Where's all this traffic coming from?

I've just been checking the logs for the carpc website, and I'm amazed at the amount of traffic that it's still generating, even though I haven't updated for some time. The top 100 hits come from a dozen countries, and links fron sites in languages that I can't read. God bless the interweb.

The main reason for the dry up of updates is because the carpc is now out of the car, having been replaced with an Alpine 7998 deck. I miss the GPS, and the volume of music, but with new kiddy I didn't have time for the constant tweaking and maintenance that comes with a CarPC. However, I've moved my attention now to my new Home Theatre PC (naturally). It's been years in the talking, and now that I've found a case that I'm willing to have in the lounge, the tweaking has started again, although now it's tweaking that I can do later in the evening and in the comfort of the lounge room.

So - that means that the CarPC rig is all for sale. It's probably easier if you're in Sydney, so that I can take you through all the bits and pieces, but an interstate sale is fine as well.

I'll have some photo's up shortly, although feel free to email me if you're interested.

New Feedback section

On other news, there's a new feedback/guestbook section for those that feel compelled to interact with strangers on the internet.

To coin a Bloodhound Gang phrase, We appreciate your input. It even does smilies.

Another Sydney meet

We're planning another meet for mp3car.com members in Sydney, you'll find the details being discussed in this thread.

Details at this stage are:

* Sunday 4 September at 2pm
* Somewhere in the inner west

Meddler and I are off this weekend to scout for suitable locations. The last meet was arranged by our personally forwarding the specifics of the location to known members of MP3Car.com, primarily to offer security. We understand that members don't want the general public knowing what is in their cars.

As a player in the car audio scene for over 10 years, and having lost sound systems before, I understand completely.

If there is a better method available - we're all ears.

GPS back on line

Following the lead and the instructions found in this thread on MP3Car.com, I managed to get the GPS back up and running. Of course this would have been more useful three weeks ago when I was running all over Sydney buying baby stuff. Hm.

Now that's all running nicely, I can start experimenting with the new GPS software released in the last couple of months. Nice.

Overdue update

It's been a while since the last update. Essentially, everything has been running really smoothly, and there isn't a great deal to report. Well, there is that issue with the GPS which seems to forget about the drivers every now and then, which makes the touchscreen mouse freak out.

I'm still using FrodoPlayer as my main frontend system, and I've added in 033L's Gamma Control software, which is really simple and effective, and means that I can stick with the darker skin that I prefer the look of.

I'd love to create a skin that is specific to my exact needs, but I just don't have the art skills. I must get around to updating the site with the photo's of the new installation, and rolling out the site update.

The plans for the reinstallation for the boot have been accelerated, as it appears that boot space is now at a premium, as we're shortly going to need to transport baby related equipment. Cool - stealth sub!

Sydney members of MP3Car.com met up today to display their creative efforts. The installations ran the whole spectrum from completed (one with a mototrised 19" monitor in the boot, to an installation in a cardboard box (complete with ZipLock quantities of stamps attached!). The photo's when posted, will be available here.

Sydney MP3Car.com meet coming soon

Spent some time this afternoon out scoping for a site for the first Sydney MP3Car.com meet. If you're interested in attending, contact me via the forums in the Sydney Meet thread, and I'll forward you the details. We've had interest from ten or so people, and at time of writing we have three definites. It's always good to be able to have a sticky at someone else's efforts.

Got the remolded screen back frm the painters today. I haven't gotten around to putting together the photo's of the new installation, because the job for tonight is to get the screen in the car so that we're all set up for the 15 hour drive to Adelaide tomorrow morning.

Audio gear installed

All the pre-work has been completed. The only thing that I wasn't comfortable
with was running the speaker cabling through from the car to the doors -
I couldn't see a way to get the cables into the factory tubing. Marty wasn't
available and I'm working to a deadline, so a quick ring-around netted
me a car audio shop with some time available. The three hours I spent at the shop while the car-audio guys made the baffles and installed the speakers and cabling was spent by me completing the million and one other little tasks:

• Installing and powering the USB hub under the dash;


• Installing the GPS device;


• Installing the polished fuse holder under the hood to complete mains
  power for the CarPC and the audio equipment;


• Installing the distribution blocks for powering the CarPC, and audio
  equipment;


• etc :-)

The last couple of weeks have been spent completing the rebuild of the car PC into it's new case. It all fits in there, but it doesn't look as cool as the acrylic one. This time, I spent time preparing all the wiring for power, switching, sound and video, by creating looms for everything before I even look at the car, so all I need to do this weekend is get it all shoved in the car.

Gain screen arrived, but I've been too busy to play with it. Crappy weekend weather meant that I had the opportunity to build the entire setup on the bench including the new screen.

Remember that bit where I was serious about not buying a touch-screen. That didn't last very long!

I've been trialling software available on mp3car.com, and there are some great applications there which do mostly everything I need. It's very different controlling the machine using a touch screen rather than a mouse and remote, so there's a lot of learning going on at the moment.

I just hope that I have the chance to install everything in the new car before the christmas road trip.

New car!

Old car was old. We thought it would be cheaper to have an old car, but sometimes it isn't. The Mazda MX6 came complete with 4 wheel steering, and as soon as that light came on and the rear steering errored on me, it was back to the hunt.

We picked up the new car today.

Further FLAC research

Following on from my comments regarding FLAC yesterday, I performed some testing today, attempting to be as objective as possible.

You can find the results of my testing here. One thing that I failed to mention in that testing - relative quality between the lossless and the lossy compressions. As I mentioned, I was using my dodgy little computer speakers, so it's a little hard to tell at the moment. I'll be doing some objective testing on that when the system is installed into the car.

Added some links and stuff to the Resources page.

Realised that I'm either too old or too lazy to finish the job. So I found an installer for the Car Audio gear (Hi Marty!). Seems that Marty is even fussier than I am (which I thought was unlikely, but it's a good thing!), so great things should result.

Began doing some research on FLAC - I don't want the encoding of the music to be a limiting factor in the quest for sound quality. On the other hand, drives are cheap and getting cheaper. There's always the option of ripping my collection again and leaving them all as WAV files :-). I'm not sure on that yet.

I'll be splitting the site to cover the old car and the new one - updates to come.

Work on the new box continues. I made some effort in figuring out how to solder (!), so big multi-pin connectors capable of carrying enough current were purchased during the week. This should help stop the installation looking like an explosion in a spaghetti factory. This also allows me the ability to route LED's and controllers for the box (reset and power) to the front of the car, should they be required.

Software evaluation continues. I'm down to the choice of three applications, and it all comes down to interface layout and ability to interface with the new remote. The difference between my system and most others is that I refuse to go down the touchscreen route.

Added the resources page to the site. This page holds drivers and bits and pieces that I've used in building and configuring the PC.

After the to-ing and fro-ing about what sort of car to buy, a decision was made late last year, and a car purchased. It's taken me this long to commit to liking the new one, and as a result, the rebuild of the CarPC was only begun last night. A new case was purchased late last year (I'd needed something that was a little shallower).

Installation of the bulk of the audio equipment took place over the christmas break, however this time I'll be using an installer for the finer details - I seem to get lazier as I get older :-)

During the 'uninstalled' period, I purchased a new RF remote from Carplayer.com - and today I uploaded a copy of a very small test application.

Naturally, many photo's to be replaced and updated as the new installation progresses.

An interview with Livewire, the technology liftout from the Australian Fairfax papers was published today. All four contributors are or have been regulars on www.mp3car.com. I'm one of them!

Pulled the CarPC out of the car today. It always takes me a little while to recover all the hardware and the cabling from a car to return it to stock, so it's best to start the process a little early. New car has been picked out, and now it's just a waiting game...

I recieved the replacement parts for the screen a couple of weeks ago, and carefully repaired it. Unfortunately, I didn't get the opportunity to test the new 7" screen prior to uninstalling from the car. I hope to bench test it and include some photo's shortly. This is due to the fact that the fascia on the front of the 7" screen is slightly larger than DIN size, meaning that either a modification to the screen or the car would be required. It didn't seem worth it given that the car is due to be sold.

New keyboard!

See the hardware section for the new keyboard.

New screen arrives. All is not peachy.

Received the new 7" screen from DigitalWW. Unfortunately, it arrived broken. A couple of emails back and forth, and the replacement parts were on the way. Thanks Armen.

Completed text for the installation page; began detailing the software page.

Got more hits today than I typically get in a week!

A trip to visit friends and family in Newcastle (two hours north of Sydney), and having an understanding wife (she drove!) meant that I had a solid trip to fiddle about with Otto (as the car PC has been named), and get the GPS up and running for the first time. After finding the right COM port, everything burst into life, and I gazed in wonder as a map of a road that I've driven a couple of hundred times rolled out before me on my little screen. The wonder of it all.

My driver did lose her cool an hour or so later when the fixed speed camera warning was triggered by the GPS in Ourimbah, with a wav file yelling "SLOW DOWN, BUDDY!". Priceless.

Took some photo's of the installation in it's current state. Still some tidying up to be done.

A late start to the day, and working at my own laconic pace rather than
at the mercy of fading daylight, things progressed smoothly. I've added
a page detailing the installation;
further photo's and diagrams to be added next weekend when I can get the
car out in the sunlight.

Enough stuffing around! A refreshing Christmas holiday got me all enthused to get the project completed, so off I go to a friends to finalise the software and complete the installation. What I expected to be a couple of minor adjustments to the software involved some pretty heavy customisation so that all the buttons on the remote worked exactly as I expect. The software was re-compiled once every ten minutes for about 6 hours until it was perfect :-)

The software page is intentionally blank until I've had a chance to really get it bedded down; on top of that - it's not my software. Further detail to follow when I've documented it completely, and doing it the justice that it deserves.

Installation was begun, and then abandoned at 8.30pm - seems that things take a little longer when you're rushing :-|

New screen ordered

Ordered a 7" in-dash widescreen. W00t! When it arrives, and if I like it, I'll add a hyperlink :-)

Gave up on XP embedded. I'm not the geek I thought I was! There are too many other things to be fussy about at this stage without adding this to the list of woes.

Started playing with Visual Basic to build the controls for the D-Link USB Radio. Discovered that there is a lot that I don't know about Visual Basic.

Began research regarding use of XP Embedded for the operating system, as it allows compilation of XP of less than 70Mb, rather than the std XP Pro installation size of 1.08Gb, thereby giving me more music space. More research required...

Very busy day!

• Tested the power supply, and removed unnecessary leads


• Accidently murdered a perfectly good AT power supply. Curse Dell
  for their non-standard implementation of 'standards'


• Received and installed shutdown controller


• Determined shutdown methodology


• Installed the PCB from a D-Link USB Radio


• Received the exe and the source for control software; Research begun
  regarding the integration of the USB radio into the control software


• Loaded all the data for the GPS

CarPC v1 website launch

Optimised and uploaded all photos to the site. Realised that it was probably quicker to build the computer for the car than to document the process.

Busy day. Between other more human duties, managed to do the following:

• Began layout for this site


• Modified the slide mechanism for the lid, and final sizing to the
  lid of the enclosure to suit


• Cut air hole for processor fan

Case actually completed. Slide mechanism for the lid completed.

Case mainly finished - OS installation and configuration begins.

Acrylic purchased - the build of the case begins. Bought a dremel as well for cutting those tricky bits.

VIA EPIA motherboard purchased. Concern that I've bitten off more than I can chew with this one begins to set in.

Registered as a member of the bulletin board at mp3car.com. Promptly forget password for my user site.