Hi All

Its been ages since i have done anything on the 2010 range rover in car pc project and i have deiced that i need some help from you guys out their to get the project moving again.

Problems i need assistance with:

Choosing the correct pc for in the car - anybody have any ideas? needs to be powerful enough to run windows 7 with as many onboard USB ports as possible, VGA for display, bluetooth, wifi etc..... Most importantly must be very power efficient and small

How to automatically power the PC on startup of car but to also project the cars battery from draining and auto shutdown. I want to try and make the system look as OEM as possible e.g. PC powers up with range rover logo on unlocking the car etc....

Any help or advice would be great, i want to get this project done and available for other people to use, but need to resolve these issues that have halted the project for too long!

Matt

I am a big fan of the Asus EEEPC range of nettops (daily use)

Something like an Asus EB1012 would be plenty good enough (Atom Dual core), v. low power usage, silent and small.

See my carpc thread in ICE regarding vbscripts for power management (although these were for a laptop, some of the same applies, but I cheated and used a button to turn it on )

Plenty of solutions on mp3car about power.

Using a laptop offers further advantages of running off its own battery when car is off...... .
Experience is the only genuine knowledge, but as time passes, I have forgotten more than I can remember
Volvo V70 P2 2006 2.4 Petrol 170bhp Estate SE
MG Midget Mk1 1962

Previous: L322 Range Rover TDV8 3.6 2008; L322 Range Rover TD6 3.0 2002; P38A Range Rover V8 1999

You'd need some sort of momentary relay for the power on. wired to ignition live, to replace the PC power on switch.

There are various instructons here -
http://www.the12volt.com/relays/page5.asp#ctm

You would of course need something to power off, or a more complex arangement to figure out if the thing was already on, before trying to turn it on again.

Asus isn't a bad idea - I've got a couple of eee901's waiting for me to get round to ebay as my kids now use iPads instead - they would be good and go for very little money - 3xUSB, VGA, SD slot, flash memory (not disc), bluetooth & wifi

The largest selection of DC-DC power supplies and start up / shut down controllers AFAIK is the MP3car.com shop. Did you want to avoid ordering from the US?

I picked up a couple of MICROSPACE® MPC-pONE commercial PCs quite inexpensively on ebay. They have integrated start up /shut down controllers and will run on less than 9v.
Have a look around - you may find a deal. 
RRC 2Dr, RRC 4Dr,
P38, and 2 L322s
(wife thinks I'm nuts - prob right, too)

Matt, I've got an asus eeeeepc hardly used if you are interested. Pm me if so.

Dolphinboy wrote:

Matt, I've got an asus eeeeepc hardly used if you are interested. Pm me if so.

Matt
Could you cheat and use something like a micro switch in the seat base that was bum activated when someone is sat in the drivers seat? [img]http://www.fuelly.com/driver/rob2529/range-rover[img/]
04, 4.4V8, Vogue Oslo Blue with LPG.
"You can sleep in your car, BUT you can't race your house!!!!"

If something can't be fixed with a hammer....... You have yourself an electrical fault!

hi matt,

this is the one i bought
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/110437932159;jse...26_rdc%3D1
but it was from a uk site,one of them car pc sites, it has adjustable sleep times, set my one to 5mins so if you switch off and run in to a shop it will still be live and the pc will not shut down when you get back in..

funny i put all my stuff in a box the other day as never managed to get past the switch programming..
dave V8 facelift Range Rover Autobiography 22" wheels.
1976 Harley Davidson Iron Head Sportster

ok after an entire day of researching and looking for ideas of using an asus eee box then contemplated on building a custom mini-itx machine the answer has been staring me right in the face all along i am going to use one of my HP Compaq D8200 ultra slim desktop computers i have spare at home it has a intel i5 cpu, 4gb ram, SSD hard drive, slot loading dvd and luckly it is powered by a 19v external PSU block which means i can use the 12v DC to 19v DC converter i found for powering the asus eee box idea i had. http://store.mp3car.com/Carnetix_CNX_P1900...wr-010.htm

So now i will be spending tomorrow transferring all the range rover software over to it and get it configured and working on the bench, need to order one of the 12v - 19v converters to then allow me to test it in the car.

If anyone know where i can buy one of these http://store.mp3car.com/Carnetix_CNX_P1900...wr-010.htm without having to order it from the US i would be very grateful!

** Dave **

I bought a M4 atx car power supply for the project last year but never got round to using it my thoughts now are a full atx computer is too big to fit in the range rovers tight space. All my stuff has been in boxes for about a year now and i have decided that i must finish the project i am getting far too many emails from other interested range rover drivers to let the project just fade away.

Matt

ok so i have spent the day installing windows 7 and the range rover software on to the PC i will be using in the car, and as always have hit a bit of a stumbling block When i originally designed the range rover software it was designed for a screen resolution of 1024 x 600 which is what the screen res of the first device i was going to use supported. Now i have come to use a different device it doesn't support the 1024 x 600 resolution. I have tried using powerstrip to create a custom resolution but the Intel HD graphics drivers dont allow you to do that.

Here is a pic of the system up and running showing the problem with the screen resolution issue.

Click image to enlarge

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I certainly can't add anything of a technical nature, so will make do with posting to show my support - a great project, looks like you can achieve some really useful functionality, keep going Matt! 2007 Zermatt Silver TDV8 Vogue SE - now sold but was a great car!

matt, i stopped the project due to the problems with the switches,have you overcome this, i got very close with the joycon unit but just could not get it right, V8 facelift Range Rover Autobiography 22" wheels.
1976 Harley Davidson Iron Head Sportster

Hi Dave, not overcome it yet - but i have found a little more info on the ardunio my plan to start with is to just get some standard buttons to work (not using the factory circuit board to start with) then once the software works with the standard buttons i will know the code works and i will try again to get the factory circuit boards to work.

My main aim at the moment is to rebuild the software in the bigger resolution to allow it to work on standard screens and to reduce the number of features available to start with. As it standards the software is made up of 46 separate menus with 119 individual image files which make it work so i want to drastically reduce this to simplify the coding behind the software.

I havent given up on it, I'm determined to get it finished asap!

Matt

here is my board, its a 2.2ghz with 1gig of ram, it is only 200mm by 200mm with one pci slot for the camera card,it has a full size atx plug so no probs with my car pc power supply



Admin note: this post has had its images recovered from a money grabbing photo hosting site and reinstated  V8 facelift Range Rover Autobiography 22" wheels.
1976 Harley Davidson Iron Head Sportster

daveo did you have any luck with the arduino chip I sent you?