meissen

Well, here I am looking at winter approaching fast, and alas no carPC installed yet. I had hoped to have it installed by end of January 2005. In any case, I just thought I'd give an update since I used to always post information about it here. Turns out I have to buy an entire new screen/touchscreen combination.

The LCD screen that I have, although it says Tashiba, the company will not recognize the fact that I have a screen of theirs, nor will they give me any specs on how their plug works. According to them, the screen was "probably" made specifically for the company that made the kiosk PC in the first place.

The touchscreen glass is from 3m, and while they gave me tons of spec sheets, the hardware controller that the touchscreen plugs into was proprietary from the kiosk PC company as well, and thus no paperwork on that.

Unfortunately, the kiosk PC company will not acknowledge the existance of these computers because they are not their property anymore. 3m suggested finding an electrical engineer and maybe he/she would be able to reverse engineer the plugs and thus make the stuff work with the motherboard. IMO, that's just way too much **** to go through for something that might not work, and I know I'd have to pay the engineer so uh.. no thanks.

There's 8" liliput monitors on ebay for ~199.99-249.99, so I'll probably go with one of those. It's smaller, so that presents the next problem. The bezel is now too big for the screen. I'm thinking about either entirely remaking the bezel, -or- modifying the bezel slightly to hold the screen, a DVD-rom, and the bracket the Via Epia motherboard came with that has two extra USB plugs on it. Don't know yet if that'll all fit, but if not, can always go back to the idea of creating an entirely new bezel.

In any case, since I have to basically start from scratch with nothing more than a motherboard, I'm finally going to be able to upgrade the carPC's OS to WinXP. This is very beneficial, because now instead of shutting the computer down every time the car stops running, XP will hibernate. Also, XP is just overall a hell of a lot better than Win9x.

In any case, I have the carPC up and running on my desk right now, so I'm setting the goal right now: Installed and working by end of the year. That gives me 3 months. Theoretically, all I'm going to need is the Liliput 8" touchscreen, and *maybe* a powersupply. Here's a pic of the carPC running on my desk.


Edit: It just cracks me up that if I stacked the motherboard, the power supply that I'm using, and the harddrive ontop of eachother, the *WHOLE* computer is half the width of a standard keyboard, and would only be less than a foot tall.

archemedes

you may want to check http://www.mouser.com/?handler=data....s=SField&N=416
I have an account with them so I can order it if you can't.I don't know if they have exactly what you want, but it's worth a shot (especially if it's cheaper)

meissen

Thank you, Steve. That link helps *A LOT*

Edit: Well, the touchscreen parts are significantly cheaper, but the LCD display is $400, which is significantly more expensive Go figure. On a serious note, Steve, if you have an account with them, I'd highly suggest expanding your electronics store to selling LCD touch panels. They go for a lot more than that on ebay.

archemedes

I was going to, but ebay has me limited to ebay motors only (unless I pay them $400 a month for teh top store crap)

meissen

LCD touchpanel screens for automotive electronics, I've seen people selling it on ebay motors before

archemedes

I have a message to tehm about unblocking me

camaro94

I think you can get ot done. Good luck with it

meissen

Been installing software all day today, geez. XP wanted to be gay and not allow me to just share folders on my wireless-networked desktop so I could access it on the wired-networked carPC and transfer my mp3s over and such. I had to go into the carPC's "Shared Docs" and then copy the files directly to there -- but it took me awhile to figure that much out! Now I'm just installing all the software to get the frontend program running, which will power all the programs from one nice screen.

Side note, I just sold the old carPC motherboard, as well as the LCD screen and touchscreen since I definitely can't use it on the new motherboard, was going to trash it but then I went onto mp3car.com and I had a private message from 9:30pm today (this was at like 10pm) asking if I wanted to sell the stuff! Cha-ching! Made $70ish and wasn't even trying.

camaro94

cool

slider

meissenation, I have been thinking about installing a carPC as well. I was just wondering what frontend software are you going to install?

meissen

Not sure. I've been downloading frontends off mp3car.com, so far I've downloaded FrodoPlayer, MediaEngine, and RoadRunner. I've liked RoadRunner and Media Engine, FrodoPlayer was good and stable but it was kinda basic.

meissen

Well, my dad is uber cool. He understands the situation I'm in and how badly I want to get the carPC in and working. So, he went on ebay and bought me a 7" liliput touchscreen. SO... once that arrives, I have to set that all up, and figure out how I'm going to power it, maybe order a power supply, and then it'll be time for install baby.

Mike Jones

iTrader: (1)

Wow that's cool, there's nothing better than having a dad that loves cars as much as you do.

archemedes

if you need a power inverter let me know I have a few pretty cheap

meissen

Yeah, I truthfully don't know who takes more pride in my car, my dad or myself. He has my business cards and passes them out whenever anyone mentions a Camaro or Firebird. He also really likes helping out with my car because it reminds him of "back in the day" when he used to customize cars. I guess he did an entirely custom interior in his old chevy hotrod that he had, including pleated suede door panels or something