I've seen a few of you with computer's in your car, i have a question, how do you convert the monitor to A/V???...i've looked for a converter but they dont seem to make them, i guess my only choice is to add a video card with A/V hookups....any other ideas???....thanks guys!!

 

Most of the carputers are based of the VIA Mini-ITX board which has S-Video or Video RCA output connector. So you can connect it to your monitor. OR you can get a videocard that had S-Video out. That is the easiest/best way to go. There are ways to convert VGA/Monitor signal to S-Video/RCA, but you will have to buy extra external convertors.

e-mail me minh7144@yahoo.com if you need more info

 

For those who have carputers/laptops, where did you mount the power inverters? I was thinking of mounting it under the passenger side dash, but I'm afraid when I use the heater, the inverter will overheat. Any suggestions?

 

mount the inverter in the trunk. lots of room in there

 

Friend of mine used one of these in his TL:
http://www.converters.tv/products/co...erters/40.html

Last time I saw it it the video looked very washed out and the text was hard to read, but we took a few measurements with an osciliscope and it appeared to be driving the RGB channels at a higher voltage level than the factory Nav unit. He contacted the mfgr of the converter unit, and they suggested a few resistors on the board to change. He says it looks pretty good now (I haven't seen it myself though).

Looks to be a good solution if you don't mind putting in a little work. I am probably going to pick one up when I get around to doing the whole carputer thing. I am still in the process of reverse engineering the databus protocol from the touchscreen so I can use that as an input to control the computer. I am kind of stalled on this right now, I have made some decent headway with the help of a few kind souls from the internet however I'm unable to find a source for the chips that alpine used in the units (they are made by NEC). For more info see my other thread:

https://acurazine.com/forums/ramblings-12/possum-i-caught-last-night-76274/

I don't know if I'm going to bother with the computer in the car if I can't make it work off of the touchscreen. Kind of seems like a halfassed job to me if I have to use a remote control or some sort of conventional pointing device (mouse/trackball/touchpad). I just won't be happy with it anyother way, so I don't want to invest any $$$ untill I'm sure I have all the pieces worked out.

Dave

 

Just to make sure...dave i know this isnt your way you want to do it, but, if i wanted to i could take a normal computer, add a wireless mouse and keyboard, and just add a video card with an a/v output and that will connect just as well, correct or am i missing important parts into making this whole idea come to life

p.s. my goal is to add a wireless card so i can drive up to "hot spots" and be on the net

 

If you take a video card with a/v output you will need some way to connect that video output to the factory navi screen. There are all sorts of ways to do this, just see the navi to video sticky at the top of the electronics forum. I haven't been keeping up on this recently, but it's pretty much a solved problem.

It may not look as good as you'd like however. NTSC video signals are fairly low resolution by computer standards which is why I am trying to avoid converting to NTSC at the computer and using one of the standard navi to video hacks. I'd like to try to use the full native resolution of the navi display.

Dave

 

He's not using the factory Nav screen... he's using the "Pioneer AVIC-n1 w/ Voice Recognition" so my thought is he may want to find out what options he has for aux input on the AVIC-n1 and base his options on converters on that. Otherwise, I think it should be pretty straight forward.

 

good ideas