Car Computer install

So I finished my in car computer, got it installed. All in all I gotta say this is pretty damn cool. I hope I won't be flamed as a traitor, empeg will always have a place in my heart. I'll weigh the pros and cons of the new install.

Pros:
DVD (not that I'll be watching movies while rolling down the street), XM Radio, GPS, Full color Touch Screen, Radio integration, MP3's (of course), very cool interface, surround sound (well when I get a USB surround sound card that works). 200 gigs of frickin storage! Skinnable interface (thank you mediacar) Under 1000 bucks.

Cons:
Not as many MP3 search features as Empeg, actually now that I think about it there are no search features, the music functions are actually pretty basic as they are directory based. The GPS piece or pieces hasn't been developed fully and therefore has many glitches. Not as easy to remove from the car as empeg

Empeg will now be retired to my living room and either my spare or my main will be sold to recoupe costs.

Anyway here are a few pics.


That image kind of shows a huge glare, I need to clarify that this LCD is extremely readable in daytime.

Very cool. Couple of questions if you don't mind:

Where did you get your LCD? Brand/Model?
Is the LCD RGB VGA connected (i.e. not composite etc)
What are you using as the PC?

and finally

What type of car is that and is that a custom pod to hold the LCD for your car?

1000 bucks sounds pretty cheap given the hardware you have there.

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Where did you get your LCD? Brand/Model?

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The specs, brand and all that for the monitor I believe are covered here
It is VGA, and the PC is a Epiah M10000 Mini-ITX mobo and morex case. The car is an Acura RSX and no special pod or anything just a hacked up install kit.

Pretty sure that is a lilliput Monitor, (you can get them with or with out touch screen at www.digitalww.com and on ebay)

I had almost the same system built in my living room just never got around to installing it,

More info check out mp3car.com.

Yeah it's a lilliput, got it from ebay... why didnt you install yours? If you had the same setup thats kind of a large chunk of change to leave hanging out in your living room?

Like so many things, I am a spur of the mounment person, when I was getting rid of my alpine head unit to put back in a empeg I decided to build a car computer, so I rounded up all the parts, and build a proto-type it was a m5000 with 512m 40G and a lilliput touch screen I ran media engine on it, and was disapointed with how long it too to switch songs, 2 second avarge (sure it doesn't seem like much but when you are sorting through 200 or more songs in aplay list it was annoying), then I started having calabration issues with the touch screen and just gave up on it. now its a media player for home, and I have an empeg, in my car.

If the Lilliput would have been more stable and the 500 dollar price tag to fiberglass the monitor into the dash would have been smaller I might have installed it. Oh well,

I do stupid things like that, not married so I don't have the wife telling me not to spend money on toys, so I spend it,

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I ran media engine on it

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I tried media engine for about a day.... other then looking pretty I can't say I care for it at all, media car is fast fairly reliable and with the progress they've made integrating GPS makes for a nice well rounded piece of software.

As for the lilliput, honestly, I've been playing with this thing everyday for the last 3 months... hasn't started flaking out yet, I think I got one after all the ill effects worked themselves out, the issues like images burned in on the screen from the factory have stopped. Hopefully it'll keep going strong.

I was wondering if you could list all of the components in that configuration?

I have looked at the pics and know what a couple of things are, but not everything.

Just trying to put together a similar project for myself.

Sure,
Epiah M10000
Morex Case (can't remember the model)
512m PC2100 DDR
Panasonic Slim slot DVD-CDrw
Lilliput monitor
Opus 90 watt power supply
Sound Blaster Audigy USB soundcard (M-audio Sonica is in the picture, but it just acted way too flaky and I needed a optical in for the XM-PCR)
XM-PCR (added optical out)
Macegroup USB 2.0 External HD enclosure, with a 200gig drive.
Earthmate GPS
Fujitsu 30gig notebook drive

Software:
XP Pro, Mediacar, TouchXM, Mappoint, Cdex and the soundblaster software.

XP has actually amazed me with the hibernate feature, this thing powers down in about 15 seconds, and comes out of hibernation in close to 10 seconds. It hasn't screwed up yet...

XP has actually amazed me with the hibernate feature, this thing powers down in about 15 seconds, and comes out of hibernation in close to 10 seconds. It hasn't screwed up yet...


Are you sure you are using hibernate and not standby ? Just curious because my laptop takes much longer than that for hibernate but those times are about right for standby.

yup, hiberanate, being that it cuts the power and I can pull the unit from the car, plug it in inside and then resume. Actually it might take longer for it to get powered down, I haven't time that part, but basically I turn the ignition and normally by the time I get the trunk open it's down.

Lopan,

I know you don't have both the car computer AND the Empeg installed in your car, but perhaps you should take a look at this thing I recently finished http://strobos.cee.vt.edu/EMSC . You can test at your home where you can access your Empeg via ethernet. I am in the process of setting up a car computer similar to yours, except that I intend to use the Empeg as mass storage and sound card (I think it sounds great). However, the EMSC app can easily be made to work without the need for an Empeg at all, if there is demand for it. (Or if I come to think that replacing the Empeg with a decent sound card and a USB hard drive makes sense).

In any case, you may find that with this EMSC you'll have what amounts to an Empeg designed for a VGA screen, with some additional search and running order manipulation capabilities not found in the Empeg. Although it is labled alpha release, it should work without flaws. If you decide to check it out I would appreciate comments, suggestions, or a review.

damn you.... right when I finish up my fiberglass sub enclosure and get everything laid out just right, you go and give me software in which I can put yet another piece of electronics in my car.... great

Empeg might yet live again in my car... Thanks!

One question though, after reading through it all, is a keyboard needed at all? Being that I have no keyboard in the car, it's all touch based.... That might be a deal breaker

You can control it by using an IR (steering wheel) Remote. I'm not sure about a touchscreen (don't have access to one). Are the apps that recognize touches specially designed for that? Or do they pretty much see the touchscreen as a mouse? If so, it can be made to work (i'd need to put an hour or two into it)

well touchscreen just works as a mouse, anywhere you touch the screen is a single mouse click. So basically if you can do everything needed by clicking something on the screen it should be ok. Preferably it would have large finger sized buttons to ease clicking on a 7" lcd...

I see. Implementing mouse driven menus is trivial. So all you can do with menus will be available (actually I just need to create a means of bringing up the initial menu with a mouse, by just clicking anywhere). Interacting witht the search screen might require more, need to look into it further. Could designate regions of the screen to represent the left, up, right, and bottom buttons. I might just make these things happen soon... Damn, I thought I would be able to work on other things (but know you got me thinking...)

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I might just make these things happen soon...

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Cool... Keep us posted!

Check out my new fiberglass sub enclosure

also got a new amp and re-arranged things a bit...

Still need to tidy things up and clean up the wires but overall I think it's coming along nicely.

Do you have a link to the software you used I can't find it for some reason.

I think I found it

Thats it.... that software is fairly good, still a few small bugs to work out, I hope he releases a patch soon.

My biggest frustration now is with the creative soundblaster audigy.... the thing spikes the volume to 100% when coming out of hibernation. So you either have to remember to hit pause before you turn your car off or crap your pants when it starts back up... thats a creative issue though. I sent email to their tech support but won't hold my breath...

Anyone know of a magic application that monitors the hibernation state and adjusts the volume accordingly?

I played with it a little on my pc. Do you know what the difference is between select and select + ? I thought the latter would have been like append but both buttons perform the same function for me. Also is there some way to play one song no matter what I try it plays all the song is the folder.

Do you have something that puts it into hibernate when turing off the ignition or do you manually do that ?

I could see this being pretty neat but I want the ability to change the playlist on the fly.

Also what do you do for a radio ?

Oh yeah also can you elaborate on the problems with the m-audio ?

Do you know what the difference is between select and select + ?

As far as the difference between the select icons... I haven''t a clue, I normally go album by album anyway so I never really gave it much thought. But I can see where that kind of sucks for some.

Also is there some way to play one song no matter what I try it plays all the song is the folder.

I think this is a glitch, in the old version you could just drill down and click the song you wanted.

Do you have something that puts it into hibernate when turing off the ignition or do you manually do that ?

Yeah, my Opus power supply, when I turn the car off it sends a poweroff signal to the mobo (plugs into the power header on the itx board).

Also what do you do for a radio ?

Had a crappy d-link fm usb radio, worked ok, but since I purchased an xm-pcr with a digital/optical out I haven't really been listening to regular radio.

Thanks for the info. I like insert and append because I like to cue up several albums and do a shuffle or I will suddenly want to hear a certain song and not want to dump the entire playlist.

I wonder if anyone makes an am/fm pc tuner or maybe I could cram a head unit and that lcd into my dash somehow then I wouldn't have to use an amp either..

If your handy with a soldering iron you can get something like this

a writeup of how to cram a lilliput monitor in it here

You try Girder? It has events for OnStandby and OnStandbyResume for hibernation/standby/etc, and can adjust volume levels. One could probably program it to save the volume prior to hibernation and restore it on resume.

I'm building something similar and like the way the VNC viewer by Jules looks... But I'm in the same boat in that I'm using the touch screen. Has there been any progress on that?

Jemmi

I replied to your email regarding touchscreen support for EMSC (see this thread ), it should prove more useful to your setting than my modification of Empeg VNC. But to answer your question, nothing has been done yet. I want to verify from someone who has a touchscreen, that once the menu is brought up (pressing the down key or remote control button mapped to it), it can be navigated using the touchscreen.

P.S. Neither EMSC nor my mod of EmpegVNC work with v3 alphas.

Try using the kX project drivers (www.kxproject.com I believe). I don't remember having that problem with my Audigy, but using the kX drivers - while less user-friendly - certainly helped in other ways, and I Can only assume that bug wouldn't show up in kX either.

I actually tried those, but I'm guessing becuase it's USB, they don't work. Anyway creative updated the driver and it's all good. What really agitates me, is I lost the driver CD, ended up blowing away the PC, guess what, creative doesn't offer the driver for download. They only offer driver updates, you actually have to purchase a new driver CD, the website makes no mention of the drivers listed only being updates, so you figure it out the hard way then when you contact creative, thats when they hit you up to pay them for it. Ended up getting a driver disk off ebay, then finding the original driver disks a day after the transaction completed. It's that kind of crap that makes me start boycotting products, regardless of how great they are, if you can't even treat your customers with decency ya don't get my business... just my small rant.

I found that too with a creative modem I bought. I don't even use the cd normally I just go download the driver but not this time.

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I found that too with a creative modem I bought. I don't even use the cd normally I just go download the driver but not this time.

Was this recent? I bought the orginal Extigy and was amazed when drivers weren't available online. I figured it was because it was a somewhat unique product that might have contained things they couldn't redistribute easily. However, if it's just policy on their part, I'm going to need my own policy when it comes to buying creative gear.

Matthew