I am doing a compter install in my car this weekend. Plan on starting it tomorrow afternoon as all the equipment I ordered will be in by then. The specs are as follows:

Computer:
My Gateway 450SX4 Laptop
P4 1.6 GHz
512 MB RAM
32 MB Video RAM
12X DVD Drive
Windows XP Professional

Interface:
7" MP3Car.com MTS12000 Touchscreen VGA Monitor
Eventually a wireless mouse and keyboard for when I need to to realley techinical things to it

I plan on powering my laptop via a car adapter for the laptop plugged into an add-a-circuit with a female cigarette lighter end on the other side of the add-a-circuit. This way I don't have to use the cigarette adapter in the car at all and I can keep the power stuff in the trunk. The mount location for the Laptop wil be underneath the passenger seat. The power for the monitor will be via an add-a-circuit in the engine bay's fuse bax (there's already a hole in the firewall from my alarm system, so I will just follow that). I will hook that into an Opus 15w power supply so I can keep spikes in the electrical system from screwing up the VGA touchscreen. I will integrate with the sound system via Sony tape adapter and find a way to minimalize the wire exposure and/or eliminate it. I would buy a CD changer AUX-IN but I'm not spending $80 for use for three weeks. I may eventualy buy the fiber-op AUX-IN for the 99 later on for $250. But I don't know yet. I will run my DVD drive in the lower part of the center console with a USB enclosure and eventually buy a sot load to make loading a CD/DVD a little easier. There will be a power switch for manual power up mounted in the upper part of the center console. My friend came up with a genius way of trggering power-up through the modem port. A USB hub will enable me to use all of the USB peripherals I will need.

GPS will be available through a Destinator/Map Monkey combo and a Holux USB GPS antenna. I've already tested this out and it's ****ing phenominal. It's accuracy is stupendous and it quickly corrects itself when you make a wrong turn and will often give you an alternate route when you make a wrong turn. Just like OEM navigation in most cars. It also have voice guided directions, points of interest, a restaurant index, and all the other bells and whistles.

The capabilites of the system immediately after install will include DVD playback, Navigation, and MP3. Later on I will add Sirius Satellite Radio and a slimline DVD/CDRW slot-load combo drive, but it's gonna be a little while before I do those things. I will do a semi temporary install in this car and take plenty of pics for you guys to see both installations. It will, however, be a pretty install with minimal wire exposure. I will most likely do a MUCH better and more permanent install in the 99 280 Sport later next month after I get it from Chicago. The cost to me so far is under $700. Wish me luck guys!

 

that's pretty cool.

i'd like to do something on a different level . . .
i wish someone would make an adapter for the canbus so that it's not just an aux input, but a rather generic adapter, for example usb 2.0 to canbus fiber or something like that. with different PHYs (like fiber or copper) and different protocols, like canbus, etc.
then i'd invest some time into writing some software to be able to do several things with it . . . like playing audio, making a nice bluetooth phone interface, navigation, etc, etc.
maybe even engine and tranny tuning
i imagine a small embedded solution like a SoC running linux, low power, etc.

i'm a software guy, if there are any hardware guys here willing to invest time . . . i've seen some chipsets around, etc, so it's certainly possible to do. question is how much is the hardware going to cost, i haven't seen any development boards that could be ordered to try things out

 

Sounds like a lot of fun work..
Look at this pc..

http://www.touchpc.net/touchpc/default.htm


Good luck

/kim

 

That's kinda nice, but it's too big and I would need to fab to fit it. The whole point in doing this the way I'm doing it is I don't have to fab anything and it will be able to go from new car to new car when needed without a whole lot of effort. Doing the install today, I will post pics soon, probably as early as Sunday.

 

Ok guys, here are the first pics of the install:

This is where we put the radio.






This is where we put the laptop in this car (It's go0ing in the trun in the '99. It's kind of ghetto-rigged in there, but it'll do for now.





This is where we put the inverter and concealed the power wires for the rigged- cigarette lighter adapter. I have a car adapter for the laptop coming next week so we can take the inverter completely out of the equation.



Ths is everything wired up for testing in the trunk




These photos shows how we ran the wire(s) that needed to go to the trunk. There a small hole in the upper right corner in the run (after you've pulled the lining back) that goes through into the back seat.





Here you can see how we wired the power for the laptop and the screen in the trunk's fuse box. Here's the negative ground for the add-a-fuse.



Here's the female cigarette lighter adapter wired into the add-a-fuse.



Here's the add-a-fuse for the power for the laptop. We addded the one for the monitor later in the same fuse box. The trunk is way easier for wiring power b/c you don't have to go through the firewall.





Heres the VGA cable for the monitor and the USB for the touchscreen run into the upper DIN slot where the head unit used to be.



Here's us tucking the VGA cable the same way we did all the others: power, USB, etc.



Here you can see everything's clean and concealed.



The run out of the center console was a bit trickier to find, but we just used the same track that the stock (optional) MErcedes phone wiring used...







...and moved it around

 

I do so apologize for the big pics, if you want to see them easily, just go to: http://thekremlin.net/~davis/ and you can see them there and save them if you like.

Essentially, the install went smooth. It took us the longest on Fri., we were up till 5:00 AM, because we had to solve all the little problems that came up. Now, when we swtich the equipment to the 99 in three weeks it will take us maybe three hours total, if that. This, in retrospect was actually a pretty easy install, but I would NOT reccomend doing it alone. We had three heads rather than one or two on this one. We ran into a few compications with the relocation of the radio. We couldn't find a dash kit that would fit where the coin tray was and so we basically cut the entire backing off the coin tray and just used it as a front fascia so it would flush mount. It sits pretty secure in there with the metal sleeve we put over it, but I don't think we would've really even needed that, so if you don't have it, don't worry about it. As you can see, we pretty much concealed the wire for the tape adapter, and the sound isn't bad at all. Hell it sounds pretty damn good when it's Equalized right with your software. Right now I noticed it sounds like I'm kinda in a tin can, so I have to jack with it, but that's probably due to something I did. after we hooked it up it souded fine, but then I had to mount it and I think I might've done something to screw with the sond when I did, so the tape adapter overall does sound ok. I'm SERIOUSLY thinking about droppping the money for the fiber-op interface though, just to clean it all up, but we'll see. I still have to get a Firewire card for my laptop so I can run the DVD enclosure in the center console. I will take pics of this part when we do it, hoever it's not more difficult than what's illisratied above. I would highly reccomend Firewire for you're enclosure as it has enough power to run a slimline DVD/CDRW drive without external power (which means you only have to run one cord out of the center console and you don't have to find another way to power it.).

Since it absolutely annoys the crap out of me when people say they did something and then don't tell you exactly how they did it, if anyone has any questions, I will be happy to take a picture and explain it to you if it's not well enough explained up there in my previus post. By the way, the power wires to the monitor up front are just medium gauge speaker wire. It is wired DIRECTLY into the add-a-circuit, no plugs needed. We will take other and probably better pics in three weeks when we do the 99 C 280 Sport.

 

So i quess u are enjoing the navigation ..

congrats..

/kim

 

Yeah I am really enjoying that. We actually moved the install into the trunk yesterday, it was an all-around better idea.

 

Ok guys, we did a little modification to the install yesterday. We moved it into the trunk and changed the interface to a front-end call Roadrunner and I have to say it is AWESOME! My friend is brushing up on his VB skills so he's gonna make me a custom interface with a Mercedes theme. I will post it when he's finished. Check it out.

 

its better in the trunk..
And yes a MB InterFace would be cool..

/kim

 

Now I am working on a bax to mount the laptop in so it won't get crushed when I put other things in the trunk. I will post pics of that when I figure it out.

 

Here it is in the new 99 C 280 Sport. I am still waiting on my MP3 adapter to hook it to the sound system. I sold my other motorized monitor to a friend and went with a Xenarc non-motorized. I like the construction of the Xenarc better and it's easier to operate the HVAC controls with this one cause I don't have to put it completely away, I can just move it down with one hand and hit the buttons to adjust the HVAC.

 

One guy in England did the same install but used the faceplate of the old radio so that when it is folded away it still looks like a Benz radio in the dash.

Then when he doesnt use it .... looks like the before pic.

 

I now have updated pics with everything working in the car. This is the complete and final results with my deck and and everything.