Been off on work shuttling between Bangalore, Mumbai and Pune juggling multiple projects so the whole nomad project was on hold.
Plan to start the Carputer build over next weeken and if that has to happen, then i need to source the parts now! would appreciate all help in scoping and planning this out.
Primary Use for Carputer: Basic ICE and GPS navigation. Secondary use: OBD based Diagnostics, receive phone calls via-BT etc.
Hardware
1. Motherboard/CPU:
Vista 1G5 Mini-ITX
2. PSU:
M3-ATX 125W
3. Primary Display :
1x Lilliput 7" 70GL with 2DIN frame .
ALREADY SOURCED.
4. Secondary Display: Can come in later. 10/11" non-touchscreen roofmounted LCD for rear cabin. Separate drive from front LCD. Will i require a more advanced graphics card to drive the rear display independently?
5. OBD:
OBDLink Multi-protocol.
6. GPS Receiver:
BU-353.
Audio setup:
1. 2x JBL 6" component speakers in the front.
2. 2x JBL 4" 2way speakers in the rear.
3.
1x JBL 12" Sub-woofer. Suggest mounting location. Behind Driver seat or behind the rear bench seat?
4. 1 x
4ch JBL Amplifier GT5-S644. Mounted behind Navigator seat.
The audio setup is completed except for the #3 (Subwoofer). For the carputer, Only the 7" touchscreen has been sourced so far. I am planning to order the rest of the parts from the MP3car store later today.
Couple of questions:
1. Would appreciate advice on the most suitable motherboard+CPU combination considering the use.
2. Can i power the touchscreen LCD off the PSU itself? I would want to avoid splicing wires etc: is some kind of "harness" available so i can connect the PSU to the Carputer and the monitor without any ugly splicing of wires etc?
3. I DONT want the carputer to power on automatically with the ignition which is how all carputer installs i have seen seem to be wired. When in camper mode, with the ignition off, i may want to browse the net or watch a DVD on the rear LCD. Can i have a separate wire the on-off function to a separate push-toggle switch on the dash? Details please.
4. I want to use 6-channel drive off the PC to the amplifier. However, most MP3's and audio have 2 channel output? How will the PC convert this into a 6 channel drive? Will i need some kind of hardware/software to make this happen? Ideally I would like to go for a 4.1 kind of drive since i dont have or want a center speaker.
5. For GPS navigation, I plan to use the maps provided by
SatGuide integrated with Centrafuse. Tested this out on the laptop last week (with a Bluetooth based device) and it worked smoothly. However I am told that a bluetooth based adapter causes problems like failure to connect etc. Though I havent faced it so far, I have decided to go ahead and order a pure USB based GPS recvr like the BU-353.
6.OBD based diagnostics: the most difficult to figure out so far. My ride is a Maruti Suzuki Gypsy and It does have an OBD-2 port located under the dash. Have tried connecting it to the Scangauge devices which failed to go past beyond the "Connecting..." message.
The obd2 port has active wires to pins 4,5, 7 and 16(See pic). So is it 9141-2 standard? Will the
OBDLink Multi-protocol work with my Gypsy?
All help appreciated.
PS: Shifting to Bangalore for the next 5 months and plan to drive down on Sun/Mon to reach by Tue.