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I do grant you that solar panels are expensive. But it could be a worthwhile expense.

My approach is that everything that I want to keep running when the power goes out should run from either 12V or 24V. I have a 24VDC system. Two 12V batteries in series for 24V, and a third 12V battery which is kept charged by a DC/DC converter. (This was mostly because I had surplus batteries; 12V alone would be fine for many purposes. My earlier attempt was with a pair of 6V golf-cart batteries in series. These are capable of storing a lot of energy, and they last a long time if well taken care of, but they do consume water.) The 24V system is charged by a pair of large solar panels on the roof, which I got used on ebay. I'm a little underwhelmed though with the current that I'm getting out of them, so suggest you should get new ones with the best efficiency you can find. Today I was getting a peak of 3 amps charge current. That's only 72 watts, and it is not providing that much all day long, either. Consequently my "secondary" grid-powered battery charger is providing most of the charging. I have 2 computers running on batteries now, and together they draw about 4 amps continuously from the 24V supply. One is an Athlon with an Orion 24V ATX power supply, and the other is a fanless Epia 600, supposedly low power, but it is drawing a bit over 2 amps off the 12V supply (which translates to a bit over 1 amp off the 24V supply). The Epia has one of these, which gives me the flexibility to run from either voltage.

CRTs are line-powered but LCDs typically run from a lower voltage. Right now I have two big CRTs for my main system and they are power hogs, and generate a lot of heat. Some day I will upgrade, and I think it's possible to find LCDs which have wall-wart power supplies rather than built-in. I would bet some of them are 12V too. So then I will be set - I could do any kind of computing I like even during a power outage. A laptop is also a good solution, but those usually charge from less standard voltages, like 16 or 18. It's unfortunate.

12V lighting is easy, because RVers use so much of it. You can find 12V fluorescent lights, halogen track lights (but that's kindof wasteful), LED lights etc. In an extended power outage I would turn off one or both of the computers, and then the 24V battery would keep the 12V battery charged, and I could have lighting indefinitely as the solar panels charge the 24V battery every day. The kitchen has a drop ceiling with several 4' grid-powered fluorescent lights already. I added a 2' 12V powered RV light. It is well hidden above the translucent ceiling panels, and provides enough light to get by.

For my computer rack I made a panel with efficient switching DC/DC converters that supply 5V and 3.3V as well, for things that would otherwise have been powered by inefficient "wall wart" power supplies. Just consolidating all of those to a single source should save a lot of power. The panel has a bunch of these connectors. I use red & black for 12V, blue & black for 24V, orange & black for 5V and yellow & black for 3.3V. (I debated about whether to follow the PC power supply color convention, but the ham radio guys have already chosen red for 12V, and that doesn't match.) I plan to use brown for any other odd voltage that I may need later; I notice a lot of things running from 7.5V, for instance (hubs and scanners and stuff like that). I used some panel-mount holders like these to mount them on a rack panel. If you don't want to make your own p

Mini-box make some neato little ITX boxes which you could hook up to any number of storage solutions. Past that, I've had good success with Mini-ITX boards. I get the cases from Web-tronics, as the MITX ones are very, very expensive -- they're meant to make your MITX look like a CD player, pretty much, and I can do more without having to worry about cosmetics. MiniBox (above) sells snap-in MITX power supplies ranging from 60w to 200w. For the extra cool factor, use a Xenarc display or use something 'headless', e.g., LCDProc and Crystalfontz. (As I remember, the MiniBoxes come with their own little displays.)

You are badly abusing the term "ignition". Ignition refers to spark. In other words, this is NOT repeat NOT an ignition module, and has nothing whatsoever to do with ignition systems.

Clearly you do not understand jack shit about automotive electrical. That's okay, most slashdotters know about as much about that subject as they do about how to pick up women without a fork lift. Allow me to enlighten you.

In your typical automobile you have an ignition switch with several positions. The ones they all have are off, run, and start. Some vehicles, especially older ones with points ignitions but also more modern cars, also have an "acc" setting. This is the same as the "run" setting except that it does not energize the ignition system which is responsible for spark.

Generally speaking, when the switch is in any position but off, there is continuity between the positive battery terminal and the accessory power circuits. The exception is when the switch is turned to start - the ignition system is active, the starter motor is activated (well actually the starter solenoid is activated, which supplies power to the starter) and most non-lighting accessory circuits are actually turned off. This is the reason you need some kind of special power-handling capabilities for your in-car computer. If it turns on when the power turns on then it's going to turn off when the key gets turned all the way to start, and then turned back on when it returns to run.

Speaking of which, we now return you to your regularly scheduled wankfest. Just remember, the ITPS has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with ignition. It's a power regulator and a timer, NOTHING MORE. It's a control circuit that will tell your onboard computer to come up several seconds after the car is started, and turn off several seconds after it's stopped.

did you even look at the ITPS??

I think the big question here is Did you even look at the ITPS??

From the Link I provided:
The ITPS performs several timing routines and takes actions as follows:
1) Ignition=OFF. Nothing happens.

2) Ignition=ON. ITPS waits for 3-4 seconds then turns on the main 12V rail. This provides enough time for battery levels to reach a stable output. After another 1 second the MCU sends an "ON" signal to the motherboard via the 2 wires connected to the motherboard's ON/OFF pins. The motherboard will turn ON and your system should start booting.

3) Ignition=ON during driving: Nothing happens. Your computer will remain ON.

4) Ignition=OFF. IPTS waits for about 5 seconds and then it turns the motherboard OFF by sending a signal to the motherboard's ON/OFF switch. Your computer should turn off gracefully (shutdown procedure). During this time, power will still be available for your PC to perform shutdown.

5) Ignition=OFF after 5 seconds. Power will still be provided for another 45 seconds, long enough for most soft shutdown processes. In the event where the shutdown process is hanging, power will be shut down hard, turning off your computer's main power source to prevent battery drain.

6) ITPS will go to step 1, until ignition is tuned ON again.

As you can see, ignition control of your computer system. No magical wireless faries required...

You go buy an M100 with an ITPS for ignition control. Then you go download MediaEngine or another interface of your choice at MP3car.com. Finally, go buy your Lilliput 7" TFT touchscreen on eBay.

If you're into self installs and whatnot this gives you a lot more flexibility at less cost.

You go buy an M100 with an ITPS for ignition control. Then you go download MediaEngine or another interface of your choice at MP3car.com. Finally, go buy your Lilliput 7" TFT touchscreen on eBay.

If you're into self installs and whatnot this gives you a lot more flexibility at less cost.

I looked into that the other day and found the MINI-itx cards to be ideal for this project. First of all they're very small, second they don't consume much power. I found a nice power simulator and noticed that with the EPIA 5000 I might be able to get 20W even in Network Mode.

$145 Fanless 600 MHz motherboard and processor
$55 12V Power converter
$25 12V Power adapter
Free (own one), otherwise ~$42 or ~$80 for 512MB, or $178 for 2.2GB if you really want to go nuts.
$20 Compact Flash to IDE adapter
$216 1GB PC2100 RAM for VIA EPIA-M
$60 Aluminium Micro-ATX case; rip out the PSU
$62 80GB Seagate Barracuda IVOptional cause if your like me you store lots of junk... (quietest 5,400/7,200 RPM disk they make), set to aggressively spin down when not accessing your p*rn, mp3, software, etc. Collection:

Total: $583
Completely silent PC: Priceless

Not the fastest server on earth, but faster than my p166 POS running Linux just fine; would completely silent (no fans) or at least it is when you're not accessing your p*rn, mp3, software, etc., collection if you go with the HDD. Only pain in the *** would be using syslinux to boot... and of course I don't know about using a RAM disk to run the system, and CF might take all the writes and rerwites over lord only knows how much use... but it's the start of an idea I've been kicking around...

Would be an interesting project though..

$145 Fanless 600 MHz motherboard and processor
$55 12V Power converter
$25 12V Power adapter
Free (own one), otherwise ~$42 or ~$80 for 512MB, or $178 for 2.2GB if you really want to go nuts.
$20 Compact Flash to IDE adapter
$216 1GB PC2100 RAM for VIA EPIA-M
$60 Aluminium Micro-ATX case; rip out the PSU
$62 80GB Seagate Barracuda IVOptional cause if your like me you store lots of junk... (quietest 5,400/7,200 RPM disk they make), set to aggressively spin down when not accessing your p*rn, mp3, software, etc. Collection:

Total: $583
Completely silent PC: Priceless

Not the fastest server on earth, but faster than my p166 POS running Linux just fine; would completely silent (no fans) or at least it is when you're not accessing your p*rn, mp3, software, etc., collection if you go with the HDD. Only pain in the *** would be using syslinux to boot... and of course I don't know about using a RAM disk to run the system, and CF might take all the writes and rerwites over lord only knows how much use... but it's the start of an idea I've been kicking around...

Would be an interesting project though..

$145 Fanless 600 MHz motherboard and processor
$55 12V Power converter
$25 12V Power adapter
Free (own one), otherwise ~$42 or ~$80 for 512MB, or $178 for 2.2GB if you really want to go nuts.
$20 Compact Flash to IDE adapter
$216 1GB PC2100 RAM for VIA EPIA-M
$60 Aluminium Micro-ATX case; rip out the PSU
$62 80GB Seagate Barracuda IVOptional cause if your like me you store lots of junk... (quietest 5,400/7,200 RPM disk they make), set to aggressively spin down when not accessing your p*rn, mp3, software, etc. Collection:

Total: $583
Completely silent PC: Priceless

Not the fastest server on earth, but faster than my p166 POS running Linux just fine; would completely silent (no fans) or at least it is when you're not accessing your p*rn, mp3, software, etc., collection if you go with the HDD. Only pain in the *** would be using syslinux to boot... and of course I don't know about using a RAM disk to run the system, and CF might take all the writes and rerwites over lord only knows how much use... but it's the start of an idea I've been kicking around...

Would be an interesting project though..

I know this was a joke.. but the original poster was correct. To adapt the ATX (DC) power input on the board to a simple DC power supply, you need an adapter.

There was even one linked in the original article about building the picture frame: http://mini-box.com/pw-60.htm

Fanless cases running VIA EPIA chipsets and cpus have been available for some time and are quite useful, especially when running operating systems that allow one to stick a huge monitor in front of them, a keyboard, a 3-button mouse and connect to the massively parralel machines in the quite noisy, but lovely air conditioned, server room.

I can't run Quake on one of these, but then again it's research we're talking about -- if I wanted games I'd buy a PS2.

The only fan I have is, funnily enough, on my video card.

i just got a mini powersupply for christmas because my old powersupply and fans were too noisy? Hmm, too many late night programming sessions i'm assuming?

Timothy, you may be interested in the PW-60, available at http://mini-box.com/. The Oggbox guy has used it directly in his car without an inverter and hasn't had too many troubles. From what i understand he's not the only one who's got it in his car. One cool thing about Mini-ITX is if you build it into an appropriately sized enclosure it will fit into a stock car stereo space, so you don't even need to have a cradle or put it in your trunk or anything. Have a look at the C-134 case or wait a few weeks and go back to mini-box.com - they're making a tiny case with an LCD and button controls on the front panel.

Mini-ITX is a revolution for me. It's flexible enough to be used as a sub-laptop-sized mini-PC... Silent, smooth, and pretty snappy for office apps and multimedia. Or put it in a slightly larger box with a GeForce4 and maybe a soundcard or TV tuner card for high-quality gaming and multimedia. Remember it's much more important for gaming that you have a decent graphics card than a fast CPU. Mini-ITX rocks :-)

Try this one www.mini-box.com
This power supply is designed for mini-itx has power brick, runs on 12v DC. It's small and depending on your itx motherboard it can plug right in with no cables.

Another excellent power supply, especially for Mini-ITX systems, is this:
http://www.mini-box.com/pw-60.htm
Small, inexpensive, and enough to power the board and a hard drive.

This works with all iterations of the EPIA platform and will happily use the power supply that comes with a Cubid (common mini-ITX factor case about the size of a 1" 3 ring binder) case. No need for a fan, so it's totally silent.