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Inexpensive Dashboard PC

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the everyone-needs-a-project dept.

Kristian - Dreamless writes "Wanting to war drive with style? The other day I surfed the web to find a free dash pc solution to my car since the commercial ones cost around 2000-2500$ here in Denmark. I found DashPC.com and I must say this looks promising a very nice GUI and the features seems to be endless: Navigation with War driving, Multimedia and so on. Requirements? Low cost pc and a dash LCD display."

12 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Great Idea, but will still cost a pretty penny. by pholower · · Score: 4, Informative
    This is a fantastic idea, assuming you can afford the cost of an LCD screen (you will probably want touch capability) and a cheap pc. (Most likely something based on the Mini-ITX board because space in a car doesn't come cheap.)

    Another site with a plethora of information on doing this is MP3car.com If you have the time, I recommend going through the site. Tons of information about the kind of power supply you will need (obviously a DC~DC converter).

    I want one myself!

    --
    -- johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
  2. Re:Down by xie · · Score: 5, Funny

    It didn't even last 2mins ... perhaps hitting refresh over and over will help?

  3. another link by iffer · · Score: 5, Informative

    www.dashpc.com/index2.php seems to be working.

  4. Dangerous Distraction? by vudufixit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wrote a pithy note to Forbes five years ago in reply to a story about WinCE-based car computers. What I said still holds true, "Some people can handle any technology while they're on the road and still drive, and some can't. It's the process of sorting them out that frightens me." On a lighter note, it sure changes the meaning of "crashing"

  5. Basic hardware suggestions by Chairboy · · Score: 5, Informative

    For those of y'all just thinking about putting a computer in a car for the first time, here are some answers to basic questions.

    Currently, the most popular motherboard for Carputers is the Epia M10000. It's full featured and super low power consumption, runs about $160 US.
    http://robots.net/article/983.html

    For the monitor, the most popular now is the Lilliput 7" VGA touchscreen. It sells for $300ish with shipping on eBay new from a lot of vendors.
    http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y47312DE7 (eBay search)

    The best power supply is from Opussolutions.com and is a smart DC-DC power supply with automatic standby handling for when you car turns off and on and can survive the dreaded voltage drop when you crank the engine.
    http://www.mp3car.com/store/

    For GPS, anything works, but USB GPS 'mice' are popular because they are small and powered over USB.
    http://makeashorterlink.com/?O18324DE7 (an eBay search)

    For connecting to your OBD-II interface on your car, scantool.net and obddiagnostics.com sell cheap serial interfaces.
    http://scantool.net/
    http://www.obdd iagnostics.com

    Hope this helps, and for more answers, visit www.mp3car.com and be sure to read the forums. Lots of great info.

  6. Slashdotted by frostbane · · Score: 5, Informative

    The site is already down but there is an example of it in a VW: here

  7. Re:Down by bushboy · · Score: 4, Funny

    Perhaps the car hosting the server crashed...

    --
    A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
  8. Mirror by Zardus · · Score: 4, Funny

    Site's buckling. I managed to make a mirror.

    --
    You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
  9. Re:What of the display for this? by bigbaloney · · Score: 4, Funny

    You mean, like a crosshair? ;-)

  10. Again, Slashdot misses the mark... by GoRK · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Slashdot tends to link car-pc stuff as if it's new and different from time to time, and they always link to some fringe stuff like one particular piece of software or one person's particular (usually fairly hackish) installation. They have actually linked to the dashpc project before -- when the interface was built in perl/tk and barely worked! (Actually it's still pretty hard to install and make work -- I'd say it's at least as hard to install as MythTV) Anyway, the reality is that there are hundreds or even thousands of computer projects driving around out there, and there are many possibilities for what one can do on any type of budget from an old 486 embedded board with a LCD display that plays MP3's to a full-on LAN of fast pc's for backseat passengers to play games.

    The best resource I found when I started looking into car-pc stuff were the message boards at MP3Car.com. They have sections for hardware, software, cabling, audio, gps, networking, OBD-II, etc. There are thousands of users on there, and everyone is very helpful. The archives contain a lot of good information that became invaluable to me when I was building my own car-pc project. It is currently going through a new overhaul where I am fixing some problems with the original design and functionality and adding some new stuff like OBD-II and reversing camera as well.

  11. Re:Nice by tinrobot · · Score: 5, Funny

    Perhaps it's in a tunnel.

  12. Re:Can I get a dash prompt here? by mroch · · Score: 4, Informative

    He certainly is a /.er: http://www.dashpc.com/show_picture.php?id=2275