Not sure what you mean about blow up..but I've been wanting to do this for a couple years, not sure why they flamed you didn't see the thread, haven't been on in a while till now. I've done things over the years that people on here didn't like but who cares I do it for myself. As far as the computer power & price, I went with something that's more than strong enough too do what I wanted to..at a good price, Plus if the Computer goes down at all, I still have a stand alone headunit that will play DVD,CD,Radio, bluetooth and so on.



Update:
Took the car out for a nice ride this weekend, Our city at the intersection's put cobble stone cross walks ..needless to say they are anything but smooth when you hit them at 45mph, I had no problem what so ever not even the slightest skip in the music & I've had problems in the past with my aftermarket Pioneer headunit skipping when I hit them, my car if you didn't know is on BC sport coilovers and set stiff front & back..so you know it don't ride smooth in the 1st place every bump is amplified. I purposely tried to hit every rough spot I could find, I even shifted hard to make the car jerk & nothing. This is just the 1st of many road trips in the next week or 2, believe me if anything happens to the computer I'll update the thread with what happened, but so far so good.

 

In my pc I mounted the hard drive with rubber bushing had this pc for about 3.5 years now no hiccups at all

 

smooth setup.

though i've got a real preference towards centrafuse. next step, ditch the deck

ssd, good quality molex's, a secure base, is everything a carpc really needs. lol

 

I mounted the front of the PC on a shelf made out of 23g aluminum 1 1/2" wide, this thin of a strip makes it absorb shock instead of being ridged, then lined the top with a piece of velcro 6' long to hold the computer in place & cushion it, then I bent a leg that supports the the shelf when the glove box is open to support the front right corner, the left corner is bolted to the glove box side wall. Nice thing is you can barely see the shelf at all, makes it seem to be just floating there.

 

ok so i sent an email to innovatek for the headunit and they can sell it to me for 280USD + shipping.

since you have that HU would you suggest that i buy it....do you have complaints about it ?

I think theres not much HU that have all the features like that one have espacially for a carputer system (screen resolution, USB port for touchscreen and video input).

oh and one other thing. i have a 2008 TC will i have problems with the original speakers setup

do i have to bypass some amplifier ?

thanks a lot !

 

the best way to do it would be to integrate with the stock amplifier

 

can u still use the double din radio to place music without the pc or do you always have to use ride runner?

 

yes....the computer is one thing and the head unit is another...you can use only the head unit if you want.

 

sounds cool. I wonder what the benefit of the ride runner is over the actual headunit.

I am really interested in doing something like this.

does the computer just wire into the headunit by like a com port or some kind of computer wire or does it need hardwired in

 

Ride Runner is a program on the computer kinda like Itunes where you can load your music, get weather or a bunch more, check out the HP Tuners Vid I just uploaded you will see what I mean..multi windows function. You can also switch to the headunit functions even when the computers on by hitting the source button on the headunit..this cycle's thru a/v in, radio, gps, and so on.
The headunit is stand alone it still plays DVD, DIVX, CD-R, CD-RW, GPS, Mpeg all on its on, it simply acts as a monitor with a VGA Plug (Monitor) & USB (Touchscreen) coming out the back of the headunit for the computer, for that fact you could hook up any computer to it as long as you have the touchscreen drivers loaded in that computer & change the display settings
I will make a vid tomorrow of the headunit alone just to show you what it can do by itself, sorry I was more into the computer part & over looked it!

 

OMG...i looked at some video of centrafuse on youtube and youre right it looks so awesome.

happy to know that theres other solution to ride runner because i wasnt completely convinced with what i saw.

 

yea i've dabbled in roadrunner(now riderunner), and many of the old and now dead front ends. the most professional looking overall and has a privately funded future is centrafuse. road runner is very capable....but as usual with open source, doesn't show all the glitter polish one would really want.

 

There's more than just that, the reason I like ride runner is being able to make virtual disks with your music, Then you hit 1 button and your music plays till that virtual disks ends & the disk can hold unlimited amounts of songs, But as far as fit & finish looks fine to me, plus I like the fact of being able to make almost any skin I want..but to each his own, but yes you have plenty of memory to load Centrafuse if you want into the computer.
Two weeks now no problems what so ever with the computer, went to a car show this last weekend & the response was huge, every one that sat down in the passenger seat was like I want 1, the thing they couldn't believe was the price!
We are making a longer Video today, to show all the functions at once, wait to you see the new toy added to the system..for car shows it don't get any better. Can you say handheld interface Vid coming later today, youtube takes 2 hours to upload the dang vids.

 

yeah the price is very good especially for the head unit. although i would be ready to pay a little more if you could come up with a more powerful pc setup. like a core 2 duo setup. theres mini-itx board that support core 2 duo with 2 memory slot with mobile cpu or regular desktop cpu. would be great to have that as a choice.

 

It's all in preferences, For the purpose I bought it for & the price I could not beat it. I researched for a couple of months before & built many online, talked to computer friends, the closest I got to the power & capibility was a grand more.
The Biggest thing for me was dual units that don't rely on each other & can run at the same time as one...makes it a redundent system.
Remember I didn't design, build, or engineer any of it...there will be upgrades to the system just like any others I'm sure, but so far so good.
Making a vid of remote control via touchpad connecting thru the wifi, this will be great for car shows, hope to have it up later today.

 

My question is does the weather, pandora, etc work without a wifi connection?

 

For my part I have data on my cellphone and with android 2.2 i can make a wifi access point to share my phone data over wifi (kind of like a router) so i will just have to enable that on my phone and the computer will automatically connect to it when its available making possible to have internet on the road i think it can be done with an iphone too

 

i have been making research about carputers the last couple of days and it seems ppl are using special power supplies that detect when you turn off the car and keep the power on the computer until it's completely shutdown.

it's called intelligent DC power supplies or something like that.

is your carputer doing this or you have to shutdown manually before you remove the key ?

 

No you will need some sort of link up, Im going to be using a Wifi hot spot, I also use it for work.

Right now The computer I power down, I'm still working with the manu on a adaptor, this computer only pulls 12v 5 amps so it's not alot of power draw. I will let you know what happens, the systems your talking about aren't cheap, I rather just run a 300 watt inverter and be done with it, plenty of power to run more stuff too.. like chargers for the touch pad i'm putting in. One thing to remember it is voice regconition so once I hook up my mic, I just tell it to standby or shut down.
Plus with the headunit I wont be using the computer all the time, check out the new Vid up with us controlling the computer with a Touch Pad

 

I'm using a Carnetix 2140.. it's got a 12v and memory power wire. It then has a 5v pulse wire that will kick the computer into sleep mode when it detects the memory wire or switched wire turns off and vise versa.

With these you don't have to reach and turn the computer on, it wake's up and sleeps automatically with the turn of the key.

After re-installing mine today i'm 100% jealous of the small casing, but i think that would be the only drawback. Getting to the switched source, etc.

 

They are already looking into setting them up like that for those that don't want to use Voice Controlls, the programmer lives not to far from me and already set up a feed to his for the ignition, me I will be just telling mine to sleep or shut off for now.

 

How did I miss this thread? Thats awesome OP. Great work! I want

 

Thanks, I'm being the test dummy...but so far, so good, very little problems so far considering. After a little more trial & error it will be ready to go, the headunits will become available real soon...the computer a little longer.

 

Bump..had the car out at another show this weekend, worked flawlessly & no one can believe how cheap it was. The headunits are now available for sale!

 

well i just bought the In 633pc so hopefully its a good buy...the computer is next...how easy was it to install? you said some modification was needed? what had to be changed?