36 replies to this topic

[dave1324]

im planning on building a car pc for my mini but without breaking the bank..

it will be small, quiet, hidden (+ screen hidden), cheap obv & ofcoures had great audio output

whait ill be using:

intel atom 1.6Ghz cpu + motherboard bundle; £65 ebay
1gb Ram; £12 ebay
200GB 2.5" sata harddrive; £40 ebay
laptop dvd drive; around £20 ebay
120w car psu (pico psu); £30 ebay
mini usb keyboard; £13 ebay
8" touch screen lcd; £130 ebay
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround Sound 5.1 USB; £44 ebay

Total: £354

and u pay what £500? for a car pc with less performance

ok so how it will be hidden, using one of them custon dashboards the motherboard will have a custom housing and will be behind the dash and the screen will be on sliding rails just like a dvd headunit the keyboard will also be on sliding rails like a pc desk so when parked up the keyboard and screen go back into the dash so any chavs come along they dont see anything, the usb soundcard has subwoofer output so can go straight to an amp and the F&R can go to your headunit or to an amp the slimline laptop dvd drive will either be where the headunit is or underneath it depending on if i want to have a headunit or not and thats about it realy i will still have a glovebox on the dash so i can get to it easily

what do you think?

[smorg]

im planning on building a car pc for my mini but without breaking the bank..

it will be small, quiet, hidden (+ screen hidden), cheap obv & ofcoures had great audio output

whait ill be using:

intel atom 1.6Ghz cpu + motherboard bundle; £65 ebay
1gb Ram; £12 ebay
200GB 2.5" sata harddrive; £40 ebay
laptop dvd drive; around £20 ebay
120w car psu (pico psu); £30 ebay
mini usb keyboard; £13 ebay
8" touch screen lcd; £130 ebay
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround Sound 5.1 USB; £44 ebay

Total: £354

and u pay what £500? for a car pc with less performance

ok so how it will be hidden, using one of them custon dashboards the motherboard will have a custom housing and will be behind the dash and the screen will be on sliding rails just like a dvd headunit the keyboard will also be on sliding rails like a pc desk so when parked up the keyboard and screen go back into the dash so any chavs come along they dont see anything, the usb soundcard has subwoofer output so can go straight to an amp and the F&R can go to your headunit or to an amp the slimline laptop dvd drive will either be where the headunit is or underneath it depending on if i want to have a headunit or not and thats about it realy i will still have a glovebox on the dash so i can get to it easily

what do you think?

i dont know too much about what you are doing but an idea for mounting the motherboard could be to buy an old atx computer and cut out the mounting board for the motherboard to sit on which can be mounted just to make sure it dont short out

or you could buy a desktop case and mount that under one of the front seats then you have all your power buttons front usb slots etc on it

[Jimmy Hat]

Could buy one of those lil cute Compaq Deskpros off ebay, tuck it away somewhere like underneath your seat or in the boot if it doesn't leak, and wire in a remote power switch, wireless keyboard/mouse combo and cd drive mounted in a centre console? would go great with a touchscreen, and actually thats given me an idea now

Edited by Jimmy Hat, 05 December 2008 - 01:09 AM.

[Dan6061]

Why would you want a PC in your car? What's the actual benefit?
I'm not being sarcastic, i'm genuinely interested!

[buddylove]

Could set it up to be able to monitor your cars performance through a megajolt system. Also, if you add a wifi card, you could have internet access right in your car or set it up like a media center.

[buddylove]

Oh ya, also set it up with a gps system and have gps right in the car... Lots of opportunities

[dave1324]

Could set it up to be able to monitor your cars performance through a megajolt system. Also, if you add a wifi card, you could have internet access right in your car or set it up like a media center.

yep run diagnostics ect, if you get mobile broadband you can access the net anywhere in the world:P it uses satalites.

[Ro4chy]

I thought about this for a while but the problem with using it for a media centre is, if you're just popping down the shops but want to listen to the music you have to wait for the blimmin' pc to boot-up! Just struck me as it could be a bit of a pain in the arse?

[buddylove]

If you run it on Linux, it should boot pretty quick. Even some stripped down versions of XP can boot pretty quick.

[Deathrow]

My computer takes less than 30 seconds from pushing the button to being ready to work. I consider that pretty slow actually.

But my point, if your journey takes less time than it does for the PC to boot and you don't get to listen to music, then I say you should be walking it!

[insamoufonyx]

Wouldnt you need a shock proof hard drive?

[smorg]

Wouldnt you need a shock proof hard drive?

you mean solid state hard drive? they are very very expencive but the eeepc's (8" laptops) come with like a 6bg ss drive and i guss they are powerfull enough to anything the mini would need

[dave1324]

Wouldnt you need a shock proof hard drive?

not really you could use an ssd but yes there very expensive and very slow at reading & writing large portions of data, a standard hdd will do fine if it is moved very suddenly then the head will scratch the traces on the drive so if you hit a speedbump doing 30 it would probably damage it

[insamoufonyx]

mini's are bumpy over a stone! can see it ending badly lol, thats why car pc's are pricey. because they use the solid state ones

[yorkshirechris]

Could set it up to be able to monitor your cars performance through a megajolt system. Also, if you add a wifi card, you could have internet access right in your car or set it up like a media center.

yep run diagnostics ect, if you get mobile broadband you can access the net anywhere in the world:P it uses satalites.

It doesn't work anywhere in the world I spoke to a guy recently who had the mobile broadband in his city centre flat while he was waiting for his home broadband to be activated and he said the signal was terrible, and when he did get connected it was painfully slow...

Anyway, why would you want or at any point make use of internet access in your car?.. for mobile broadband, just get one of those new small style laptops and stick a mobile broadband pen into that and it'll do the same job for cheaper