02 VW Golf TDI 7" Eee PC Budget Build

**rdholtz** · 11-18-2009, 04:21 AM

Yep, I think you're on to something here. Nice job on the switch, too.

**firstorbit84** · 11-18-2009, 08:01 AM

Thanks....

Yeah, I don't really see too many other builds on here with the same degree of functionality, compactness, and budget combined. It seems like people will often sacrifice one of those traits in exchange for the other two...

Its similar to the saying in the automotive performance tuning community: "Choose two: low-cost, high-performance, or durability."

**rdholtz** · 11-18-2009, 09:52 AM

Originally Posted by firstorbit84

. . . Its similar to the saying in the automotive performance tuning community: "Choose two: low-cost, high-performance, or durability."

Or the engineering community: "Choose any two: good, fast, cheap."

My other favorite quote from my hot-rodding days:
Question: "How fast can I make it go?"
Answers: "How much money you got?" or "As fast as you can afford."

**Scrambles** · 11-18-2009, 11:30 AM

Bump for Engineers!

**firstorbit84** · 11-21-2009, 05:29 PM

Progress:

Today I soldered up the extension wires from the car power adapters for the Eee charger and the adjustable voltage converter for the fan:

I found that a Dewalt 12V drill battery makes a good power source for testing low amperage 12v devices:

I also trimmed the LCD front and back panels to fit the PAC IR-X eye, which is going to be a ****** and a half to put in unless I take the PAC-IR out of the car. However, I may end up doing that.

I also put connectors on the ends of the wires for the extended power switch, and cut the LCD back panel for the touchscreen wires to go through. So it looks like I'll be assembling it all onto the radio cage tonight for a final fitment, and if everything looks good then it should be going in tomorrow!

Here's all the connections that will have to be made, once it's in or as it's going in:
- Mic wire for Parrot
- Power converter for fan
- Power converter for Eee
- Audio output from Eee to ground loop isolator to aux in
- USB GPS
- USB Hub
- USB Bluetooth
- PAC IR-X
- Extended power switch

I'm also going to have to remember to put the SD card and laptop battery back in before it goes in, as well as tape up the extended power switch connectors and audio connections.....

**firstorbit84** · 11-22-2009, 10:28 PM

Whew!!! Today was THE DAY, I'm all done...

I ended last night with some soldering of connectors and also attaching the wifi antenna wires to a little external wifi antenna I had laying around in hopes of picking up my home network from the parking lot:

Then I was going to pick up a couple of fuse holders, but to cut down on under-dash clutter I ended up going with a 30A 6-fuse block and an assortment of low amperage fuses, plus some female quick disconnects for about $17. I'm currently using 4 of the 6 empty slots, which leaves me two for future expansion:

Then I began the full test fitment on the bench before the install. First, after reattaching the Eee mobo to the radio cage, I put the LCD back panel onto the radio cage with the microphones in place for test fitment, and cut a notch for the PAC IR-X to infrared eye to come through.

Then, I seriously struggled with getting the front LCD bezel to fit with the touchscreen panel in place. Usually, when people add a touch panel overlay to their Eee's it causes the LCD bezel to bulge a little bit but there are enough outer clips to hold it in place. However, with most of my clips cut off I had to resort to holding the touch screen overlay on to the lcd with electrical tape, and holding the lcd bezel on to the back bezel with mounting tape and velcro...

the end result left me with a very slight gap around the edge, but it was the best I could do without taking everything back apart and dremeling down the back panel and the radio cage more.

Then I fired it up and had to go into the bios to turn the camera's internal USB port back on to run the touchscreen, which had somehow turned itself off... but everything seemed to be working well, and I got pretty good wifi reception with my antenna mod.

Then came the install. I had to begin by taking out the glovebox and radio again, and running all of the pre-requisite wires for the computer, which I mentioned earlier. Once all of the supporting wires for the Eee were in place, I slid the radio cage right in without any drama.

At this point, you can see that there was a spaghetti-like mess of wires to hide. I mounted the Parrot controller box to the right of the glove box in the cavity there, as suggested by a MkV GTI owner on his how-to. I also used the Dremel to cut into the plastic to the right of the radio cage to fit the usb cables for the 4 port hub and the GPS... I was going to do the same to the left side to fit the bluetooth adapter in there, but it was too tight, so I decided against it. I'll be using the parrot for calling, and if I want to use the bluetooth for internet tethering I can always plug the bluetooth dongle into the USB hub in the glovebox.

I was going to put the bluetooth dongle on the internal usb hub, but I decided not to plug anything else but the touchscreen into internal USB hub because these cheap hubs are not known for their reliability, and the touchscreen uses the same amperage as the camera (250ma) and the internal usb port has no current overdraw protection....

Then, I had to wire up all of the power and grounds and finally, fire it up!

Glovebox:

I worked on it for at least 8 hours today; 4 hours on the car fitment alone. I definitely put in more than 30 hours total on the build and my total cost was just under $450...

I'm very happy with the way it came out, and now I've just got to get all my media uploaded, as well as play with settings and what not.

Sorry for the crappy cell phone pics tonight. I'll get some better ones up soon, update the first page post and then request that it be moved to the show-off your project forum...

Time for a

**firstorbit84** · 11-25-2009, 07:58 PM

still don't have the clear pics up but i've run into several issues (listed in order of seriousness):

1. the Parrot Mic behind the Eee's speaker grille is making me sound too muffled to callers. I must move it (probably to the steering column)

2. after several hibernate/wake from hibernate my GPS is no longer recognized by iguidance or GPSinfo and I must restart the computer for it to become recognized again.

3. centrafuse crashes sometimes when running the visualizations (particularly in fullscreen mode when the song changes)

any thoughts on these issues?!? maybe Devcon for the GPS issue?

**mkiv18t** · 11-26-2009, 12:51 AM

I just joined the forum to thank you for everything you have posted. I picked up a eee pc 900 for the very same reason. I hope to proceed with these plans within the next 2 weeks. I have questions of course like...

1. Is the round via a headphone like auxiliary plug?
2. Any more specifics on how you wired the power for the laptop and fan?
3. Where did you mount the backup camera, and if the cable for it was extended, how did you go about doing this?

Awesome job man, your setup is amazing. Best part is not having to try to extend the lvds cables. That seemed like the biggest obstacle when I initially researched this project.
Please don't be afraid to do some youtube videos

**firstorbit84** · 11-26-2009, 01:28 PM

Originally Posted by mkiv18t

I just joined the forum to thank you for everything you have posted. I picked up a eee pc 900 for the very same reason. I hope to proceed with these plans within the next 2 weeks. I have questions of course like...

you're welcome. glad i could help to inspire you.

i have a 900 as well and the 16GB SSD in it is MUCH slower than the 4GB SSD in my 701. so, if you have the 900 with both the slow 8GB or 16GB SSD and the faster 4GB SSD, make sure you install your operating system and FE software on the 4GB SSD. i discussed this with another member who has a VW SUV with a 900 in the glovebox in some of the earlier posts of this thread.

also, the 900's 9" screen is quite a bit larger than the 7" of the 701... so fitment may be an issue. definitely be prepared to ditch your cupholders, and think about how you will attach the outer lcd bezel once you've cut most of the clips off. in addition, you'll probably want to get an exact measurement of the touchscreen overlay panel to make sure that it will squeeze in there.... before i put it into my car, i really didn't think the 7" screen was that large, but now that its in there, it seems huge.

1. Is the round via a headphone like auxiliary plug?

not sure exatly what you mean, but if you're asking how I have my sound hooked up, then it goes like this:
1/8" mini jack connected to the headphone output of the Eee, which then goes to a ground loop isolator via RCA L/R plugs in order to eliminate any buzzing from the alternator or engine while the computer is plugged in, back to a mini-jack which is connected to the front of the head unit's aux input through a right-angle adapter.

2. Any more specifics on how you wired the power for the laptop and fan?

sure: if you look at the early posts of this thread i mentioned a terminal under the fuse box called 75x with a yellow/black wired going to it. this is your switched ignition-on +12V source that I used for all of my accessories. i basically ran a wire with a ring connector from this terminal to the input terminal for a 6-fuse accessory block that i picked up at advance auto for about $8. i mounted that with zip ties to the fuse block bracket. then i used 4 out of the 6 available fuse openings to properly connect my accessories: the fan, eee charger, PAC IR-X infrared repeater, and my boost gauge light.

the laptop and fan dc converters started out as car chargers that plug into the cigarette lighter. the one for the fan was a universal cell phone charger with adjustable voltage that i had laying around the house. you could use any old car cell phone charger if you'd like, and it will run the fan a little slower and quieter than at full voltage. i opened them up and removed the built-in fuses and clipped off the wires connecting to the pieces of metal that contact the cigarette lighter. then i soldered on extensions to those wires and close the plastic housings back up. then i wired the positive side to the fuse block via a female spade connector, groudned the negative, and zip tied them up out of the way underneath the driver's side dash. make sure to read the amperage off of the fuses that you removed and use a similar one in the fuse block. i'm using a 4A fuse for the Eee charger, and a 1A fuse for the fan.

3. Where did you mount the backup camera, and if the cable for it was extended, how did you go about doing this?

i actually haven't mounted/integrated this yet for several reasons:

1. i'd have to make a custom waterproof housing and extend the usb cable.
2. i don't think it will function well at night, and i'd rather wait and save for a night-vision camera, which will also most likely require a usb video capture card because most of the night vision cameras are RCA and not USB.
3. i've never hit anything backing up so i don't think i really need it anyway. (knock on wood)
4. my diesel is chip-tuned with larger fuel injectors and puts out a good amount of soot at full throttle which means that after a week or so the camera will probably be blacked out anyway.
5. the internal usb port that runs the camera is only meant to have a 250mA draw from the camera and it has no overdraw protection. the touchscreen draws 250mA. people on the Eee forums recommend taking power for this port from either another (external) usb port or the mini-pci express port if you're going to use it for more than just the touchscreen.
6. i had a problem in centrafuse with the camera turning on everytime i resumed from hibernate. it would run in the background and take up system resources until i went into the camera screen and then back out. i posted a thread about it in the bug report section of the flux media forum and they said that this problem was fixed in CF3.

Awesome job man, your setup is amazing. Best part is not having to try to extend the lvds cables. That seemed like the biggest obstacle when I initially researched this project.
Please don't be afraid to do some youtube videos

thanks again! yeah, extending the lvds cables would have been a TON of extra work. then I still would have had to find a good place to mount the Eee.... good luck with your build, and let me know if you have any other questions!