New toy for the car

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whiterabbit06

whiterabbit06

Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill?
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I just got a bunch of stuff in the mail today. I decided to put a computer in the car for music movies and internet. It's an AMD Sempron 2800+, 512mb DDR ram, 40gb HDD (operating system), 200gb HDD (music/movies), DVD/CD RW and an 8 inch LCD touch screen. I'm using my blackberry for internet. It's not broadband but I don't feel like paying for an aircard and the service.

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Well in my car the passenger side airbag has a snap in pannel and behind the airbag there is like a deep cubby hole that's big enough to fit the board in. I'll just use brackets to secure the board in the hole and then make some brackets for the screen and dvd burner. When it all gets put in there and tightened down so it doesn't come out, I'm going to mould fiberglass around the drive and screen and fit it to the opening. I'm gonna try to make it as hard as possible to steal. I was doing some looking around and some people were doing test of temps inside a car and they said that the air got as hot as 149f-150f on a 110f day. I'm not too worried about the electronics because the cpu max temp is a little over 70c which is about 160f and once the computer starts and I get inside it should cool down to safe temps. The power supply has an auto on/off feature that turns the computer on when you turn the car on and shuts down the computer when I turn the car off or when the battery gets below 11.2v.
 
I would consider adding a ventilation port or duct. I wouldn't be concerned about the CPU as much as the hard drives, they grenade really fast in high temps.
 
How are you addressing vibration?
 
I'm assuming you are talking about vibration in the hard drives. I'm using rubber gromets with the mounting screws. I'm not expecting to really have any problems with vibration though.

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Might switch to a laptop hard drive. They are built to handle vibration and bumps..


But that brings about the question: Why not just buy a laptop?
 
I already had the motherboard and the 40gb and I wasn't doing anything with it. I have a netbook, but I wanted something more permanent. I've always got a bunch of computer parts laying around. I was gonna use a 17" screen out of an old laptop i have but it is too long for that space. I spent $20 on the 200gb, $150 on the screen and $30 on the power supply. so a total of $200 so far.
 
An update I got the glovebox out because I need to fix it and I'm going to put usb ports in it for the computer. I took out the airbag and started to test fit everything.

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I think I'm going to mount the hard drives here on a bracket and tap into the a/c vent to cool them off.

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That looks sweet. For internet needs, check out Clearwire. They provide wireless internet anywhere in you area. They are the first 4G network. Sprint bought like 51% of their stock, so they claim to be the first 4G network. Check em out and see if they are in your area yet. I don't know where you live, but I'm in Vegas and they just started up here. My brother works for them and their internet is actually pretty good. They're completely wireless. You could use it for your car, and your house at the same time.

I like how you're tapping in to the AC to cool, that's a pretty good idea. Hope it comes out nice, keep us informed!
 
PDX was one of the first areas to have the new Clearwire service, and from the gizmodo writeup it was very good where the signal existed.
 
cool beans man. props.

i want to see the progress too...

eventually i want to throw in a mini-itx setup or a netbook as mentioned above for thermal reasons and the whole setup will be around 200 bucks as well mninus monitor.
 
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