IN Car PC

I mentioned this in another thread but thought I'd bring it out into the open for general discussion.

I'm thinking of building an in car PC for mine. as I have a pre facelift car I'll be looking to mount a touchscreen somewhere suitable unless its a dead easy and not silly price to upgrade to the later console and embed a screen into that.

My initial idea is to use one of the latest Netbooks as the base and run something like MythTV as a media centre app. I'm thinking of fitting a second screen in the back for my daughter so I can enable video etc with a headphone socket for audio( in this case maybe keeping the original stereo and wiring it such that the headphoen socket could be isolated so I can listen to the radio whilst she watches videos etc)

Anyone (apart from Ian who responded in the other thread) done anything similar?

[Botang]

As I mentioned in the other thread I have a CarPC so may be able to help a bit

First of all you will need a proper power regulator to stabilise the power supply and look after the startup/shutdown aspects of the pc. I have a Carnetix one which has been spot on, don't be tepted by the regulators hat just look like a circuit board they really are as crap as they look.

Next up your going to need some kind of screen. I have a lilliput 7" touchscreen that again I have been happy with. Mine is an older model so you can benefit from some new advances in the technology but basicly they are brighter than they used to be and there are versions that are transreflective to minimise any reflections. In our cars they are not really needed until you open the sunroof.

You are obviously going to need a carputer, they all seem to be a fairly similar spec and are purpose built, I'm sure you could use an old laptop but I'm not sure if its really worth it. I have my pc mounted in the glovebox so that I dont have to run lots of cabling. It all works fine and gives all the functions of windows such as wireless networking which is handy at times for transferring data to the pc if nothing else.

I have a wireless keyboard but very rarely use it as I can control everything easily via the touchscreen.

This brings me onto the front end software. There are various ones to choose from I like roadrunner (or ride runner as its now known) it does the job and has had lots of cleaverer people than me working on it to add loads of functionality. I use the Simplistique skin as I like its simple easy to use interface, Digital FX seems good too but looks a bit more complicated to me.

As for Navigation I'm trying Garmin Mobile PC together with an externally mounted USB GPS Aerial which again is a nice interface to use.

For the sound I output the sound from the pc via an audio jack and into the headunit, which then distributes it through my amplifiers/speakers. There are various ways of doing it but this makes it like an I-pod connection which is fairly simple.

I'll sort some more pictures out tomorrow as I'm just about to head off to Anfield and but it'll show how easy it is to operate now with access to as many albums as your hard drive can take, I have about 70Gb of music on there at the moment.

These are a bit outdated but it'll help as a guide.

Stealth Mode


Boot Up


Windows XP

out of interest where did all the ventilation go? just blanked off?

[Botang]

I intended to blank it, but never got round to it so there is extra cooling for the back of the radio now!

route into the glove box for some processor cooling :-) (less its a water cooled mega PC!)