the GPS solution via the wireless network. Otherwise, get a KVM switch. Hoped for solution is release this Fall of "Navigator" for the Mac, if it isn't vaporware.

5. No GPS tracking, a' la GPSsecure, XBrady's application. Solution may be to write one or continue to use VNC for it. I've found a GPS driver that supposedly works with my GPS on the Mac but haven't tried connecting it.

6. Software compatibility with rest of car PC community. Again, I still have my PC installed so I'm not totally lost but I want to focus on the Mac side of things. So far configuration and setup has been easier than on the PC but one could easily argue that there's less to set up.

In the end, having access to three operating systems (BSD Unix, Mac OSX, Windows XP) gives me greater flexibility but can also complicate the situation. I increasingly find that each operating system does some things better than the other but none do them all decisively better.

Initial System capabilities:
-Touchscreen control
-MP3/iTunes playback
-DVD
-Griffin Powermate control

Here's the desktop running 800X600 on my Xenarc touchscreen. Haven't picked an appropriate picture for it yet.

iTunes running on the system. This is a vast improvement over my old system since the PC front ends don't play iTunes files purchased from the iTunes music store. Now I can do that both from iTunes itself but also from my home-grown front end software, Harmony.

Fullscreen visualization running on iTunes. The frame rate is 30fps and it's silky smooth. Not bad for a computer with only 256mb in it.

Bugbyte · 08-19-2005, 10:49 PM

Well, I brought the old Epia M10000 car PC inside tonight to see if I could figure out how to configure VNC between it and my home Mac. Turns out it was a *snap*!

Launch VNC server on the PC, get I.P. address, launch VNC viewer on the Mac and type in address. BAM! The PC desktop appeared and I launched the GPS software. It showed up on the desktop. The whole connection was between the wireless card in the PC and my wireless router on my home PC.

Refresh times were about 2 seconds when it had to redraw the entire screen for zoom in/outs. The mouse lagged just a bit when controlling it from the Mac, but absolutely usable.

I'm going to figure out if this thing can survive hibernation and such as I could leave the PC on but run it essentially headless and send the data to the Mac Mini.

Here's a screenshot of it running on my home Mac with iTunes in the background.