ECU Tuning & Fuel Management - a PC in a car!!??!!

Hell yeah why not?? Ok so I was thinking today about how much those in-dash dvd monitors cost, a good one about a grand if not more. WTF!!?? So I decided being the computer geek I am that I was gonna configure a PC to fit in my Civic. How you say? Well some of you prolly have heard of a "barebone" system, these are very popular for the LAN party people, small sleek yet still powerful. So I did all the configuring and pricing and here is what it comes down to:

Barebone $149
Intel P4 3GHz $179
80Gb Harddrive $56
DVD/CD rom $100 ~ I don't count this in the total since I have a spare DVD burner laying around
DDR PC3200 1Gb $87
NVidia FX5200 $85
Keyboard w/ built in mouse $50
8" Touch screen monitor $235

Total: $841

Where would it go?? well the barebone could fit where the glovebox is with a few modifications and the monitor where the cup holder is (on a 7th gen). So there's my thoughts on buying an indash DVD/monitor. And for those with a programmable EMS you can configure your maps in your car.

Just consider the fact that the CD/DVD and the HDD in a PC are not very likely to survive very long. They are designed to be stationary.

They will be stationary. They have their own holders that don't leave much room for vibration and for added padding mount the PC on 1/2" rubber mat or something similar.

Forgot power... simple power inverter will do around 200W.

You might enjoy this: http://www.timekiller.org/carpc/
:D

not really a computer smart person what purpose would this serve besides having a pc in your car. sorry if question is dumb

Watch movies on long trips, if you're in a big city you could prolly "borrow" internet service from a wireless access point. If you have a programmable ECU there are PC based software programs to tune your fuel maps. You could hook up a webcam and tape your street encounters.

the webcam thing is cool the movie part will were out trust me. cause i was decidin to get a hondata system and it comes with a usb port that u can hook a laptop up to tune it and regulate jus wonderin what would be better

If you already own a good laptop I would just use that, but I was looking into a new laptop (for school purposes) and most are more than $1500, now if you are gonna buy a laptop for the main purpose of tuning your car why spend that when you can drop less on a perm. pc in your car.

ORIGINAL: Chimera02EX

They will be stationary. They have their own holders that don't leave much room for vibration and for added padding mount the PC on 1/2" rubber mat or something similar.

Forgot power... simple power inverter will do around 200W.


I think you misunderstood what I said. I'm a field engeneer for a company that fixes all kinds of computer equipment. The MOST an average HDD lasts in something like a locomotive is 6 months. And they are a pretty smooth ride. Your car will jerk, turn, jump and make all kinds of manuevers. High-end laptop HDD would be a better choice as they can actually "lift" heads from the disk surface if they sense an uncomfortable movement for them...

Here is why it would be really smart to do that. First off, the average indash dvd player runs 1k. also the rediculous screens that are 5 inches big are like $300. Thats already $1300. Now, music kegs and in car hard drives are outrageious. Some run upward to $5k easy. Think this... the average dell deal "back to school" notebook is running aroun 6- 7 hundred bucks with a built in dvd/cdrw writer and have at least 40 gigs with a 14" or bigger screen. They all support an extra monitor too. So, go to ebay, find your indash monitor for a deal and hook it up to the laptop. Grab a power inverter (avg. $30-$40) and plug it in. You can even get an rf modulator (fm transmitter) and hook it up to your headphone jack to your laptop and then run it to your head unit. If you got an AUX. input on the unit, more power to you.


Now, these days, if your connected to the internet and rip a cd, it will get all the song titles, albums, artist, AND EVEN THE DAMN PICTURE OF THE ALBUM COVER and sort it for you in your "my music" folder (for pc.. i dunno bout macs).

Take all that I have said and ponder on it.

IMO, it would be better just to buy a laptop. That way, you can take it in the car only when you want (no rip-offs), larger screen for watching DVD movies, you could upgrade it easy, and you can also use it in other places when not using it in the car.

High-end laptop HDD would be a better choice as they can actually "lift" heads from the disk surface if they sense an uncomfortable movement for them...

I'll have to look into that.

I can understand what you are saying if the PC is mounted to the floor or even worse just left on the floor but what I was thinking was building a "box" for it lining the box with a layer of soft rubber so it's a very snug fit and mounting the box in place of the glovebox, that way when the car bounces the PC will move with the car at the same rate causing less jerk.

I've been considering doing this for a while. Now that i have my own server at home that doubles as my PC, my laptop is freed up to do whatever. So i'll be whiping the hard drive clean, and doing some sort of "under the dash" install, running only a few programs. Mine will be more for tuning and what not than music, but i'm sure it will end up serving that purpose as well.

Anyone have any experience with some good programs?

Two words for you guys talking about HDD's wearing out from the motion:

solid state :D

Yeah I know, solid state hard drives of any appreciable size are really expensive, but being a computer geek myself I just wanted to put it out there. I really wish USB ports and digital media card readers were standard equipment in car stereos (actually I think the 06 EX with Navi does have a card reader)

A card reader, ohh good call, didn't even think about that.

Thanks!!!

ORIGINAL: Auto98EX

Two words for you guys talking about HDD's wearing out from the motion:

solid state :D

Yeah I know, solid state hard drives of any appreciable size are really expensive, but being a computer geek myself I just wanted to put it out there. I really wish USB ports and digital media card readers were standard equipment in car stereos (actually I think the 06 EX with Navi does have a card reader)



LOL...they don't live too long too. I just trashed two one gig flash drives...me being stupid, kept compiling my c++ apps while working on them...

I just spoke to a buddy of mine who has had a PC in his Integra for about 2 years now and has yet to experience a problem. Even so I've checked out the solid state and for the price of some of them I'd rather spend the money twice a year on reg hard drives. It'd still take about 15-20 years of buying 2 hdd's a year to equal the price of 1 2 gig solid state.

ORIGINAL: Forty04

Anyone have any experience with some good programs?

I know AEM has their own software, other than that only one I know about Uberdata.

ORIGINAL: Kolhoznik

ORIGINAL: Auto98EX

Two words for you guys talking about HDD's wearing out from the motion:

solid state :D

Yeah I know, solid state hard drives of any appreciable size are really expensive, but being a computer geek myself I just wanted to put it out there. I really wish USB ports and digital media card readers were standard equipment in car stereos (actually I think the 06 EX with Navi does have a card reader)



LOL...they don't live too long too. I just trashed two one gig flash drives...me being stupid, kept compiling my c++ apps while working on them...


Yeah but if all you do is load an OS on boot, then run everything from system memory, it should last quite a while. There are tons of Linux distros that would work for this, and I'm sure some enterprising people have found ways to do it with Windows (although none that I've heard of)

ORIGINAL: Chimera02EX

I just spoke to a buddy of mine who has had a PC in his Integra for about 2 years now and has yet to experience a problem. Even so I've checked out the solid state and for the price of some of them I'd rather spend the money twice a year on reg hard drives. It'd still take about 15-20 years of buying 2 hdd's a year to equal the price of 1 2 gig solid state.


LOL where the hell are you shopping? I got a 1 gig flash drive for 65 bucks.

Seriously though, if you really wanna save money, look for old drives in classifieds on computer forums. You can probably buy a dozen or so for less than a hundred bucks. Anything bigger than 5 gigs ought to be enough for Windows and a decent amount of apps. Maybe 10 gigs if you want to keep a bunch of music on there too.

Flash drives are great but Windows itself needs 4 Gbs to run. Soooo that means for a decent amount of apps and some music your looking at least 20 gigs. And the solid states I was looking at were not flash drives or usb memory sticks, they were solid state drives that are internal to the PC, those are major bucks. 2 Gbs was something like 1500.

Eh, I guess. If you're really serious about building a GOOD car PC on the cheap, you should be looking at using a Linux-based setup run off of a 512 MB - 1 GB CF card. The configuration would be a lot of work, but if you've got any geeky friends, they should be able to help, and the results would be well worth it.

But I just like to tinker, so that's just me :D