snova031

Building a carputer in my HHR. Ordered 80% of the parts, ordering the rest next week. I don't think I've seen an HHR with a carputer yet

Let me explain my reasoning behind this-

My original intent was to install a double din in dash screen/dvd player. After doing some research, I came to the conclusion that building a car PC would work out to the same cost, but have so much more versatility over a standard screen. I will have full access to my music and movie library (a few hundred albums, about ~150 DVD's), wifi access, and GPS. It will also have a 7" in dash touchscreen :)

So I figured why not? Going to get audio via the on board sound card, and run the audio outputs to a line driver to give me a nice steady, high input voltage :)

I'm pretty good with PC's- I built my current PC about 3 months ago.

I'll be taking plenty of pics of the whole process...should be fun :)

captain howdy

I should have you build me one so I pretend my HHR is KITT from Knight Rider. Just kidding, that is way too much technology in the car for me. I'm not even really into putting video in a car, unless its maybe a backseat unit to amuse the kids. Now a nice stereo set up.......that's a different story! I can't wait to see how you project turns out and would like to see all that goes into it. I wouldn't even know where to begin on a project like that.

SIHHR

Would I would love to have that in my car. I've seen on cnet a couple of cars with computers installed. They used that mini mac machine 400 bucks is cheap for a CPU.

snova031

*UPDATE*

Got most of the parts in for my carputer. Waiting for the HDD, some cables, the screen, and the DC-DC PSU.

Hooked it up to my old HDD which I formatted, and my old monitor and PSU to load all the drivers and whatnot.




Hopefully I'll have everything up and running next week. Gonna pick up a slim DVD drive since the one I bought is too deep for where I wanted to put it (going to mount it in the tray on top of the center dash).

DJNateGnau

Good luck bro, Sounds fun!

captain howdy

How does the power supply hook up in a vehicle? Where are you going to hide all of that stuff? I guess I'll have to wait and see. Your project fascinates me.

SIHHR

Yeah I'm curious of the outcome too. Can you please do a detailed How-to guide and be very direct how the power is run and how wires at hiden. Are you going to use the auxiliary glove box for any cpu parts?

snova031

Well, there are 2 ways to do it.

You can use a regular PSU (power supply- like the one in my picture), and run that through an inverter. But, there are serious downsides to doing it that way- for one, it's an inverter...they like to induce noise (static, hisses, etc.). They are also extremely inefficient, and, they don't really protect the computer from voltage dips/spikes (starting a car, dead battery, etc.).

I'm getting what's called a DC-DC powersupply. Don't know if you know this or not, but all computers have parts that run off of 12v. They also run off of 5v and 3v, which the powersupply will supply to those parts. Basically a DC-DC PSU takes the cars input voltage (12v), and regulates it to prevent the computer from seeing those dips and spikes. It acts just like a regular powersupply otherwise, except that it has 12v input, as opposed to 115v (your home outlet). The DC-DC PSU that I'm getting also has what's called a startup/shutdown controller. When the car shuts off, it will let you choose how your computer will react- you can either have it shut down, go into hibernate, or standby, for various durations which you can set.

As far as mounting, it's either going to go behind the rear quarter panel (where you have your upgraded stereo packages amp/subwoofer), or under the trunkfloor next to the battery (most likely ditching the spare).

I've also got a USB Hub on the way, which is a remote USB unit with 4 USB ports, which will be located in the glovebox. Want to plug in a digi cam? Ipod? I'll be able to plug in any USB device from my front seat :).

Also going to have a wifi/bluetooth adaptor, allowing me to surf the web (wherever there's an available signal), and network with my home PC and grab music/movies/etc. off of it.

snova031

You mean the compartment on top of the dash? That's where the DVD drive will be mounted. The passenger glovebox will house the USB Hub.

There aren't much as far as cables that need to be ran when you think about it-

-VGA video input from CPU to screen in dash
-USB from CPU to screen in dash
-power/ground/acc from screen to CPU power supply
-speaker wires from radio harness to amp(s) in the back
-accessory wire from BCM in fusepanel to power supply
-USB extention from CPU to USB hub in glovebox
-power/ground for amp(s) in trunk (power supply has a remote line out for external amps)
-RCA line outputs from computer's sound card to line driver to amp(s)

I think that just about covers it lol

snova031

Oh, I'll be sure to take plenty of pictures for you guys :)