http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/show...ghlight=camaro

this looks really interesting.. has anyone done this to the F-body?

scroll down to post #51


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meissensation is in the process currently...i think...

 

Yes, that's my car. Any questions about it? I have a worklog page on MP3car.com here, and my webpage is here.

 

I have an ancient TooCheapa (Toshiba) laptop that
will run on 12V and charge on 13.6. It would make a
swell replacement for the changer out back (and
almost be able to keep up with vehicle logging duty).
I also have a somewhat ill IBM Thinkpad, also 12V
charging voltage. I think picking up something like these
would ease the hassle a lot, you could probably put them
between the tracks under the passenger's seat and just
run a couple of wires. The IBM is fast enough (266MHz)
to keep up with logging and tuning duty as well. I use the
Simple4.5 MP3 player on my computers, it's compact and
will do playlist / shuffle etc.

I'd be interested to see an interface oriented to laptop
type installs, with just forward / back skip button (off
the steering wheel controls, and into the parallel port,
maybe) and no display; all I want is the tunes, lid
closed, when it's under the seat. And to have it boot
up & run the app with no keyboard fiddling.

 

All of that wouldn't be too hard to do, except for the sttering wheel controls. That would take some doing. Then a 250w inverter could supply your power. Beter yet, if the output of the laptop's power brick is 12v, it could be wired to a 12v power cable run from the battery. I believe under power options in the control panel in Windows, you can set the action of closing the lid to turn off, hibernate, standby, or ignore. I would set it to ignore, and set a low battery alarm. set the alarm at 95% battery, and then under "alarm action" set it to turn off computer. That way when power is lost from the inverter when the car is turned off, the laptop runs off battery until 95% is reached. Then it shuts off. When the car is started back up, you would have to push the power button on the laptop to turn it back on. Maybe you could get a docking station for the laptop, and extend it's power button, or maybe a better answer can be found here. in The steering wheel controls are a little bit tricky. I recommend you:
Plug this device, called an Ipac into your PS/2 keyboard port. Then break open your steering wheel controls, and solder individual 22ga wire pairs to each button. Route those wires through the steering column, into the dash, then connect them to the ipac. program the ipac to the keyboard keys you use for each keys function, and your'e done.The music player software can be set to be run as a shell (program starts as soon as windows loads) using a registry entry:
click start, then run, then typr REGEDIT. once in the registry editor, go to:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Policies\System]

then find the value Name: Shell
click on it, and change the value of explorer.exe to the full path that the executable file of your program is in, for example:
"c:/program files/sinple4.5/simple4.5.exe"
then reboot.
Windows will then boot your mp3 player instead of windows explorer.

Hope this helps.

 

I just need to hook mine up

 

How do you handle start up and shut down?

 

Its a great idea but with ipods getting cheap and having huge hard drives it seems the ipod route would be cheaper, faster and more reliable.

 

I'm just wiring a switch from the inverter to power up and down, but some poeple put a relay on their ign wire so it turns on when the car is on. as for the controls I just use a remote control. For anyone wanting to do this the best mobo's are mini itx they are tiny, and require minimul power

 

i've thought about that too BUT the only thing is that with a computer you can also install a version of HP Tuners for your car and alter your ECU or track a drag down the strip. or you can mess around with cameras to record videos while you're out on the highway or gravel parking lot.

 

My system uses a Mini-ITX Motherboard, and the "Intelligent" 90w power supply I have handles power-up, and shutdown. I have it set in windows to standby/resume when the power button is pushed. So, when I turn the car off, 5 seconds later, the power supply puts the computer into standby. When I get into the car, and start it, the power supply again "pushes the button" and 5 seconds later, the system resumes from standby. The system will sit with the car off in standby until the battery reaches 11vdc. when that happens, the power supply turns the computer off totally so it won't kill the battery. Then, when the car is started, the computer boots from scratch, taking about 30-35 seconds.

 

^^^^^ hmmmm I'll have to look into one of these where did you buy the power supply?

 

definately sweet. i love snootch's work. Im picking up a ford focus soon as my daily driver, and since i wanna keep my camaro kinda race oriented, i'm going for compu-car in the zx3

 

No no no! Don't do that. Get a PAC-SWX so that it will convert the steering wheel signals to an IR (infrared) signal. The get an IR reciever that plugs into the serial port or a USB version. Get any universal remote you want. Then get the software program Girder. It will seee the IR signal and you just tell it what you want it to do. play/pause, vol up, vol down, etc....

There's more details to it, but that is the basic idea.
Good parts store. http://www.mp3car.com/store/

 

^^^^^ yup yup

 

Geez, I forgot the main thing. I grouped together all the f-bodies I could find to help you guys out. Check it out here:
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=63949

 

Hey! I did that to my 2000 Focus when I had it, the computer and touchscreen was BADASS! but when I switched over to the LS1 I was only thinking SPEED in the 98 TA so I never got around to the electronic portion but yes, the screen fits perfectly in that slot