Thread: 1998 Olds Intrigue CarPC

This build log is to log my progress building a car PC for my Olds Intrigue.

I am currently a software engineering student and to Graduate you must have a Project you can demonstrate. At the moment I am in the beginning stages of building a system for my car to end up as this demonstration project. I am also considering tacking on another degree which will have me building devices with Micro Processors and interfacing them into cool hardware projects.

My intent with this car is to first build a PC based carputer to test out the hardware I have under the intended environment. Once I have accomplished this and understand how it works I plan to try to rebuild the build with a much less powerful ARM based computer running Linux and eventually Android making use of my Micro Processor knowledge to build new devices to work with the ARM based computer.

I will start a new build log for my other vehicle once I have accomplished this goal.

The hardware I have to start this project to date includes:
M350 Case
GA-Z77N-WIFI
i3-55watt processor with Intel 4000 Graphics dual core and over 3ghz speed.
16gig ddr1600 ram
M3-ATX PSU
Roswill low profile fan (Designed for 65 watt CPUs)
Patriot Pyro 120G SSD

6.95" Multi Touch screen with eGalax 4 wire USB controller.
Directed HD radio DMHD1000
BU-353S4 GPS
OBDLink SX ODBII to USB cable

At this time I am expecting to make full use of Open Mobile as my FE.
Since I am a programmer at this point working a full time job and going to school full time I am taking this route to get everything figured out.
I have some wild ideas and hope to incorporate most of them and working with OM I hope to accomplish this goal.

Once I have this working I will be looking to get OM running on my ARM freescale based Quad Processor which my understanding as of November of last year was the most powerful ARM available. This of course means running under Linux first. Eventually with this unit I may decide to get OM working with Android if there is an interest once I understand how everything works well enough to be able to do so. It may also mean I end up helping the team build better interfaces where possible so that it works smoothly with both Windows and Linux and go from there.

The accessories I mentioned I choose those because they are commonly used. When I start tinkering around with the ARM board I may start looking to build some of my own hardware or making use of things like the monkeyboard.

With the touch screen eGalax drivers unfortunately are not detected as a touch display so I can not use Win8 with this build in its current condition until I can get this screen recognized as a touch device or get a different screen. So I will be using Win7 for my build.

I chose this motherboard because of the features it has, plus it is up to date for the latest features.
It has the latest Intel Mini PCIe wireless card. This card has both the latest WiFi (Including Intel's wireless Video broadcasting called Widi) and Blue Tooth 4.0. Not sure yet that I will use the WiDi option or make use of the full 4.0 blue tooth but it is nice that it is there for future expansion. It can run dual displays right from the onboard video and comes with 2 HDMI ports along with its VGA port.
It comes with two WiFi high gain antennae which hopefully will allow good reception since I will try to link it to my home server when I am home for updates and other "interesting" options.
I put 16 gig on the board because it was under $100. Which allowed me to set 512meg of ram for the video without hesitation.

Currently I have installed Windows 7 onto this board using a standard power supply and will be installing the M3-ATX after I get some adapters and cabling that I am waiting on. I plan to take this standard power supply I have and make an adapter that will allow me to use it to power this PC in the house for bench testing prior to installing in my car.

I am currently still trying to decide the best location to mount this PC. I am thinking under the passenger seat is a decent place and should be close to all of the other stuff I need. I have a simple factory radio installed in this car which will be replaced. I plan to install a dash cam in this car and track the GPS and ODBII information with this car as well for "Incident reporting" just in case. (This data will be uploaded automatically to my home server when the WiFi is in range.)

So there is the start to my system. I hope to have the case finished up in the next couple days and have the latest build of OM put on this for testing. However before I will be allowed to use this in the car I have to be able to replace the radio with this unit. (It is my car but my girlfriend is the sole person using it for now. )

I believe I will need to pick up an FM antennae to try using it with the DEI radio mentioned above to make sure it works.

I am not sure what the best route to get amplification to the factory speakers is but I am leaning towards the quad amplifier listed in the MP3 store and just hooking them to the stereo out on the computer. I am unsure if it needs regulated power or not though since it doesn't really say in the instruction sheet that is shown online. Maybe I will just pick up a cheap 4 channel amplifier somewhere. I HAVE an amplifier I could use but I would probably end up mounting it in the trunk.