GCAdidas13 10+ year member
heh.
Hi.
It's been a while, right? Like two years since I've even been on the forum. Really it's because I haven't done anything related to car audio in a long while.
Well I guess last summer I built a iPod dock into the center vent of my dashboard, and maybe a little before that I installed a pair of B&C 8NDL1s or something like that. But seriously, I've been completely content with my car audio system for a long time now.
I decided to get back into the Forum here because I'll be showing up to whatever meet happens this early summer in central Ohio. My frontstage looks horrible (unfinished fiberglassing) but for some reason I've convinced myself that I want to put a computer into my car.
So basically I bought a Samsung Q1U-EL (the latest one, with the built-in keyboard) and spent a few hours optimizing it, then a few more hours wiring a few things in my car to better accompany the computer. I've named it Glados as a reference to the Portal video game, and I've made a background to suit the theme.
The computer came with Vista installed, so I attempted to manage using that for about four days before deciding to downgrade to XP Tablet edition. So I "obtained" that and it's installing now. I tried everything to get it to perform well but it would only play about 5 minutes of video then stall for a while, I figure it's best to just not worry about it and downgrade to XP.
So here's how I'll be using it. I'm going to be using it constantly for music via iTunes, the occasional video via VLC Media Player on long car trips, and within a couple months I'd like to put a GPS transmitter on it. I have an electronic atlas to install and all of my music will be on a 160GB Aluratek hard drive which means that I can hook it up to any PC with iTunes and listen to music via iTunes. And of course I'll use it for various other things.
Wiring-wise I'm going to have power from an old (yet solid) Radioshack 140W inverter. I also have a Vector Slim 100W inverter that I have to use to supply a bit of extra power to the hard drive. From the UMPC, there will be one USB cable that runs to an unpowered USB hub (hence the extra HD power needed), and the hub will connect to the HD, the iPod dock, and potential GPS receiver. Because the only USB ports are on the sides, I may do a small hardware hack to get a USB port to stick out the back. The audio signal wire will come out of the top of the unit then straight to my Alpine PXAH700 with controller, bypassing the need for a head unit completely, so my Alpine CDA9830 will be coming out.
As you might be able to tell, iTunes has extremely small buttons when placed on a 7" screen running 1024x600 resolution. Because the UMPC is a touchscreen, the default buttons are waaay too small to poke at with my finger. So I'll be using a program called iRemote, which allows custom skins that let you make any image into the program window and then define what happens when you click wherever on the window. Here's my background image (including size reference) that I made from scratch, and you know what each button does.
I'm going to be machining my own mounting bracket to place this unit directly in the double-din dash of my Camry.
Sorry for the long post, it's only so long because I'm waiting on XP to install... here's the TL;DR version
Hi, I'm back, I got a UltraMobilePC and I'm putting it in my car.
It's been a while, right? Like two years since I've even been on the forum. Really it's because I haven't done anything related to car audio in a long while.
Well I guess last summer I built a iPod dock into the center vent of my dashboard, and maybe a little before that I installed a pair of B&C 8NDL1s or something like that. But seriously, I've been completely content with my car audio system for a long time now.
I decided to get back into the Forum here because I'll be showing up to whatever meet happens this early summer in central Ohio. My frontstage looks horrible (unfinished fiberglassing) but for some reason I've convinced myself that I want to put a computer into my car.
So basically I bought a Samsung Q1U-EL (the latest one, with the built-in keyboard) and spent a few hours optimizing it, then a few more hours wiring a few things in my car to better accompany the computer. I've named it Glados as a reference to the Portal video game, and I've made a background to suit the theme.
The computer came with Vista installed, so I attempted to manage using that for about four days before deciding to downgrade to XP Tablet edition. So I "obtained" that and it's installing now. I tried everything to get it to perform well but it would only play about 5 minutes of video then stall for a while, I figure it's best to just not worry about it and downgrade to XP.
So here's how I'll be using it. I'm going to be using it constantly for music via iTunes, the occasional video via VLC Media Player on long car trips, and within a couple months I'd like to put a GPS transmitter on it. I have an electronic atlas to install and all of my music will be on a 160GB Aluratek hard drive which means that I can hook it up to any PC with iTunes and listen to music via iTunes. And of course I'll use it for various other things.
Wiring-wise I'm going to have power from an old (yet solid) Radioshack 140W inverter. I also have a Vector Slim 100W inverter that I have to use to supply a bit of extra power to the hard drive. From the UMPC, there will be one USB cable that runs to an unpowered USB hub (hence the extra HD power needed), and the hub will connect to the HD, the iPod dock, and potential GPS receiver. Because the only USB ports are on the sides, I may do a small hardware hack to get a USB port to stick out the back. The audio signal wire will come out of the top of the unit then straight to my Alpine PXAH700 with controller, bypassing the need for a head unit completely, so my Alpine CDA9830 will be coming out.
As you might be able to tell, iTunes has extremely small buttons when placed on a 7" screen running 1024x600 resolution. Because the UMPC is a touchscreen, the default buttons are waaay too small to poke at with my finger. So I'll be using a program called iRemote, which allows custom skins that let you make any image into the program window and then define what happens when you click wherever on the window. Here's my background image (including size reference) that I made from scratch, and you know what each button does.
I'm going to be machining my own mounting bracket to place this unit directly in the double-din dash of my Camry.
Sorry for the long post, it's only so long because I'm waiting on XP to install... here's the TL;DR version
Hi, I'm back, I got a UltraMobilePC and I'm putting it in my car.
