Thread: 2005 Volkswagen GTI

Originally Posted by Zip-Lock

If the signal was balanced then wouldn't it have 3 wires per channel then? I'm confused with that one and asking around with that question trying to understand it better.

That's the thing, balanced audio wire has +,-, and shield (shield goes to ground, + and - both carry signal) right? So I'm not sure. What this thing is. Also, I thought "balanced" implied voltage swings around zero. From what I've read on vwvortex, we actually want a 6V injector since that would bring the - common up to 6V and the + line to 6V plus whatever the signal added.

Are you actually coming out for your NorCal mp3car event or just setting it up from there? Maybe we should hold a Monsoon owners working group to sit down, eat, drink and figure this out.

Originally Posted by kbyrd

Originally Posted by Zip-Lock

I think the pink thing just provides additional stability? It looks like you left the pink thing in yours, does it still fit into the Monsoon?

I haven't tried yet. My car is at the body shop (someone ran a red light), but I'll check when I get it back.

So, I just checked. That pink tab needed to be pushed in a bit. I compared to the original connector, it was pushed in so I did that to my new part. It fits in the monsoon perfectly.

Originally Posted by kbyrd

So, I just checked. That pink tab needed to be pushed in a bit. I compared to the original connector, it was pushed in so I did that to my new part. It fits in the monsoon perfectly.

YAY thats great to here, gona stop by the dealer over lunch and buy me some cables...

We really should make this (well not this entry but a "how to connect that crazy monsoon to your car PC") a FAQ. BugByte, you're FAQ master and fellow vw owner, how about it?

I got the 5V injector built "for real". I didn't take pictures, so WebDog is out of luck.

Here's the final description (maybe some pictures later):
- 1/8" audio jack with three conductors soldered on. I soldered a .047 microfarad capacitor in line with the common neagtive conductor. I wrapped all the capacitor/wire joint with a bit of electrical tape to keep the two capacitor leads apart, then wrapped all three wires with more tape (I don't have heat shrink) most of the way to the quick-connect ends. This whole thing is about three inches long. The soldering here turned out great. I thought I was a pro!

- On one half of a small board I soldered the voltage regulator (with heat sink ) down, soldering an input, output, and ground leads to the pins. Once again I crimped quick connects to the ends. The leads are short, the quick-connects ended up sticking off the board by about 1/2 inch, so the whole thing is about a 2-3" square.This is mounted with nylon standoffs right in front of my m1-atx. It'll draw power from my previously made molex->quick-connect harness. I soldered this like ***. It's a mess on the bottom but everything is electrically separated as well as mechanically secure.

So when I mount the PC in the car, I'll run a set of three wires from the 1/8 plug harness to the monsoon harness. I also run a single wire from the output of my 5V regulator to the common - input on the monsoon harness (my harness has two quick-connects in a Y for the common negative input, see pics above.

One thing that made this much easer to layout and think about is that a separated this circuit into two parts. The capacitor "input protection" part and regulator "5V injector" part. Two things made this work well:

- I made the capacitor a part of the 1/8" plug. I soldered it inline with the negative conductor close to the plug. Once there, you can wrap all three (L+, R+, and - with capacitor) leads up with tape or shrink. This separates the "audio source protection" part of the circuit and makes it a part of the 1/8" plug. With this done, all you have left to think about is a 5V regulator.

- I made a Y for the common ground input into the monsoon amp. That is, it takes two connectors. One is the common ground from the audio source (the 1/8" plug), the other is the 5V injector.

No testing yet. Got my new (replacement) LCD this week. Maybe I'll have time to test on Sunday.

First off, no pictures (yet). Sorry. The only thing pic I would add would be a shot of the LCD installed in my dash.

After my troubles with getting an LCD mounted in the TMZ bezel without breaking it. I bought a Lilliput locally from www.case-mod.com. When you order from their website, they give you the option to pick it up at there store in San Jose. I did that last night, tested the screen, took it apart to mount it in my sawed-off tmz bezel, and solder some power wires on it. I had planned to just plug in a spare DC power plug I had already soldered onto some wires running to my dash from my PSU. But, the stock power plug does NOT fit on the LCD when it's in the TMZ chassis. So, more soldering practice for me. I did a good job, followed the instructions at: http://www.mechatroniks.com/wrx/lili-diy.html

In any case, the LCD is mounted in my dash, and everything is hooked up and working. The mounting is a hack. It's not secured but wedged in with packing foam. I'll take pics this weekend.

Version 0.9 is alive!

Great install,

I've also an mkIV Golf but I've run the cables through the center console, see link below.

LCD pics



That's the Mechatroniks WRX bezel (you can buy it at the mp3car.com store). I cut off the back couple of inches, mounted the screen upside down and wedged the whole thing in. Theres a plastic tab on the back of the radio cage, the "bottom" of the TMZ chassis is wedged over it. It's been "installed" almost three weeks and it doesn't move. Notice the gaps on all around. I think the whole thing looks like ***. But, having the pc running is so much better than not. I'm really waiting on R32 JUhl's piece.

On a different note: I've decided to take a calculated risk and use S3 standby (suspend to RAM) pretty much all the time. I know there's danger of battery drain and all that. But I did some testing (see this thread for the complete story).

(These numbers may not apply to anyone else, YMMV)
- My VW has a 60 amp hour battery
- With the PC in suspend (I turned off as much as I could in the BIOS), the whole car is drawing about 180 milliamps. I measured at the battery.
- Forgetting the reality of a lead acid battery, that gives me about 13 days of time before I completely discharge my battery.

Now back to reality. I can do no more than half that with really damaging my battery, and the M1-ATX will cut out when the battery hits 11V anyway. So, I feel a safe guestimate is 4 days. I drive the car daily. Sometimes not at all on the weekends. I'm going to install a kill switch that cuts power to the M1-ATX. I'll flip it when I'm leaving the car for more than a day. Resume from standby rocks.

Finally, I installed a Buffalo PCI wifi card. It's not the best, but it's really low profile and it has an external antenna connector. The real solution is a USB or ethernet client like a Engenius CB3 (200mW transmit power). Those take external 12V of power, so it would complicate my setup a bit. But I need an excuse to learn about wiring relays anyway. So I might do that. In the meantime, I'm getting a file sync proccess in place, and shaking out bugs in Centrafuse 1.5.

The m1-atx has flashable firmware. Maybe you could hack that to get it to shutdown at around 11.5v, so that a kill switch would not be necessary at all

Originally Posted by 0l33l

The m1-atx has flashable firmware. Maybe you could hack that to get it to shutdown at around 11.5v, so that a kill switch would not be necessary at all

Damn you putting ideas in my head! I'm under the impression that 11v is safe. Safe = I could still start my car and my battery isn't totally worthless.