The CarPC / Carputer Thread

[gigy]

changed plans and installed my home pc motherboard into the car pc case. its a mATX MSI RS480 motherboard with AMD Athlon 3000+ processor. Three advantages with this board is ,it has a direct tv out and now its 2gb memory and has 5.1 audio out. many of its usb ports have gone bad, so using the internal ones with extension cable.
will upgrade home pc to intel dual or quadra core later and make it a htpc.

[gigy]

The picture of logitech wireless numeric keypad which has made life much easier now. most of the controls are on steering.stuck with double sticking tape. volume, bass treble, track, menu, mute,navigation change.

[DerAlte]

What does the red LED (on the steering wheel) indicate?

[revvedup]

gigy that numeric keypad integration on the steering wheel is uber cool, but tell me how do you control your music via it.
@ Der Alte-Maybe it is some sorta shift light

[DerAlte]

Originally Posted by revvedup

...@ Der Alte-Maybe it is some sorta shift light

Counter-intuitive to have a shift light on the steering wheel - you would have to look down to see it.

[Digital Vampire]

Keep a watch on the power drawn by your new motherboard, processor, DDR...I'm not sure about Athlon's power consumption figures but I get a feel that you are pushing the M2-ATX to its limit.

M2-ATX's has a bad reputation of suiciding and killing the connected peripherals if they are overloaded!!!

Please ensure that the M2-ATX has enough head room, i.e, individual voltage rails are not loaded more than 80-85% of the rated capacity.

The following is the rated maximum power rail capacity for the M2-ATX

5V - 8A
12V - 8A
3.3V - 8A
5V SB - 1.5A
-12V - 0.15A

[gigy]

DerAlte, its a horn switch. the old baleno had the four spoke steering wheel with horn in center, it was distracting & pain to take out your hand off steering, particularly while driving faster to pump the horn, so made this alternate arrangement to use the thumb. wanted to put two on both sides but was not sure i can make it symmetic. now after the numeric pad deactivated the center horn switch.

revvedup, centerfuse has option to assign hotkeys to keyboard. i assigned it to the numberpad.

digital vampire , not sure of the load but i have tried to keep it minimum possible. hope the 160watts power board handles it. didnt have any issue till now.

[gigy]

plan to incorporate security into the carputer . enter password to start the car. there will be no prompt to do it but anyone try to just start the car there will not be any fuel, ignition and crank. additionally can wire the horn to blast. of course there will be a hidden override in not so convenient location. whats you view on this.

[DerAlte]

Originally Posted by gigy

plan to incorporate security into the carputer . ... whats you view on this.

Unless you are able to emulate the Immobilizer route (logically, via CAN or some such bus) direct to the ECU, you would land up reducing system reliability by adding points of probable failure (I am not even talking about M$Windoze and cars!). For example, to account for the override switch, you will have to add a relay, and so on and so forth.

Now imagine you have to make a quick start, wouldn't you find that a nuisance if you are not able to start the car?

On the other hand, cars which have a push-button start (true keyless entry types), logic is implemented in the ECU which validates all permittances before allowing Starter command and Ignition permittance to go through. In such cases, additional alternates are provided (in hardware as an ECU pin) which count towards that permittance, and one can wire one's own enablers / disablers.

[shldn]

Originally Posted by gigy

of course there will be a hidden override in not so convenient location

Well your override will have to be in a very convenient location, if you are to use your current setup with Windoze for this .

Look at StevieG's Access Control instead. While it doesn't really meet your objective it still is pretty nifty, with the latest version supporting Video recording and access via M$ fingerprint scanner. Oh and there are some nice skins to go with it too.

[gigy]

sure reliability of the system will go down but will try to keep it as reliable as possible.the carputer will be the weakest link i think. any info on the ecu connections where if i give a high or low to any of its pins i can disable ecu functioning or making it go into off or standby mode. i think i am risking many things!

[spadival]

Better buy an immobilizer instead. Otherwise, the time it takes for the system to boot up, you'll be twiddling your thumb!

There are other useful stuff like remote tyre pressure monitoring system that you can implement.

Oh..Another update. An English guy on another forum has started deciphering the Suzuki ECU's. redlinegti.com • View topic - Baleno OBD II port ..

[gigy]

have a immobilizer in car but not connected it since, looking at the way wiring is done for the security system i fear one day it might develop wiring problem.
wanted to fiddle around a diy security system so that no one will be having idea of figuring it out.
nowadays i dont think any thief will be interested in baleno anyways

[gigy]

pin A11 of ECU receives the start signal from the ignition switch . a SCR controlled input through carputer can do this i think using parallel port.otherwise,
when does usb ports power up? if it does after UAC is enabled through password then its enough.what if i use that 5v to trigger the SCR?
let me see how StevieG's Access Control works.

[spadival]

BIOS these days have USB support enabled to allow for booting from a USB hard drive. Check your BIOS settings. If its available, you can use USB interface for the UAC as the PC loads up OS. Unless of course, you plan to modify the BIOS to do some magic stuff like asking for password !!

Not many MoBo's come with parallel port these days. Does yours have one?