Gibson99's Carputer - Build Diary

Build Diary

Build Diary

07 Sep 00 08 Sep 00 09 Sep 00 10 Sep 00

11 Sep 00 12 Sep 00 17 Sep 00 24 Sep 00

01 Oct 00 02 Oct 00 10 Oct 00 04 Mar 01

28 May 01 27 Jun 01 07 Jul 01 13 Jul 01

19 Jul 01 28 Jul 01 31 Jul 01 12 Dec 01

This page chronicles my experiences installing and using the carputer. The reason I'm doing this is in case anyone else wants to do something similar. I want to let others learn from my mistakes and experiences (this works, this didn't, this fried, etc).

Day One: 7 Sep 00
Finished working on the puter in the house. PC is in a mid-tower AT style case, 145W 110VAC power supply (AT style). Mainboard is some cheap thing I bought a long time ago for like $50. Aint bad, it's a TX board, supports up to an intel 233MMX chip, has onboard sound and video, and is baby-AT form factor. that means it takes up a LOT less space since I dont have to mess w/ bulky extension cards like sound and video cards. Proc is a K6-200MMX. 128MB PC66 3.3v unbuffered SDRAM. Maxtor 3.5" EIDE (UDMA/33) 17.4GB drive. The mainboard is so old, its BIOS auto-typed this drive as only 8GB so I had to use some EZ-drive type stuff to fool the BIOS into using all 17 gigs. I loaded win95 OSR2.5 on it, for FAT32 support, and to not have to mess w/ all the fluff (and slowness) of win98. I then stripped EVERYTHING I didn't absolutely need from startup, including device drivers for stuff not being used. Used TweakUI to disable scandisk on boot, since nothing's really 'open' in the true sense the technical term, and the puter's being shut down all the time, so to save time on boot, nix the scandisk. Then i loaded Winamp (which, BTW, really does whip the llama's ass! Props Justin!). Temporarily installed a NIC to dump MP3s to its hard drive over the LAN, and then made a playlist of all the mp3s on the carputer's drive. Put the playlist in the startup group of win95's start menu. tested out nicely on the bench, even with a few intentional improper shut downs (rip power cord out of the back of the machine, which is essentially what happens, electrically). Boot time is good. Could be better, I spoze, I'll try to tweak it more later. Boot time is 40 seconds - from the time i give it power till it starts playing music. I grabbed a keyboard, audio cable, power cord, and the inverter, and headed out to the car. I laid the tower down on its side on the front passenger floor, with the back of the computer facing the firewall, and the keyboard on the passenger seat.

Click here for a photo! (Added 9-9-00)

Hooked it all up, cranked the motor, watched it boot up (no video... just watching the HD light flicker as it boots. Ya know, it's odd hearing the typical "PC-booting-up-beep" in your car shortly after you start the motor. I figure i'll eventually eliminate the PC speaker, but for now I'm keeping it in for diag purposes. Anyway it worked just as good as it did on the bench. but damn I have -GOT- to get a dedicated numeric keypad... having a full sized keyboard just doesnt fly in a car! It'll do for now I guess... Restarted the car a few times to make sure it'd boot every time without tripping the breaker in the inverter (its rated at 140W). It even runs w/o the engine on, but if i turn on any other accessories (like the a/c blower or exterior lights) the inverter starts to chirp from lack of current or nearing the edge of its trip limit (where the breaker pops). Other than the fact that it looks totally ghetto having a computer and an ancient keyboard where it is, it looks good. SOUND is GREAT. cd quality. Tomorrow will be the real test. Gonna leave the puter hooked up all day, and try to break it. (well... run it thru its rigors to see what breaks...)
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Day Two: 8 Sep 00 (01:00 AM!!)
Couldn't sleep. Doncha hate that? So I went out for a drive. I'd picked up a camera to take pics of the new air horns and to take pics of the lights at night, so I figured I'd go for a drive and look for some remote place to take pics of the car in real darkness. And test out the mp3 player at the same time. Well, the MP3 player is great. its awesome having so much music on hand. Kinda like listening to the radio except if i dont like the song playing, i just press 6 on the numpad and it changes to the next track. sweet. :) found a nice place about 5 miles east of fairfield (best guess)... there's some perfectly straight 2-lane country road back there with high vegetation on either side. oh man that was peaceful. so beautiful out there. snapped a lot of lighting pics, and one thing i did notice was that with the a/c on, and all lights on including high beams, and the car in park at idle (about 700 rpm) the inverter was starting to chirp as a warning that its breaker was about to pop. i gave it a little gas and got the rpms up to 800-900 and the headlights got noticeably brighter, and the chirping stopped. but the pc never flinched, it just kept playing the tunes. nice drive home too, except for the poor dude who had a blowout about a mile in front of me... at least he didn't crash, he got it off the road safely and waved me on when i slowed down to ask if he needed help. ahh now i'm tired enough to sleep so thats what im gonna do.

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Day Two: 8 Sep 00 (part 2)
Got a little bit of a late start due to lack of sleep... got rolling at a little after 8am, and the carputer was working great. i managed to get the keyboard semi-wedged between the pc chassis and the front passenger seat, so that no keys were being held down, and the numpad section was within easy reach for changing tracks. i made 7 service calls (i am an onsite computer tech, and use my own car for the service calls - no worries, i get paid mileage) and stopped the car for other things a few other times... i figure i started and stopped the car about 15 times today. only one hiccup, and i think its because i left the nic in it... it dinged one time i booted it instead of playing tunes. i couldnt see any video (no monitor!) so i can only guess... i'm guessing i got a message about "DHCP was unable to obtain an IP address for adapter LNE100TX" since it's not plugged into the lan (duh). yes, i do have DHCP services on my home lan even though i dont have a broadband connection. i need to set up a static ip if i leave the nic in the carputer but i think for now i'm just gonna rip out the nic and disable the network crap till the next time i need to load up some mp3s. its not like it takes a long time to install a nic... i put the drivers for the nic (and all other system devices) on the hard drive, which consumed a whopping 2 megs, so i dont have to mess w/ floppies/cds for them if i ever need em. also put the win95 cab files on there too... again, only 70 or so megs, and on a 17 gig drive thats fine. i have 12 gig of mp3 on there now, leaving 5 gig free for whatever... :)

on ya there was one other hiccup... i took a corner kinda hard and the keyboard slid out of its semi-wedged place and landed against the center console. i couldnt move it since i was taking the corner so hard I needed both hands on the wheel... i heard it clicking from the mass of keys being pressed and all of a sudden winamp locked and started skipping. when i could, i grabbed the keyboard and it was still skipping... i hit alt-f4 a couple times and winamp stopped skipping... i just rebooted it. all was well. REALLY need that 10-key! gotta figure how i'll mount it tho. i'm thinking i'll cannibalize my dad's old cell phone that's been sitting in the closet for like 6 years now... take the mount arm, take the phone perch off and screw or velcro the numpad to it when i get one. should work out well, and will free up space for a passenger (gee, imagine that!)

one other little thing... i noticed that the wires going to the inverter from the cig lighter socket were getting noticeably warm. even when they werent in the sun. gonna have to beef up the supply wires from something other than the puny 22 ga OEM wiring to the lighter socket that's in the dash now. tomorrow i'll go pick up an inline fuse and a relay at radio shack and will run some leads from the battery to the interior so that the carputer has its own circuit, which is closed by the relay which will be activated by the power antenna lead. gonna run 14 awg from the battery to the inside of the car and will prolly ground it out somewhere inside to keep the ground lead short. i already have an extra 12vdc power socket (basically a lighter socket) that i snagged from our old volvo before it was junked.

oh ya something else i noticed... some folks on mp3car.com complain about alternator noise/whine... i was listening for it and i didnt hear ANY. so it looks like i'll forgo getting a real 12VDC AT power supply (a mere $150 + S&H) and just use what i already have since there's no need for all that fancy ground loop isolator coil or expensive power supplies... ok i'm done for today... time to head up to rankin. puter's out of car for now till i can wire up a better power feed. i'd rather not burn down my car, ya know?

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Day 3: 9 Sep 00
Well I wired up a new circuit just for the carputer. went to radio shack and bought an inline fuse holder and a 30A relay. hooked the fuse holder directly to the battery's positive terminal, then ran it right alongside the power lead for my sub's amp, down thru a grommet in the driverside fenderwell, and then thru the firewall in the factory wiring harness bundle. :) once i got the wire inside the car i ran it up over the pedals and across the dash to the glovebox. wired up the relay to be activated by the radio's power antenna lead. if you want, i can tell you which pins on the relay went to what... maybe i'll draw up a schematic for it later if people really want me to. anyway i had a 12V accessory outlet (aka an additional cigarette lighter socket) that i took from our old volvo before we got rid of it, and i wired this into the glovebox. nothing permanent at this point. i am using quick disconnects and ring terminals on all connections so i can remove it without leaving a trace of it ever being there. i ran a little audio cable up inside the dash to the aux input on the fornt of the stereo. must admit, it looks a little odd having a white cable come out of the dash only to plug directly in to the stereo face. i left enough slack in it so i can unplug it and remove the stereo face if i need/want to, but i never remove the stereo face anyway.

so i wired all this up, i zip-tied the inverter's cig lighter plug to the cig lighter socket so it wouldnt come loose, and i crammed it in the glove box along with the relay and cig lighter mess. i was kinda lucky. in the 95 camry there's a rectangular plastic thingy on the left side of the glovebox that u can pop off, and there's this yellow wiring harness snapped to it. well i just left the thing there loose, and ran the wiring (including the PC's 110VAC power line) down thru that hole. i ran the audio and power leads down below the dash, and unless you're looking for them, you can't see them when the PC's in there. so now that all the bulky wiring is concealed in the glovebox, the only obvious dangling wire is the keyboard wire, which makes it SO much cleaner and easier to put the keyboard where i want.

of course eventually I am gonna cannibalize this case or make a new one, and mount it underneath one of the front seats, likely the driver seat since the passenger seat gets moved the most, this being a 2-dr and all, it makes it tricky getting in the back seat. the thing that's gonna give me the most greif i think, is gonna be the power supply. it's BULKY! i will of course run the cabling from the PC up thru the center console into the dash, though i'm not sure where i'll mount the inverter just yet. but it's gonna have to stay up in the glovebox for now. it's not like i need the glovebox anymore, i only used it to store CDs, and now that i have the carputer, i dont need cds anymore. :)

okie, well i'm off to office depot, i just looked at their web site and found that they have a black PC Concepts numpad for $30 so i'm gonna go snag one. i also picked up my dad's old cell phone and so i'll need to get some self-tapping screws and mount the phone stand thingy into the car to hold the numpad at a convenient height and angle. more later!

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Day 4: 10 Sep 00
i drove around today w/ the computer at home.. out of the car for now. meant to load some more mp3s on it and some new plugins to try for remapping keys (specifically one to be able to dis/en-able shuffle from the numpad (which, btw, office depot did NOT have... all they had was some USB ones for like $60. screw that!) anyway, check out this numpad plugin .

also, i found some KICK ASS info for the carputer project. i'm thinking im gonna put in a character based lcd to show whats playing, among other things, and will be using this plugin for winamp. Its called LCDisplayer, and well... it just rocks. and it looks like i lucked out finding his site today... latest update is posted as "Sep. 10,2000", which would be TODAY! sweetness. he just released ver 0.60beta, which i am playing with as i write this.

To the left is a sample image of the LCD i plan to use. main difference is that this picture is a 20x4 (20 chars wide, 4 rows) and i plan on using a 40x4 - twice as wide, same height. the LCD plugs into the LPT (printer) port of the PC, and uses the LCDisplayer plugin for winamp i just mentioned above. I will rearrange the data that gets put on the screen, since the newest version of LCDisplayer allows for multiple items on one line, so i'll likely put more info on the screen, like bitrate, freq, time remaining on this track, etc... all that can go on the bottom. i'll of course play with it once i actually GET an LCD. but thats further down the road.

one more link today... Jarcom's InMotion MP3 player. this guy is also using the LCDisplayer plugin, and this is the site where i learned about the numpad plugin i mentioned above, as well as where i snagged that sample LCD image. unfortunately the guy's site is rather out of date... he still shows that .58 is the latest... i think his last update was february.

and another note for today... driving without the mp3box in the car is drab... listening to the radio sucks, since they seem to play about 2 songs then go to commercials. and when flipping thru my presets, i usually cant find anything i like and end up turning it off. with the mp3 box, if i feel like listening to something different, i just hit next, and voila, another song that i know i'll like cuz i hand picked all the mp3s on there myself.

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Quick update - Sep 11, 2000 3:30am
well i got the lcdisplayer .60 beta and have been playing with it for a while... i think i got the screen set up the way i want it to be... it lets you see a little sample of it on your monitor so u can play with it even if u dont have the lcd hooked up... nice touch IMHO. well here's a screenshot of the way i got it set up now:

okie time for bed... gotta work in a few hours... ugh... prolly wont have time to hook up the carputer so i guess i better bring some CDs to listen to... :/

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News - Sep 12, 2000
I was near home between calls today so i stopped in for a snack and to see if my numpad had come in yet, and while i was checking my email, lo and behold, UPS shows up and hands me my new Numeric Keypad! So i made a quick run to the hardware store. picked up some self tapping screws and some self adhesive velcro. i mounted the numpad to the car phone stand w/ velcro, and screwed the cell phone stand into the passenger side of the center console, but down low where it's carpeted. i had to put it really far up towards the dash and firewall because the seat slides so far forward when you pull that lever to let people in the back seat... what a pain. because of that, the arm isnt really as long as i'd like it to be, but it'll do for now i guess. no photos yet (someone wanna donate a digital camera?). but right now the setup looks VERY clean. hardly any wires visible at all, except for the fact that i still have the big ass tower taking up all that floor space in the front seat!

on another note, i have pretty much come to the conclusion that i wont need to build that many safeties into the case when i finally do build one. reason i say this is because i've driven over/thru just about anything and everything i'm going to encounter: dirt roads, rain, mud, gravel, old asphalt (read: resonation patterns start happenning in your car at highway speeds) roads, road construction (aka road DEstruction), potholes from hell, railroad tracks that threaten to jerk the wheel out of your hand, rumble strips, reflectors, speed bumps, curbs, of course good old freeways. i even drove on the rumble strips cut into the side of the road to help keep you from driving off the road if you are falling asleep, for a good 30 seconds, and had no ill effects other than numb hands. right now, the only problems i've had are due to the damn full size keyboard - it falling and mashing keys, or something sliding under the seat and mashing the reset button (which i've since disconnected). now that those variables are out of the question (keyboard, reset button), i'm gonna drive around with it for a few days and see what happens. i'm even gonna leave the windows rolled up and wont put that sun screen in the windshield... gonna let it get REALLY HOT in the car and see if that kills it. i bet it wont since the cpu itself has got a really good heat sink on it, and the case itself provides a sort of shade, so that it's not in direct sunlight. it'll be even better once i get it mounted under one of the seats.
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News - Sep 17, 2000
everything's going great, and since putting the numpad up on the car phone stand, i havent had a single weirdness happen. so this weekend i've spent some time gutting the interior of my car! it looks rather weird with the driver seat out and the lower dash and center console torn out. there's a lotta wires in there! something else unrelated i noticed... my airbag computer is LOUD. whenever the key is in the ON position, whether or not the engine is running, the airbag computer, located in the bottom of the center console, makes this high pitched buzzing/whining sound. surprising how well the plastic center console mutes this sound.

anyway, this weekend i'm redoing all the wiring. the mess of wiring and the inverter is no longer in the glovebox. it's up in the dashboard. yes, even the inverter. it's propped up sideways between one of the air ducts and the shifter cable (automatic tranny). then the 110VAC line is running down the middle console, along with a keyboard extension cable (for numpad, since its cable is only about 3' long) and some beefier RCA cables to run from the head unit to the carputer's audio jacks. i'm taking special care to route the wiring as far away from the airbag computer wiring as possible, since i noticed that the factory wiring is all on the passenger side of the hump in the floor, except for the airbag wiring, which is wrapped with BRIGHT yellow electrical tape, slipt loom, and yellow plastic wiring conduits throughout the car. so i guess that little yellow bundle i found in the glovebox last week was part of the airbag wiring. yikes, glad i put that back to OEM!

i'm gonna try to grab a camera and take some pix of the install process... its rather unique, to say the least. i'm going thru zip ties like a madman, i've never used this many at one time before. just trying to make sure i'm not gonna have any wires rubbing against the rough edges in the dash, which makes for chafed wires and thus SHORTS (bad!), not to mention preventing rattles in the dash, ya know? i know, as soon as i get a VGA screen or even just the text LCD, i'm gonna have to pull the console apart again, but its actually not that difficult in this car. sure beats the hell out of the gen2 camry dash! THAT thing was a royal pain!

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News - Sep 24, 2000
Nothing new to report, and in this case, that's good news. Carputer was successfully installed over last weekend. Mounted the mainboard to the floor under the driver seat, and the power supply directly behind it. hard drive is hanging in the center console by springs, and it has yet to crater on me. (knock on wood!) I even drove on an old red clay road with some really weird grooves (and normal potholes) in it... I could hear all the change in my change bin rattling, not to mention the keys in the ignition. Bump up the volume a couple notches, and i can still hear the music just fine. Try THAT with a CD player!!! Even those new cd players that can read CDRs with MP3s on them would have skipped.

I'm really pleased with how well the install came out. Most of my friends and neighbors, who all thought I was crazy for putting as much work into this as I have, are now looking up to me, and asking me if I'm going to start marketing it! One friend in particular became Mrs. Giggles when i was showing her the PC and how it worked. She seemed particularly tickled by the power and HD LEDs i put in the center console, not to mention the spring-mount hard drive.

In other news, ziplock finally got me set up with a subdomain on MP3Car.com. You can now access this site by going to http://CAMp3.mp3car.com. Hopefully soon, the evil SQL errors on his site will go away, and I'll be able to have a pic of my car and my NAME next to it when you browse the examples page on his site. :)

My El Kameleon still hasn't come in yet, but I'm not surprised. I only mailed payment on Tuesday, give it 2-3 days to get to SoCal, then 2-3 biz days for UPS to ship it, so I'll probably receive it middle of next week, at which time I'll probably install it right away.

Hmm, let's see, what else... OH YEAH! I know all of you are dying for pictures! Well, I'm waiting till i get the el kameleon installed before i take pix... and I am going to a LAN party on Oct 7, at which I will borrow a friend's digital camera, and take some pix of my car, inside and out (something i been meaning to do for a long time!). So by Oct 10 I should have some nice photos on here for your drooling pleasure. :)

Oh ya one more thing. I was cleaning my room (imagine!) and I found my old license plates... So I scanned the least damaged one in, then had a little fun. :)

No, that's not really what my license plates say. Yes, I did the graphic work myself. It took me about an hour... I'm not very good with paint shop pro, but i think the results are decent. Click the picture of the plate for a larger version, which I suppose would be suitable for printing. It's not photo quality, but why you'd even want to print it out is beyond me... but since i had a high(er) rez version of it, i figured i'd at least let u all see it... maybe other texans would like to graft an MP3 CAR license plate onto a photo of their car? who knows... use it for whatever... i dont care what you use it for, just don't sell it. mmmmkay?

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News - Oct 1, 2000
Received the El Kameleon, got it installed. it's pretty sweet. i even programmed in some text so instead of LINE INPUT it says MP3 PLAYER. This deck has some nice features, my favorite is Audio Cruise. this actually makes use of alternator whine! it listens to the alternator frequency, and from that it derives engine speed. if it detects that you're cruising at highway speeds (above 50) it will gradually step up the volume to compensate for road/wind noise. it's not perfect, but it's really cool. you dont notice it getting louder, u just notice that you're at speed, and can still hear the tunes, but you didnt have to turn it up. i like it.

one problem though. this deck has 2 RCA jacks for line input, which should be a good thing since they're in the back - no more wires hanging off the front of the stereo. normally this wouldnt be a problem, but apparently this head unit doesnt like the fact that the 2 audio channels coming from the PC share a common ground. i'm getting some nasty noise when i switch to the line input source, even when the pc is OFF. it's a loud buzzing/crackling, similar to what you get when you connect something like a tape deck to the MICROPHONE jack. but the thing is, i get the noise even when the PC is powered off!

the cable from the PC is actually just a shielded headphones extension cable - 3 conductor, and one end of it splits off into 2 RCA jacks. i need to figure out the actual pinout of the stuff from the mobo, to see which is left and right, and pray that the motherboard has 4 conductors coming from its line output so i can connect up 2 isolated RCA jacks. if it doesnt, i'm gonna have to move the mobo all over again and will be using my sound blaster awe64 gold in the car, since it has 2 RCA out jacks. main problem there is that the card is like 1/3 of the size of the mainboard... and its too tall to fit under the seat. grrrr......

In other news, I need a graphic artist. If someone can take the CAMRY logo and then kind of superimpose MP3 over the MRY in CAMRY so that both MP3 and MRY are visible, in a way that looks cool, i would be grateful to you. If you need CAMRY logos to work with, just ask, i have more than one. thanks!

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News - Oct 1, 2000 - 11:50pm
Well with the help of some of the folks on Camryman's Passing Lane, who suggested I ground the PC's chassis to the car's chassis, the buzzing/crackling problem is gone. Phew! thought i was gonna go into a depression or something... i'm REALLY used to having all the tunes in the car and was starting to get frustrated after only a day of not having the mp3 box working. so what i did was to get an 8" piece of wire, left over from wiring in the inverter and all, put a big ring terminal on one end, and run one of the seat mounting bolts thru this terminal. then connect a smaller ring terminal to the other end of the wire, and screw it into the PC power supply. voila! ground strap installed and working great. now i can enjoy the endless tunes again. JOY!

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News - Oct 2, 2000 - 2:30am
Ahh yeah, another sleepless night... I just spent a little time tweaking the LCD display, here's a new shot of how the LCD will look (screen simulation). the actual Winamp window won't be there, it's just there cuz i thought u might want to see it to compare the data on the LCD screen w/ the winamp window. i doublesized it this time so u can see the snazzy icons i created for stereo and shuffle indicator.

k well im tired... i really gotta break this habit of staying up late all the time... it's no wonder i'm always tired in the daytime during the week... I'll probably order the LCD panel from www.eio.com. I'm gonna get this one. also gonna get their little 99 cent 14-pin cable, which should make hookup about a zillion times easier. a lot less solder! can i get a whoop whoop!!

yes, i'm tired. yes, i'm going to bed now.......!

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News - Oct 10, 2000 - 9:45pm
Finally! PICTURES!!! CLICK HERE!!!!! Note that this link goes to a page that i threw together in about 5 minutes, and it looks it. the photos are all at 1024x768 resolution, and are like 115KB each, so they'll take a little while to download if you're on a plain modem (like me). its taking its dear sweet time uploading... but by the time you see this news update, the pics should already be there (if by some weird coincidence you view this page immediately after i upload it).

nuff said. if you wanna ask me questions or whatever about the car or the puter, post it to camryman's forum and put my name (gibson99) in the subject line to get my attention.

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News - Mar 4, 2001, 4am - Wow, long time no update!
No news is good news, right? That means nothing has really been going wrong. Everything's going well, pretty much. I have discovered a bit of a problem, but it will be fixed when I rewire some stuff. here's the issue. when i start the car on cold mornings, it takes a little longer to actually start. so that longer delay where they key goes from ON to START (where the car cuts power to the radio) is giving a little power dip to the puter, and this sometimes makes it lose the keyboard. nothing a simple reboot won't fix, but it can be annoying at times. so what i'm gonna do is to wire the carputer's relay to be triggered by the IGN circuit instead of the power antenna. that way any time the key is in the ON or START position, the carputer will get power. that way even if the car doesnt start the first time i turn the key, the carputer will still keep on booting. i will also wire in a switch and a second relay (for safety) to power the carputer. this switch will turn on the computer regardless of the ignition key's position. so i can flip this switch, and the carputer will turn on, even if the car is OFF. this could be useful if i will be coming back to the car, or if i want to turn off the motor after driving but leave the stereo on, and not have to reboot the puter (and thus lose track of what song is playing)... not to mention for my next big step....

whats that? "next big step," you say? Yup. i bought myself a pair of wireless nics. next step is to get a right-angle adapter like this one so the card will fit in the mobo under the seat:

This part is available on twinhunter.com - the only problem is that it's FIFTY DOLLARS!!! what a rip! maybe i can find a way to make my own or something... if anyone can make me one for cheap or knows where i can get one, let me know!

now what am i doing with wireless nics? play mp3s off the home server while driving around? sheah, right! i wish! no, i intend to be able to remote control the carputer for admin/config/add/remove mp3s from the house while the car is parked outside. this is why i'd need that switch to turn on the puter w/ the car off (and locked).

in other news, LCDisplayer is finally out of beta! he's made it to version 1.0! there's a few tweaks in it since the last ver, in which they added VIS stuff! yeah, check it out. here's the setup i will most likely be using on my lcd screen (ordering it next week! REALLY!!) the thing i love the most about this new ver of LCDisplayer is the spectrum analyzer. to hell w/ bitrate and all that. who cares? i just wanna know track name and time and whether or not shuffle is on (that's what the little radical in the brackets is - tells me shuffle is on). the spectrum analyzer looks pretty spiffy. and it'll go well w/ the VU meter-type thing my head unit displays.

If you like the config i'm using there, i posted my INI file for the lcdisplayer here. right click it and save as.

i also found another site which tells you how to make buttons instead of having to have a full keyboard or even a numpad. more flexibility! on his site, click the "the buttons" link. now here's the catch. i want to be able to hook up this "keyboard" as well as a regular keyboard, both at the same time, and be able to use either at any time without a switch. i rememer seeing a keyboard Y-adapter at one store, but dont remember where, but i do remember that it was ludicrously expensive. why do i need 2 keyboards? well one will be the winamp buttons in the stereo face (i intend to basically copy this guy's button setup) and the other will be a little mini-keyboard like this:

This keyboard is available at www.eio.com for $20. i will buy one when i buy my LCD (also $20). it'll be good to keep in the glovebox or under a seat for when i add a VGA screen, so that i can do navigation/GPS stuff, as well as being able to input/access name/address/phone info in the puter. and i dont think unplugging the winamp keyboard and plugging the cherry in will be too feasible. but if i could have the 2 hooked in paralell and work just fine, that'd be awesome. but i dont know what would happen if i hooked 2 keybds to the same machine in paralell. anyone know?

well its late... 4am to be sure. im off to bed. later!

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News - May 28, 2001 - Carputer removed
WHat? No, it's not broken. It was working fine when I took it out. So why'd I take it out? Cuz I need clear, unfettered access to the ECU area to be poking and probing around in the ECU area behind the glovebox. Why? For the Supercharger installation of course. I'll glady put up with no tunes for a while to add that kinda power.

While I have it out, I can play with the LCD panel. I ordered one, hooked it up, then prompty fried it because I'm a moron who was in too much of a hurry... I accidentally hooked the 12V lead to the LCD panel instead of 5V... I didn't notice anything at first, because the backlight came on like normal, and I didnt have it set to display anything during POST/boot, so I didnt notice anything odd till I expected text and got nothing. Then i looked at my wiring and yelled out loud, and immediately unplugged the puter. I went to move the LCD and it was too hot to touch! I tried hooking it to 5V and it SORTA works... but quickly degrades to displaying garbage, if anything at all. So needless to say, it's toast. Thankfully it didnt make that horrible burnt electronics smell. Ordered another one (thank god they're only $20 shipped) and I have yet to work on it.

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June 27, 2001
Today I bought a biscuit PC motherboard off ebay. The motherboard is the same size as a cdrom drive! Here's a pic of it (121KB - large JPEG). This board is a socket 7 board with UDMA33 (2 drives max), fdd, 4 serial, 1 printer, 2 usb, keybd/mouse, sound, video, 10/100 nic - ALL ONBOARD. And given its compact size, it'll fit nicely inside the dashboard, right up next to the ECU and all. I'll have the use of my center console again, since the HD and power supply will also be mounted in the dash. Much cleaner and more integrated install. And with it that close to the ECU (Engine Control Unit), It'll make hooking these two together just that much easier.

I might get a screen for the biscuit too, but i'm not sure yet. but with the prices i've seen them going for on ebay, it's hard to resist... the trick will then be figuring out where to mount an LCD panel that measures about 10x7". Gee what a problem to have, huh?

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July 7, 2001
Received the biscuit PC motherboard yesterday, and like I expected, it didn't come with a cable kit. So I spent most of yesterday taking apart old cables from old PCs I've had laying around (I knew there was a reason I been keeping them) and making new cables that work for this board. Thank god the manual for this board has all kinds of pinout information. And the translation to english is actually intelligible instead of being laughable (those of you who build lots of PCs know what I'm talking about) So now I'm in business... except I still don't have an IDE cable. Turns out the 44 pin HD header is NOT wired just like a laptop one, because my laptop hard drive adapter has different pinouts. So I broke down and ordered the biscuit pc hard drive cable from the same place I got my board and LCD. $12, shipped, and I'll probably have it here by next friday. The wait is gonna kill me! Hopefully my screen should arrive before then, so I'll have something else to tinker with. Oh well at least I won't have to tear up my fingers trying to make more cables...

I took a buncha pictures of my cable making adventures since I'm not that great at soldering on those tiny little D-sub connectors, though it did give me some much needed practice, and I got it right the first time - always a plus in my book. I also decided to try my hand at the hot knife, and I cut a hole in the glovebox. Then I mounted a slot-loading 24x cdrom drive. I'll have the cdrom in the car (with a screen, keyboard, and a touchpad - no, not a touchscreen... I WISH!!) and then I'll not only be able to use a map program without wasting a gig of drive space, the carputer will be able to play VCDs/DivX movies, and I'll also be able to rip a cd right there in the car if I so choose. And since the motherboard has built in 10/100 ethernet, I can just uplink it to the house to dump my fresh new mp3s to the home machine, or vice versa. Sure, there's other uses for the cdrom too, but those are my primary ones.

Oh yeah... pictures. Here's some Robot porn for ya to look at. :)

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July 13, 2001
LCD came in yesterday. Nicely packed. I hate styrofoam peanuts tho... heh... the box was smashed on one end but the LCD looks OK to me. Inverter was included, but the LCD cable was missing. This is not something I can make myself, unlike the ethernet, serial, ps/2, etc cables I made. So I emailed the company to ask them to send me one. Haven't heard back from them yet, but then again I sent the email late in the day so we'll see what I receive tomorrow.

I spent 5 whole minutes trying to see what it'd be like to have the LCD screen in the dashboard, and here's what I came up with. I just took a screenshot of a 640x480 screen with winamp doublesized and the task bar at single height. Then I tried to approximate the size of the screen and just paste it onto the dashboard, then I blacked out the rest of the space around the screen... Obviously, I lose my climate controls doing this, and would require seperate amps for my interior speakers since right now they're being driven by the head unit, and it'd be gone with a screen here. My climate controls are almost all electrical, even though they look like knobs. The only mechanical parts are the fresh/recirc slider and the temperature knob. And when you look at how the temp knob works, it's actually a linear actuator too. Fan speed, vent selector, and of course a/c and rear defroster are all electric, so I could theoretically put these controls wherever I wanted to. But if I do end up putting the screen in the dash, the controls will most likely get moved down to the ash tray, voiding its storage space. No big deal... the only thing I keep in there is my tire gauge, some pens, and my stereo remote, which I wouldn't need anymore if I put the screen in this way. I could always find another place to keep pens and a tire gauge, like the map pockets in the doors or the sun visor. Then the only hard part will be moving the mechanical switches, since they're cable-operated. We'll see!

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July 19, 2001
Well it seems the customer service at Technology Renaissance really sucks. That's where I bought both the LCD and the biscuit PC motherboard. You'd think that since I'd just spent $300 there, they'd be willing to give me a simple little cable... but no... they want to charge me another $24 for the cable. I'm gonna head out to Electrotex and/or EPO this afternoon to see if maybe they can help me out. Maybe they can and maybe they will also have an enclosure I can use or modify to use for the LCD panel. Not likely, but certainly worth checking into. For now, I have taken several pictures of the build process of installing the biscuit PC into the glovebox. It's just about ready to go, I'm just waiting to see if I'll be getting the LCD cable anytime soon.

Photos of the build process can be found here and here.

As you can see, I have the motherboard hanging from the underside of the cdrom. The screw holes on the motherboard are spaced perfectly - I just had to dig up some standoffs that had the right thread pitch to screw into the holes of the cdrom, then use them. Also, the hard drive is attached directly to the ceiling of the glovebox with no sort of shock absorbtion material at all. Call it an experiment... Hard drives are outrageously cheap right now. 20 gig EIDE drives can be had on pricewatch.com for under $50 right now. So if this 17 craters, it's no big deal. But if it DOESN'T crater, I'll be even more thrilled. If it does, I've got some ideas on how I could put some shock/vibration absorption materials around it and still have it in the same place. It may not look all clean and neat, but such is life. Sometimes you have to compromise when you're not made of money. And I'm certainly NOT...

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July 28, 2001
Yesterday I built myself a Y-adapter for the keyboard port only to find out that the computer doesnt really like having two keyboards connected. I think the clock of each keyboard was arguing because every time i'd hit a key, it would beep at me, and sometimes spit out random characters or other keystrokes that I hadn't pressed. That, and the pc was being rather sluggish as well. So I can't have both the numpad AND a regular keyboard... so that means I have to come up with another way to control winamp. I found out that winamp can be controlled by a joystick (via plugin)! That would've solved all my problems... except that this biscuit mobo doesn't have a game port! DOH! So I keep searching... I want a hard-wired solution, so that rules out infrared (the IRman and similar devices which use standard remote controls). I found a plugin (not actually a plugin but it's just for winamp so it was on the winamp plugin site) made by a dutch guy. It's called ComControll Beta3 English. This allows you to connect 4 buttons to the serial port to control winamp regardless of what application has focus. The only problem I've found is that when comcontroll first starts (I put it in the startup group), it pops up an error message, but at least it stays in the background and winamp starts normally. And the real kicker is that even with that error message, the buttons still work fine. go figure... There are some known issues with it, like sometimes it'll register a button press twice (which for shuffle and pause, results in nothing happening) even if you only pressed it once. But like I said, the author knows about this already. All he really needs to do is add a simple delay where once it's registered a button press, it ignores all buttons for like 1/2 second or even one second, before it continues listening for buttons. And if it still has a button pressed after the waitstate, then it should start repeating that button (very good for changing tracks rapidly) depending on its function. pause and shuffle and things like that shouldn't be repeated. Maybe if the button is still being held for a toggle (like shuffle) it can be made to do something else, like maybe shut down winamp or something. of course it could all be user configurable. I don't know how soon he'll be releasing the next version but he's got a realistic set of expectations for it, and it works pretty good as it is. I mean it only cost me about $8 for the parts to make the buttons... can't beat that!

While searching for a control plugin, I also came across the Resumer plugin. Written by someone else who also has a pc in his car for playing mp3s, this plugin will save the state of winamp, including settings and current song position every X seconds so that you can just kill the power and it will pick right up where it left off (within X seconds of course) just like a regular CD player. This makes things a LOT easier for me. No need for fancy power supplies or anything to get it to shut down properly and remember what song it was playing... even then it wouldn't have saved the song position. This is a great plugin, and if it didn't obliterate winamp when I turn on the disk cache (as he reccommends in a car type situation where the machine doesnt get powered down properly), it would be one sweet plugin. But right now when I turn on that cache purge/flush/whatever option, it somehow hoses winamp and i have to delete the winamp.ini to get it to work again. So for now I'm using it with that flush disabled, but it seems to be unpredictable about when it actually saves the state without that flush, but I spoze it's better than nothing at all... I'll probably email the plug author and see if we can work out the kinks.

So I'm almost ready to throw this thing in the car. I bought some little buttons at radio shack and put them into the trim ring. I also designed a nice power circuit (see pics and schematic here) and I already installed the circuit into the car. works good as far as I can tell - the inverter is coming on and staying on when it should and turning off when it should. Next thing I gotta do is get all the wiring tied down so it's out of the way. Then mount the power supply somewhere secure, and also fasten the inverter better than I have it now. I've already got those buttons mounted, and I also added one main power switch (not in schematic yet) to be able to turn off the carputer completely since I can't reach the power supply power button (it'll be up inside the dash!). Also added an indicator lamp (also not in schematic yet) to let me know if I've got the carputer turned on via the hard switch that lets me turn it on w/ the keys out... that way I don't accidentally drain my battery. That would kinda suck huh?

A brief explanation of the power circuit... Several people have told me I'm being rediculously redundant with it, but I don't think so. First off - the relay that's triggered by the radio circuit is basically how I had the first carputer hooked up. This is all fine and good and supplys power to the carputer when the key is in ACC or ON, except that the power drops while the motor is cranking (key in START position) - and that freaks out the PC. So, in order to get around that, I put in a second relay triggered by my engine computer's power lead, so that it's live whenever the key is in ON or START. These two relays, together, supply power to teh carputer any time the key is not OFF. Finally, the SPST switch allows me to turn on the carputer even if the key is OFF and out of the car. Perhaps for pulling up a map or ripping a CD or administering the carputer over the LAN (ethernet cable running into the house). Obviously something that doesn't require sound. So I don't think my power switching setup is too elaborate... it does exactly what I need it to.

Anyway I guess that's all for today... next news update should be me installing the carputer into the car! WOOHOO!!!

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July 31, 2001
I found an old bookmark... EarthLCD. All they do is sell new/refurb/used LCD panels and controllers and stuff. I checked their online inventory, and lo and behold, they have some of the same hosiden panels I have! So I sent them an email detailing what I have and what I need, hopefully they'll get back to me soon, telling me they've got just what I need. I have a much more positive outlook for these guys - their site is much more homey feeling. You can tell by looking around on their site that they know what they're doing. And if I can't make this panel work, they've got others that I can make work. And if I DO get this panel working, they've got TOUCH SCREEN KITS!!!! Can I get a HELL YEAH!!! No, I probably won't have right-click ability, but so what? It's touch screen baby! I still need to figure out how I'm gonna mount the screen... It's too big to mount where the radio is - I'd lose the climate controls, and in Houston, I sure as hell ain't gonna wait for a PC to boot up to turn on my a/c!! What if windoze decides not to boot? Ya right i'll drive to work in my car when it's 5000 kelvin inside and only 3000 kelvin outside. I don't need hands, I'll just burn them off on the shifter and steering wheel... and fry my hips and chest with the seat belt. Yeah, sure... Anyway, I want to figure out a way to hinge mount it so that it either flips up or down (or maybe left-right?) so that when it's closed, it covers up the radio, but when it's open, it doesn't possibly interfere with the passenger airbag (cuz u never know when you might need it) and can be swung out of the way to get to the glovebox.

Oh yeah... I tried to install the carputer into the car (sans screen of course), and I was rudely reminded that I'd forgotten to go into the BIOS and turn off the "halt on keyboard error" option. The whole shebang FITS into the glovebox area, though the back of the CDROM butts up against the ECU. It's a VERY tight fit in there, but it doesnt look like any wires are being pinched, and most importantly, IT WORKS! I think I may change out that lamp I installed as a power indicator... swap it for an LED or something, cuz that thing is way bright and generates a fair amount of heat, which I don't like. So for now the carputer is back out of the car, since I had to bring it inside to change bios settings and stuff. When I fired it up on the bench again, winamp wouldn't start. Well, it'd put itself in the task list once for each time I tried to start it, but it wouldnt actually put anything on screen or play anything. Once again, Resumer plugin craps out. I ended up blowing out winamp and installing just the ComControll plugin (exe actually) with nothing else. Now it's working fine. Strange how resumer works great on my desktop machine, but completely hoses winamp on the carputer. Maybe resumer doesn't work in win95? I run win2k pro on my desktop machine... Guess I really do need to email the plug author, cuz I'd REALLY like to be able to use that plug in my car!

So, for now, I still have no carputer in the car, and I'm all psyched about getting this screen installed (and the further possibility that it'll be touch screen in the future!). I am busting my ass to get this thing done in time for QuakeCon 2001. I want to enter my CAR in HardOCP's Case Contest they hold every year at QuakeCon. Hey, my carputer plays Quake! Sure, it's the oldschool netquake, and I guess you have to use good old keyboard controls, but I finished the whole game on the keyboard on the next-to-hardest difficulty back in the day... So let's see... MP3s, Maps, MPEG/AVI playback, Quake, OBD-II Diagnostics... what more could you want in a carputer? Ok, ok, I know DVD would rock but hey I'm not THAT rich. heh...

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December 12, 2001
Holy cow. I hadn't realized how long it's been since I touched the carputer. Well, long story short, I got laid off in June. So the carputer took a back burner, but I was still working on it, as you can see by the diary entries dated as recently as July 31. But then August rolled around, and I still didn't have a job, so I stopped spending money on things I didn't NEED, and started concentrating my energies on finding another job. By the beginning of September, I'd run out of money and was having to borrow from my parents to make rent and bills. In early October I finally gave up on the IT industry, because temp firms and their short contracts just weren't making ends meet. So now I work as an auto mechanic. Ditch one hobby for another, eh? Anyhow, I've been working my ass off trying to get caught up on my bills again, and now that I'm almost current on them, I'm getting back into computers and working on my own car again. So that means I'm reviving the carputer project, which has been sitting on my table for like 4 months now, and I've had wires dangling out of my dashboard for the same amount of time since I have no glovebox with the carputer out.

OK, so today I received an email from Bas Konigs, the author of Com Control. He says he found my site by searching for "com controll" on google. He told me I was incorrect saying he's German. He's Dutch! DOH! I should have known; his email address ends in .nl which is the netherlands, not germany (.de)! Sorry Bas! I've now corrected it above.

Even though I accidentally insulted him saying he was German, he was still kind enough to let me know about the newest version of Com Control (yes, he dropped an L off the end so it's spelled right now), and his new site. He's up to beta5 now, and it looks like he's added a user configurable delay, so that it only checks for a button press every X milliseconds, so it's much less likely to start madly repeating your button presses once it sees one. This is a very welcome improvement, and I can't wait to try it out.

Lately, my computer energies have been focused on The Camry Forum, since I'm an admin on the forum there, but also, I'm working on building a headless MP3 box for work, because the radio sucks. Not just because they play the same damned songs over and over and over and over (ad infinitum), but because reception inside the warehouse-like building that is our shop is poor quality. Once I have something good to listen to in the shop, I'll concentrate on getting some good tunes back in the car. For now, I'm using the CD player. Gaw, I'd forgotten how much of a hassle it is changing CDs while driving. I miss my carputer...

The guys at work are really intrigued by my car. I mean, not only is it supercharged, and I'm handling the engineering problems with that (computerized engine management is a completely different ballgame than just twisting the distributor and listening for knock!), but they're also interested in my plans for this carputer. They're even helping me design some better things for it. Like a real 12VDC power supply. The biscuit PC doesn't need anything special, just 12 and 5 VDC, and a good ground, just like a drive. I don't need the negative rails or a 3.3v line, nor do I need a "power good" signal from the power supply. So power supply design for this thing should be much more simple than trying to design my own AT 12v power supply. I'll be putting in some good capacitors so that the computer won't flake when the engine is under heavy load at low RPM, and the alternator may not be putting out 12vdc, or accessory draw may be too much. The capacitors will also act as power filters, giving the computer cleaner power. I may even go so far as to get a big ole 1 farad cap, just like the ones used in monster stereo systems, as part of my power solution. I'm also playing with the idea of giving the carputer its own battery - like a motorcycle battery or something. I'd mount it in the engine compartment where my ABS system would have been if my car had come with it (it was optional on my car). I would need to wire it up so that only the carputer could draw current from the motorcycle battery, but that the batt would still get charged by the alternator, and that the carputer could still run from the alternator. Shouldn't be too hard. I'm thinking it may just take a big diode, so that current can flow from the alternator's output into the (+) of the battery, and that the carputer will still draw current from the output of that diode, but that nothing on the car side of it could draw current from the (+) of the motorcycle battery. Of course, the motorcycle battery would have its (-) terminal connected to a chassis ground. Otherwise, I'd probably get ground loop noise, and the alternator wouldn't charge it.

Doing it this way should completely eliminate the noise I am getting from the inverter, and will give me much cleaner power, and also result in lower current draw on my car's electrical system. Efficiency is a good thing. It'll also free up the inverter for me to use elsewhere in the car. I've been toying with the idea of replacing my rear ashtray with a 110VAC outlet. :)

Welp, it's 5 after midnight; I think I should go to bed. I've been late to work every day this week. I don't get paid very well when I show up late. Besides, I think I've written enough to keep the rest of you awake (or maybe put you to sleep?) as it is. More later... when I think of it and have time.

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