Thursday May 7th:
Two different orders arrived today. The bluetooth dongle and the MP3Car.com order. The photos on their store do not do these parts justice. It was like Christmas
The Blue LED Rocker. It is in the off position in this photo. On the back it has connections for Ground, Accessory, and 12V Positive. The gold colored connection is the ground, the middle connection is the accessory, and the final connection is for the 12V Positive. I did not notice the etchings at first when I was looking at the rocker.
The Raptor battery clamps are pretty slick, literally. I am afraid that the battery cable will eventually come loose out of the 4 Gauge connection. This could be my battery cables, but it just felt like the positive cables did not want to stay. The negative ones had no problems with these clamps. I feel like if it would have been a square hole instead of round they might have held in place better, I'm not positive on that though. You can see the 0, 4, and 2x8 Gauge connections. The screws on the top and the sides have an alan wrench style screw in them that tighten down.
I thought I ordered two distribution blocks, but when I looked back on my order I only had one. When I went back to the MP3Car.com store I found that they were out of stock.D'ah well, I set auto notification and when it comes back in stock I'll get one. You can see the 4 Gauge in and the 4x8 Gauge out connections on it.
The Bluetooth Dongle and the Momentary Switch are about the same size. I plugged the dongle into my desktop computer and Windows installed the drivers for it automatically. Pretty slick. I synced my phone and transferred a file without issue. I'm not 100% sure on what I'm going to use the momentary switch for, but my initial thought is a reset button hidden somewhere up front. That way if the PC locks I can hit the button, force the computer to reboot and continue on my way. That way I wouldn't be forced into a pull over, turn off car and turn back on to reboot.
And the piece de la resistance...the M4-ATX. My little DC-DC Power Supply. I'm not 100% sure how I'm going to mount this in the Thin Client JUST yet, my initial idea is a plexi glass base with holes zip tied up into the roof against the slits. Kind of like how I originally had the hard drive mounted. I imagine this would hold it pretty well, but I just have to make sure all the wiring will fit that way too. In these pictures you can see the connections for the power in, and the connections for the power out. As well the jumpers (USB/Anti Thump/Motherboard Power) and dip switches (Power settings).
So being the excited kid I am I couldn't wait to get home and try and power this bad boy up with my desktop power supply. I wired the molex into the switch (Ground and 12V Positive), and the switch into the M4 (Ground, Accessory, 12V Positive). I shorted the pins on the ATX Power connection, I double checked my connections and threw the switches. First the PSU then the rocker. Watching for the CPU fan to take off. It never did. The blue LED came on the rocker, and a light blinks on the M4-ATX. Man was I disappointed. I checked my wiring, redid the connections, tried again. No dice. By this time it was pretty late. I didn't even get a chance to get the new clamps on. I cleaned up and called it quits for the night.
Punky, I did get those times for you, but I didn't have a chance to get all that uploaded. After uploading these photos Flickr is complainin' about a 200 photo limit (I'm at 182 with the pictures from the 8th). I'll get them for you though either tonight or tomorrow morning.
Friday May 8th:
Not much happened today. Got the new clamps put on. They're pretty slick, literally - the cables don't hold too well in them (on the positive connection). It could be just my battery cables. I'm not sure. At any rate they look nice, I had to use the 4 gauge instead of the 0 gauge connection for my cables. This means either I'll have to use 8 gauge wire (which would be okay) or I'd need to have 0 gauge wire ran to the battery.
Not sure what you mean the positive cable doesn't hold to well. The set screw should be holding it.
If not solder the braids so that they do not crush. It will act like solid core so you can really put the screws to it.
Again. Awesome pics. My battery posts look like CR a P! (I'm So embarrased)
My "test" was a slight tug on the cables. If I give it a pull on the negative one, no slippage. If I give it a pull on the positive one, it slides a bit.
The battery was new in February, and so that helps. However, the clamps that were on there before are pretty ugly.
Cable is pulling from the clamp.... or is the clamp turning on the post?
Cable from the clamp. The clamp is holding tight on the post.
Just not catching why the set screw is not holding....
Hey another idea. Solder can be a pain. Remove the cable from the clamp and insert (drive) a piece of solid core wire (10-14 guage) up the center of the battery cable. The increased diameter should help this cable tighten up with no loss of conductivity.
Saturday May 9th:
So tonight I gave up. I wired the rocker into the M4 every way I could imagine. Nothing was working. So I started posting asking for help.
The D2 light on the M4-ATX was blinking when I had the power on, but I couldn't find ANY reference to that little LED. Luckily blk02si had the answer. Enforcer recommended checking the polarity on the connection for the motherboard on/off signal. Thinking something had killed the motherboard, I removed the M4 from the equation, but the Zotac motherboard without M4 powered on just fine.
At this point I started to think the problem was with the little Rosewill power supply I was using. Again, blk02si had the answer - with only 15AMP on the 12Volt I was not getting enough power to the M4 to pass onto the Zotac. I would need a beefier power supply. Not wanting to rip apart my computer, I quick looked up my power supply's specs on Newegg (where I purchased it from). Looks like it pushes out 52AMP on the 12V. I'll have to rip that PSU outta there and throw it on the bench. Just not right now
I also took a trip out to the car with my little aux cable for the stereo. I pulled out the stereo, plugged in the aux cable, fed it down behind the environmental controls and into the hole where the Thin Client will sit. To test I threw the laptop on it and fired up Hulu and some music. Sounded pretty decent in the car. Should work just fine...nice and easy.
I test fit the rocker in the place of the cig lighter - it fits but doesn't hold itself in place. I'll have to do a little work to make it sit pretty, but I think the placement will be nice.
I popped the hood and tried to find a place I could run cables through, that was already drilled. I THINK I found one, but I'm going to see if I can test fish a line through - if I can I'll do some more testing and see if it's big enough to fit at least 8 gauge through.
Oh almost forgot.
I ordered a nice slot load DVD drive, a shorter SATA cable (6" vs 18"), a couple male molex cables, and my touchscreen. All should be here by end of the week!
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