Thread: Scion xB '06, in-dash Atom 330, Lilliput 889GL; details, pictures, links. Index: pg 1

Originally Posted by HiJackZX1

OHH WOW, you have guts, lol. I tried the fan control on the mobo and just felt so uncomfortable. I dont think the fans draw that much power, do they? As far as quietness, it wont ever be quiet because you'll be doing something that is making noise. It could just be that the AMD was just retarded, but when I used the thermostate built in, the PC was always over heating. My rear hatch that I am building has huge fans, the opening is about as big as a compact disc.

Wait, wait -- these are the chassis fans I want to control, not the CPU and GPU fans. The mainboard fans blow all the time. These chassis fans are the fans that pull heated air out of the chassis and vent it into the dash. They're just not needed all the time, much as thehump says here:

Originally Posted by thehump

on my setup, currently i have no fans whatsoever. My case is vented enough that I think it should be OK and I havent experienced any overheating issues so far. My only concern is when it is cold outside and i blast the heat to warm up the air temperature inside the car... since my pc is located between two of the vents, it could cook the carputer (and at least warms it up currently).

Therefore, I have put some thought into this over the last few weeks and my plan is that if my carputer does overheat during winter when I am blasting the heat, I will add fans to the carputer case that are only activated when i blast the heat... this could easily be done with a simple relay and tapping the correct wire. The additional benefits to this setup is no extra drain on battery (i dont warm up the car without the engine running) as well as reduced/eliminated noise polution since I assume that the noise from carputer case fans would be drowned out by the car blower.

anyways, just an idea for you...

Sounds to me like we're headed in the same direction, except that I want to control mine thermostatically instead of with the heater control. My primary reason, though, isn't concern for the carPC's health, but rather for the charge on the auxiliary batteries; I don't want to use their power unnecessarily.

Originally Posted by rdholtz

Wait, wait -- these are the chassis fans I want to control, not the CPU and GPU fans. The mainboard fans blow all the time. These chassis fans are the fans that pull heated air out of the chassis and vent it into the dash. They're just not needed all the time, much as thehump says here:

I meant all fans in general. I keep forgetting though that you are using a INTEL ATOM board, so it cant really overheat that easily. The rear PC systems are all passive cooled and only one large fan cools all of them, but that because they are all INTEL ATOM based also, but the N270, not the dual core N330 like you have. My main PC though is going to be upgraded to a quad core, so now I am terrified to death of heat. With the AMD I was only slightly scared, lol.

Sounds to me like we're headed in the same direction, except that I want to control mine thermostatically instead of with the heater control. My primary reason, though, isn't concern for the carPC's health, but rather for the charge on the auxiliary batteries; I don't want to use their power unnecessarily.

I honestly don't think they will kill your batteries any faster. If I remember, you are using the smaller fans, the same type that is found on the processor? With my install running 8 of the standard sized case fans, it took about 45 minutes to kill the battery. That time should be way extended on your setup, like in the hours range. Now maybe I am missing something, but are you thermostat controlling them so they will cool the PC even if the car is not on? Like if it gets 100 degrees behind the dash, they kick in to help?

Originally Posted by HiJackZX1

I meant all fans in general. I keep forgetting though that you are using a INTEL ATOM board, so it cant really overheat that easily. The rear PC systems are all passive cooled and only one large fan cools all of them, but that because they are all INTEL ATOM based also, but the N270, not the dual core N330 like you have. My main PC though is going to be upgraded to a quad core, so now I am terrified to death of heat. With the AMD I was only slightly scared, lol.

I think that's a healthy fear. I suspect heat kills electronics as much or more than anything else. Electronics cooling is a place where it's hard to get to overkill. I'll take cooling way beyond what's necessary, rather than have just a bit too little. I like lots of cushion; where I have unknowns, I guess, but way up on the high side.

Originally Posted by HiJackZX1

I honestly don't think they will kill your batteries any faster. If I remember, you are using the smaller fans, the same type that is found on the processor? With my install running 8 of the standard sized case fans, it took about 45 minutes to kill the battery. That time should be way extended on your setup, like in the hours range.

The fans are small, but any energy use will run the batteries down faster. Fans convert power to airflow, and these fans are way larger than necessary on most days. I sized them for the hottest time I'd experienced living in Florida. For the trip to Michigan in winter, they were pretty much unnecessary. The dash got warm, but not hot.

Originally Posted by HiJackZX1

Now maybe I am missing something, but are you thermostat controlling them so they will cool the PC even if the car is not on? Like if it gets 100 degrees behind the dash, they kick in to help?

I don't have a thermostat, yet. At present, the fans are only cooling the chassis when the PC is on. If I choose to leave it on, even in cool weather, they're blowing air, whether that's necessary or not. My first thermostat will be the simple mechanical thermostatic control. That will let me try various settings to see if I can get it to just kick the fans on when it's really hot in the dash.

The downside of this particular unit is that the thermostat has no remote control, so it has to be in the dash where it's measuring the temperature, and that will make it more difficult to reach when I want to change the setting. I'll probably find a compromise location. I didn't mess with it much in Michigan because I was having fun with my family, and it was just too cold to play outside in the car. Now that I'm back in Atlanta, where I have proper tools, I'll get it installed.

Hide That WiFi Dongle

One thing I got done on the Christmas trip was to relocate the WiFi to a completely hidden place. I don't need the WiFi dongle anywhere but in the car -- both laptops have built-in WiFi -- so it was okay to conceal it. I had originally intended to put it in the rear driver's side window. Instead, I put it inside the windshield pillar cover on the driver's side. Reception seems to be good, and the cables and dongle are completely invisible.

Now, Where Can I Hide the Sprint Dongle?

Now I'd like to figure out a similarly good place for the Sprint stick. The trouble is, I need easy access to it, since I sometimes use it away from the car. I don't think I'd want to disassemble the windshield pillar every time I need to take the Sprint stick with me.

At the same time, I want the access point well concealed. I'm still planning a security system; its ability to notify me of a break-in will depend on Internet access. I don't want the bad guys to disable the connection easily, which they could do if they spotted the Sprint stick and pulled it out.

I've thought about locating it up where the original mirror was mounted, and Josh suggested locating it in the ceiling by the overhead light. While I think those spots still have some negative security or access issues, they're enough out of the normal eye-scan area that they might be good enough until I come up with something better -- or at least until I get a security system installed.

Window Location is Unnecessary

One thing I've learned from Josh's always-on connection is that the Sprint stick doesn't need to go in a window. He runs with his sitting on the floor in the back seat behind him, and his access is good -- no drops for hundreds of miles at a time. That surprised me at first, but then I realized that my cell phone still has a connection even while I drive with it in a holster on my belt, or down on the console. In either location, it's surrounded by sheet metal body panels, and it works just fine.

While I ponder my options, I'll leave the Sprint stick on the dash, plugged into the USB extension I set up as the original WiFi location.

OBD-II and a New Mirror

Oh, boy, it was a fun Christmas -- the techie presents were real grin-makers.

Josh gave me an absolutely amazing soldering station with a built in regulated power supply. I'd been thinking a good soldering system is something we'll need as we get into board soldering for the Arduino projects -- and maybe the RepRap or RepStrap project. But this beauty is absolutely beyond anything I'd imagined. I think we'll be spending a bunch of evenings hunkered down over the kitchen table, soldering, while the girls are off doing books or TV or whatever . . .

One of the things we've needed in the shop is a good set of taps and dies, in both inch and metric sizes, so I gave Josh a set. It's one of the things we should have bought a long time ago, and it fills in one of the gaps in our tooling.

In the carPC world, Josh gave me an ElmScan5, so my OnBoard Diagnostic information is soon going to be headed for the carPC. I'd been thinking I needed to pick a system, but he beat me to it.

Josh mentioned a while ago that he wanted a mirror for his car that has a compass and outside temperature readout, so I got him one of those. We'll pull the ceiling-mounted mirror out and use this windshield-mounted one.

If that kind of mirror interests you, look on eBay for "compass mirror"; the one I got was titled "Rear View Mirror Auto Dim Temp Compass Donnelly NEW OEM", and the vendor was "shameless500". It was a good transaction: fast shipping, good packaging, good communication, and good instructions included. I'd definitely buy from him again.

Delay of Game

We'd get right out and get our new toys installed, but we're finishing up the installation of the new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system at work, and our team has worked long days New Year's Day, Saturday and Sunday. Rollout is today. We're in pretty good shape, overall. There are still a few little bugs to squash, and a lot of new users to keep up with, so we'll really be cranking for a few more days.

Then we'll be able to get back to the carPCs and garage toys.

The Delay of Game May be Short

The first day of the ERP system rollout at work went very well. We're one day into it; although there have been a few bugs, it's definitely working for us. There are a few more things to polish as users get into it more deeply and we find little things we didn't think about in advance. Still, I don't think there will be a long list, because we got a lot of user input as we were planning the installation. Lucky for us, we're replacing a system that just plain sucked.

The underlying package we've installed is Microsoft GP10, and the interface for most users is SalesPad. The software star of the rollout has been SalesPad -- it's literally saved the GP installation from being abandoned. Much of the customizing was done by the SalesPad staff, and they're good to work with because they simply "get it". They build tools to make users' lives easier, and they understand how to treat their customers well. If your company is looking at GP and you have a sales team, you'll do yourselves a huge favor by looking at SalesPad, too.

We can see already that, between the two packages, we'll have a much better handle on day-to-day company performance, and an ability to slice and dice our corporate data to learn better ways to earn profits and help keep things operating smoothly.

I Need That for the Car

I expect the Elmscan5 will provide the same kind of diagnostic and monitoring capability, so I'm anxious to get it into the car. If this rollout keeps going like it has so far -- and like we expect it to -- we'll be back to a normal schedule, and that OBD installation could happen tonight.

Game Back On

The ERP installation is moving along well. There have been a few gliches, but there were no show-stoppers. I expect we'll tweak for a while, and polish, but the new system makes a huge difference.

The temperature in Atlanta has been below freezing since Christmas, so we'll have to take turns in the garage. Yesterday we saw ice that made it impossible to get to work. Now we're actively calculating what it will take to get the new basement-level garage space done.

I think we'll put one car in the garage today and work on it, then put the other in tonight. That will give us a warm space for the cars so we can install my new OBDII reader and Josh's new mirror today and Sunday.

Originally Posted by rdholtz

Game Back On

The ERP installation is moving along well. There have been a few gliches, but there were no show-stoppers. I expect we'll tweak for a while, and polish, but the new system makes a huge difference.

The temperature in Atlanta has been below freezing since Christmas, so we'll have to take turns in the garage. Yesterday we saw ice that made it impossible to get to work. Now we're actively calculating what it will take to get the new basement-level garage space done.

I think we'll put one car in the garage today and work on it, then put the other in tonight. That will give us a warm space for the cars so we can install my new OBDII reader and Josh's new mirror today and Sunday.

It has been cold in Miami too..... I actually like the cold, if its dry normal cold. Today it was cold and rainy and all the added moisture did havoc on my sensitive body. I had so many body aches. My two large dogs which are mixed with Labrador, normally love cold weather, but with the added water, they weren't happy so I had to bring them in the house.

Congrats on the install. I had a install for the last 2 weeks to replace a company that completely destroyed my phone system. The new people are much better. Word of advice. If HotWire Business Solutions ever asks you to switch, turn them away and lock the door. The company actually ruined my revenue for October because I couldn't get incoming calls from AT&T customers because they didn't port my numbers the correct way.

Lol no pity coming from me... At least for the cold part- the chronic illness part sucks. I did my audio stuff in an unheated garage, its 15F here in PA. Although I'm sure it could be worse!