Thread: 2007 Mini Cooper Project

Check the thread of my newbie quick and dirty fabrication process for more pictures and details. It's a rough imitation of the masters like Turbocad and Nexson. I'm still shocked that everything fit in that crammed space.

I've removed the screen from the laptop. What is left dangling in the picture is the wifi antenna. It fits perfectly in my glovebox. It's like a computer disguised as a keyboard/trackpad. I will need a right-angle vga adapter, though.



I plan to solder W3bMa5t3r's auto-on module to the power switch. Never soldered before, and I'm scared.

Originally Posted by Injector

quick tip use a low wattage soldering iron, you don't want to burn the board, place the wire you want to solder ontop of the board, place the iron ontop of the wire, you basically want the heat to flow down the wire to heat up the existing flux on the board, if you're not confortable doing this, you can use hot glue.

thanks for the tips! using the existing flux sounds like something i'm comfortable doing. i had nightmare, of spilling solder everywhere like the Terminator. what's low wattage? 15W? 30W? Will this battery powered device work? I got it a while ago for another project but never used it.

For a preview, here's a pic with my modded lidless eee pc in the glovebox. It's not secured yet and can't quite fit-in until I get a right-angle VGA adapter. The glovebox light is handy to see the keyboard. I dremeled the back left bottom corner of my glovebox to pass the cables. There's also a convenient cool air vent in the glovebox meant for drinks but will help chill my eee pc.



I've been playing around with windows xp, roadrunner, and various skins. Haven't owned a pc for over 5 years, and I'm not enjoying the software as much as the hardware install.

A few thoughts in retrospect, I should have gotten the Asus 900HA 160gb. It's cheaper at $329 (Amazon). I would have saved over a $100 and it would have fit better in my glovebox. I don't need built-in bluetooth, and the smaller screen wouldn't matter since I removed it anyway.

For now, I'm cleaning up my mp3s and trying to get DigitalFx 4.0 tweaked properly.

I got DigitalFX 4.0 working pretty well with my embedded art MP3s fixed by Fixtunes. I needed to install a new version of Mp3Art.dll found in this thread. I put it in the roadrunner main directory, registered it, and put "X,Mp3Art" into the menu.skin file directly below the "INC,Plugins.txt" line.

I've not been able to get a response from W3bMa5t3r regarding his laptop auto power-on module. I couldn't wait, so I ordered this $10 528T Pulse Timer with SPDT Relay online. I already had a $9 RadioShack headphone in-line volume device that I rook apart. I'm going to solder the jack line to my laptop's power switch and connect the plug line to the 528T Timer SPDT Relay. Think it will work?

I soldered the headphone jack plug to the power switch. It wasn't pretty. I haven't had time to get a real soldering iron so I thought I'd give my never-used battery powered solder iron a try. It was too weak to properly tin and conduct heat through the wire like I saw in the youtube vids. It works for now. Kinda of magical starting the laptop via the headphone jack wires.