GIVER

Hey thank you very much for your advice. Looks like I have some shipping to do. I'm still tackling the issue with the PSUs... Due to work I haven;t had time at all so when I get back to it I'll have more questions. Thanks again.

moahdib

Hey my flash skin is finally released =)
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=99343

met152

Awesome man!
I'll be checking it out today.

csmeance

hey met, where did you tap into for the power, battery or fuse box?

met152

Fusebox with one of those mini add-a-fuse things..

how's that touchscreen module coming? Haven't heard anything new lately.

GIVER

Ya, I'm still waiting for it also. Some local shops here in Staten Island, NY don't express confidence in being able to do this mod.

met152

If they don't have confidence, tell them to check out this thread.
It is absolutely possible. I have been using my PC w/ the touchscreen for months now.

GIVER

I know its possible and I did refer them to this post. I've also created a diagram to help them get a better understanding of what I'm looking to accomplish. If you have the time, look over the diagram and see if you find any problems with it, or if something is unclear.

csmeance

ordered mostly everything and got the relay module working after alot of playing around. Just waiting now so i can put it in.
on a side note, when you had doms tv nav to go, the two power wires, red and black, what did you do with the black wire?

csmeance

The giver, if you can hold off about a week or so, i can send you one of my relay modules for the touch screen thingy.

met152

Forgive me for sounding like an ass... but how are you making this module (which requires some electrical knowledge) if you don't know what to do with the black wire?

The black wire is ground. It should be labeled from Dom.

It should be easy to find somewhere to ground it. Especially in the trunk.

csmeance

I don't have the unit yet, i placed the order a few days back and am waiting. The DIY's on the board just happened to skip on that section. I justed asked to make sure that i don't blow up anything on the system when i get it and install it. . The module is made, just waiting on the carputer and i shall do some R and D on it. And no offense taken, it is perfectly common sense to think that and i applaud you on that for thinking about that.

GIVER

Update?

dennisil

1 quick question was installing a doms converter a mistake or can i still use it with the touch screen controler and make a carputer?

csmeance

Its made, just have to put it in tomorrow and test it. Sorry for the delays guys, i have been stressed with work, family, a bit of money and school. So the first 15 orders i can get out will be discounted if it is working as it should.

csmeance

can you tell me which fuse because I don't want to short out any wiring in the car.

csmeance

nope, i am using it to get video to the screen instead of the scan converter. The drawback is that quality won't be the best unless you make the fonts in the settings extra large, the resolution on the screen low. Basically unless you make everything super huge, but i can live with that being super huge. I can take a picture for you if you need one of the video quality of the carputer

zax123

I believe they are labelled OP1 and OP2. They are both 7.5A slots...

zax123

csmeance, someone on the forums used software called powerstrip to convert VGA output to work directly on the LCD screen... the quality looks pretty good too. Maybe you could check it out.

dennisil

this is so awesome im so proud to be a member of this forum, acurazine has the coolest stuff on here, even though we cant install a turbo in the car we can put an overclocked watercooled cpu in the trunk someone needs to streamline the process, hopefully one of our admins will give us a clear roadmap in the comming months.

csmeance

are they switched or constant? Also they sound like they deal with airbags.... i don't want to short it and have airbags blowup in my face.....

GIVER

if that happens, please post pics.

csmeance

thanks for the vote of confidence got a new mmulti meter today so i will tinker with it tommorow. Also took me 7 phonecalls, 4 shop visits and yellingat some stupid teenager to get the MINI add a circuit that worked. Half the people thought inline fuse and the dumb teen was muttering at how some people wre so slow in finding what they were looking for ( i took over 20 minutes of talking with the guy to tell him what i wanted) BE CAREFUL honda uses mini, not large

zax123

The OP in OP1 and OP2 stands for "optional" or "options"

They are both switched with the "ON" position, not the "ACC" position of the key.

Really looking forward to your setup csmeance... I'll likely be buying the PnP module you're working on for my install this summer. Please keep up posted!

moahdib

i gotta question for anyone who has a navi TL..

I have a non-navi tl but I have a navi LCD and I'm, planning to get the display for the ac controls and cd changer info (top lcd in navi equipped tl's). I don't have a navi unit in the trunk and I was wondering if anyone can test it for me if the display still works WITHOUT the navi cable being plugged into the lcd display. This would be the bottom connector.

I assume the clock in the display would be the only thing that doesn't work since the time comes from the navi unit but I can live with that. If it works it'd be great so I can finally get rid of my OEM non-navi LCD which occupies too much space. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

moahdib

Sorry i didn;t mean for my post to seem "out of place" here. I figured since you guys are the ones taking your dash appart and what not, soemone can help me before I make a $150 purchase.

Also, if anyone wants a cheaper solution than scan converter to send vga signal to the lcd, check my thread here called "my carpc mod". I have some details on how to get straight vga signal to the lcd without a scan converter. Quality is probably better bc you're skipping a layer of hardware. You just need to hack a vga cable, add some resistors and maybe a small circuit if you dont have csync on your vga card.. and powerstrip.

moahdib

Ok never mind on my request above.. I just realized the same NAVI connector is used to send signal to the navi clock display so disconnecting it will not do any good. I think i just have to test this on my own.

csmeance

I have started a new thread and the product is sucesful. I am working on getting vendorship now. I used a fuse that was rated at 15 Amps on the bottom row, third or second from the last to power it and it was perfect, was not ignition controled (to allow computer to shut down properly) and had all the proper ratings. Thanks for the help through this process.

Also thanks guys for waiting so long for this and standing by me. I will let you guys know as soon as i get vendorship.

csmeance

most likely, this will not work as the radio display is maanged by the nav in the Navi equipeed cars. Also i doubt that other funcitons will worker properly if the drive is not installed. I would just recommend that you either do a navi conversion 100% with a carputer hooked up to it or just leave it as it is. I can try this out for you this weekend if you want. Just send me a PM about it.

As for the vga cable, we just use dom's tv converter to get it to the nav screen.

Kikaida

moahdib,

If you do try this, please post your results.

I have a non-navi, and am considering doing a car pc. I know some members have cut out the display and mounted it where the 2 compartments are below the radio, but that seems kind of hard to do.

I always wondered if it was possible to use the sub-display.

moahdib

I think the only way to test if the sub display works without the navi unit is to disconnect the main cable in the trunk that goes into the navi unit.

I'm somewhat familiar with the IEBUS (Ga-netII for honda and acura's) From studying the electrical wiring diagrams and looking at the LCD board connectors, I can tell for sure that the lcd board acts as the controller for relaying the climate and audio data to the sub display. Clock data comes from the navi unit and it goes as a separate wire from the lcd controller to the sub display

My guess would be that without the navi unit, climate and audio data should show but the clock would display either nothing or 88:88.

I tried hooking up the navi LCD to my non-navi car. I had hoped that maybe the audio data would display on the LCD but unfortunatelly the navi unit is in charge of displaying everything on the lcd screen which makes sense since it has to interpret touchscreen presses via the iebus.

I thought dom's unit doesn't do VGA to RGB or does it?? Don't know why they charge so much for plug and play units when its so easy to splice wires and use relays j/k i know lot of members have the car on lease or don't want to mess too much with cutting wires.

If this works, I can get the oem navi LCD on the bottom compartment as a second carputer display and discard the non-navi lcd. Otherwise i just have to get deeper into this and find ways to read the IEbus data to the PC which I'm already researching.

CSmeance: Let me know if you can try that out for me I'd be very grateful.

csmeance

the pc that i am using has a RCA plug on it so we can just hook it up to dom's converter. As for the climate control, i think it is related to the navi as acura says it uses solar sensing stuff to keep the car cool, like f it very hot sun on one side, it will automatically make cooler. Also i think the A/C controls are hooked up to the dvd drive is becase AngryDad (banned) hacked the navi so we could use the touch screen for A/C controls.

tranzlator

How much would you charge to do this to my car (parts and labor)? I can ship my car to your front door! (07 TL) What's the no shit price and estimated time involved.

T

pds1974

Hey Met152

Great install, it looks awesome. I have a 2005 TL 6Spd with Navi. Last summer I had a JL Audio system installed and now I am looking to add a PC. I have a spare PC it is a Micro ATX Board with a P4 2.6ghz and 512MB of Ram with a wireless RF keyboard with touchpad built in. I will be running Windows XP. I have a Soundgate vidhond2 converter that I will be using. Anyway, my main question is that I really like that menu that you are using which I believe you said is Road Runner right? Is that just a program that I can install on the PC? How does it work exactly? I tried going to the mp3car link but I could find anything that was specific to the TL. Any help would be great. Thanks

met152

$3000 parts and labor.
Time: 1 weekend

Lemme know

met152

Road Runner front end, with Simplistique skin. You can get both in the mp3car.com software forum.
It's just a program that is in the start menu in windows so that it loads when the computer boots into windows. Thats it. Then you customize the buttons to load the programs you use most. ie. music, video, dvd, gps, internet, etc.

The stuff you'll find on mp3car.com is not vehicle specific. You won't find much TL related info, maybe a half-dozen or so people. It's more for general hardware and software support. The only real vehicle specific stuff is where you run the wires, where to mount, get power, etc. After that, it's all the same... just a computer....... a really freaking sweet computer that is!!

csmeance

damn thats alot, i was gonna charge less but now that i see your price, i may have to alter my plans

news on carputer:
i am waiting on the weather to clear up as it has been raining hard for the past 2 days. Most likely if the weather is better, i will have the PC running and everything done by the end of the weekend.

Met152,
one question, when the computer boots up, does it ask you to push the F1 key to continue? my does and that seems kinda odd.

met152

Price-wise, I figure that hardware alone can easily add up to $1000 when you add up all the little things, wires, usb hubs, keyboard, wireless card, bluetooth, etch.
For labor, $1500 -2000 isn't out of the question. It's an involved process and time consuming to run all the cables and get thing setup and running.


For your F1 issue, you need to go into the BIOS (probably 'Del' or 'F2' during bootup) and find the section that deals with halting on errors. Make sure it doesn't halt on keyboard error. That's your problem. The mobo isn't detecting your keyboard (if you even have one installed). That should clear things up. Also disable an unnecessary devices while you're in there, ie. floppy disk seek..

csmeance

i guess your right about the price for materials and such. I know whatyou mean by the labor now as it took me a while to figure out to takeapart the TL without lossing screws, breaking clips and only taking out the nessary in a good amount of time. Routing the cables, especialy the witches and computer cords are a total Pain in the butt. I had to use the old metal coathanger to get the cords from the tunk, under the seats to the console

jarrd

hey man, nice job. I have a few questions.
you are using the internet from your verizon phone correct? how is the speed on it, and can it handle video feeds (ie. slingbox)?
the computer you have, i understand is a low-scale pc, but can it handle msn live? dvd burning? streaming video other the internet?
my goal with your project would be total media convergance. i have a pretty sweet setup at home that runs throughout the whole house via home network. i would like to access that network in my car! I can do it so long as the computer is powerful enough and the internet is fast enough.