start to almost finish pics , dash pieces will be picked up tomorrow form paint shop ( i am not a painter -and i want a picasso)

here is a brief discription of what i did and time and money spent :

time from start to finish : 1 month

hours spent on epoxy, glassing, spot putty,molding, drilling ,cutting and sanding : aprox 100 hours

total cost estimate: 1200 us dollars

work farmed out: paint (cost) 75.00 us dollars

components:
via m1000 micro atx main board (1 giger)
30 gig used laptop drive
laptop dvd rom drive
512 k corsair ram
opus 150 power supply (bad ___ i must say)
liliput 7 inch touch screen (also bad ___)
usb wifi adapter (forgot the brand)
usb rf mini keyboard (forgot the brand 50 bucks on line)

all the moulding welding and install i did myself (everything but paint work) pics of that tomorrow)










laptop hard drive in homemade mount via mig welder with IDE convert device attached



almost done sanding

test fit and wet sanded with 320 and reprimed and repeated process over and over...

map pocket houses after market head



hacking up factory switch panel

moulded dvd rom/cd drive (used out of a laptop) where factory switch panel was a converter to make this IDE was used also



test fit

switch panel...

usb access


mobo wired and installed

 

Very nice job so far. Looks good

 

awesome.

 

that looks cool as hell. now i want a carputer.

 

Why do you want one?

 

nice work

 

That's a really nice setup. I like the way you installed the monitor housing.

 

even though it is cool to say you have a pc in your car it is actually very practical , all your music on your hard drive, wifi navigaton obd2 control and monitoring and as you can see from the pics there are software programs made to to run in front of windows (called front ends) with large buttons to control all of this with a touchscreen

 

bump

 

very clean--me likes
I have this same setup I WAS going to install
i am building a faster SFF--can't game on an ITX
I gotta get my frag-on.....
but the 1ghz Via is perfect for most media
congrats

 

is that color the Stock TCM? I was considering doing several of my interior parts in TCM or matching BOP.

Setup looks nice, but I want to build a new home PC first... then the carputer... maybe next winter.

 

That looks good.

 

Very Clean and Very Nice.

 

Looks clean as hell.. I like it. The DVD rom drive integration, and usb integration is sick.. Mad props for creativity and originality.. I hate to steal people's ideas, but when they are this good, it's unavoidable..

A few quick questions for you, as I am considering undertaking a similar project..

How do you get the computer's sounds to play through your car audio?
How is the sound quality using that method?
Honestly, how is the picture quality on the lilliput screen?

Thanks for posting pics of a great set-up

 

enough said!

 

friggin awesome! Man i think i will do something similar (don't really want to hack up the dash too much when it's brand new, ordering xB soon so i'll have to wait till it's a lil used for this lol). Damn that is awesome though. You just have a line out going to your head unit for the music? Also, that touch screen, does the touching only work with certain programs, or for anything on Windows? Also, how did you connect the monitor to the mobo? This would be soooo awesome to have! That app you have to run your music, where did u get that? It runs on XP right?

 

great job!

 

the monitor is a liliput touch screen, it is supposed to be one of the better ones out there, the touch overlay dimms the screen a bit but it is more than bight enough to see in any situation as far as the program i am playing the music out of it it a "front end" made just for running a setup like this and yes it works with xb or any windows based o.s. as far as the audio it sound cd quality to me , very good, i have a aux in on my head unit and control the volume via touch screen , almost using the head unit ike an amp, and yes that is tcm the dash parts are painted with

if you are plannning on doing somthing like this check out www.mp3car.com
and www.centrafuse.com

peace

 

thanks for the links! so i guess the monitors have VGA out from what i read, a perfect excuse for me to build a new desktop and use the parts from the old one in the xB. I wonder where i'm going to put it all tho ...

For your PSU, do u have it ran into an inverter, or is it a special Power Supply for 12v?

So that front-end is free? that's awesome!

Is there any place that sells the center console peice so i can have a backup one? (for the xB i mean)

 

do not ... and i repeat do not run a inverter, it will just be a waste of your efforts, i ran a opus 12 volt 150 w inverter, it is about 150.00 but well worth the money , has a trigger to push the power button when you cycle the ignition and it is clean power... and yes the front end is free if you would like to beta test it go to www.centrafuse.com