Wow. Tight! I thought I was cool because I ran my Laptop (w/ winamp) through my IPOD jack. Game over dude, lol! I like computers too and I would love to do this one day. I have ALOT of old comp stuff (my mom is a comp programmer) lying around my house to fiddle with.

 

welcome to the carpc world man.. now you need to get into the 5.1/7.1 channel sound card tuning.. I have a m-audio 1010LT sound card, routed through a program called console.. each channel has its own 32 band equalizer to get the right sound out of every speaker..

I sprung a few extra bucks for the minipc box.. looks pretty good.. At least you dont have the problem of to much amp draw when you turn on two air compressors for air ride.. that makes things interesting.. im guna get a kinetick HC2400 battery and an OPUS power supply to help me out..

I just love the flexibility of a car pc.. you can do pretty much anything.. I havent got the GPS yet, im trying to figure out if I wanna put xm in first or not..

heres some pics of my setup..

 

Maybe you could construct a "box" w/ cushioning to hold your cpu, with a fan built in. That would be a cool project

 

SSteve! nice to see ya lol

your soundcard sounds like just what i want to be honest.

btw, Creative Labs suck! sure on small speakers they sound good, but people i went through 2 Creative cards, one old and one a new X-Fi......and it's sad to say, but an old Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sounded 2x better.

 

Nice setup!

What size screen is that and what frontend software are you running?

 

I've seen his setup car on the mp3car forums before.....hmmmm

Ah yes, I believe these are his specs:
Intel 1.2GHz 19W Celeron 220 with 533 MHz FSB
8.4" touchscreen usb from that gooddeals18 website
5400 rpm hard drive
1 stick of ddr2 ram (1gig)
PCI Delta 1010LT Sound card

as for frontend.....you used a free solution didn't ya Steve?

 

Nice, almost identical to mine except I'm running an Atom 1.6 and the onboard audio (for now, HEHE)

 

This is a very cool idea.....wonder if this would make a good setup?
http://hothardware.com/Articles/Acer...NVIDIA-Ion-PC/

What kind of screen are you running?

 

You could use one of those, but when you use a small form factory PC like that (or any repurposed desktop PC) the problem becomes powering it and rigging up something to function as a shutdown controller so that it starts and stops with the key.

Most of us are using 7-8" touchscreens.

 

I am very interested in this. I would like to do this simply for the fact of having my HPTuners right there, and I can data log from the dash, lol.

Just a couple questions...

Do you run Windows on these? Does Windows work with the touch screen? And, what brand touch screens are you using? I have seen liliput monitors on ebay for cheap, and would probably pick one of those up if they are any good.

 

most peeps on mp3car.com use liliput monitors on their units so i would say go for it

 

there is a little black insert in the middle of the dash, some of the cars have there passenger airbag light in that location, but I would think pulling that would give you a neat place to put a "center Channel" speaker of some sort. And shoudl help with imaging as the speaker would be right near the screen.

 

Lilliput is the everyday person's choice.

Xenarc's top end products are the best though.

I went with a Lilliput 629. An alternative would be the Lilliput 701 which is the most common you'll find.

You can run ANY OS you want. Just make sure it's compatible with your front end and equipment.

 

Now... is there any way we could use the stock radio amp to power the sound? Like, would I be able to hack open the stock stereo, and use the Aux input and the amp? OR am I stuck having to use a 4 channel amp?

 

as long as you provide the stock amp 4 channels of line level signal and a remote turn on it will work like factory

 

Thats a good idea except if you could rig a USB hub in there? I'm not sure what it looks like behind there so just an idea.

 

theres plenty of room back there trust me

 

lol yea, if you take off the dash trim, there is a ton of space. in fact, there is more free space behind our stereo's/center dash panel than many SUV's I've worked on.

lol.

I'll have to take a look at possibly mounting a square speaker into that area, good idea!!!!!

As for putting a USB hub back there.....I have 2 USB hubs, 1 currently not being used.

 

check out the alpine or pioneer center channel speakers. might be pricy ive never messed with them but i know they made them. i thought about it for a long time but if i'm doing a center channel i need super mega speakers to match the doors so, plus i have the volt guage there now