I have been looking at getting a CarPC put into my stato over the last few months and with some of the requirments i am now requiring it is coming more benificial to build a car pc, than go about it the standard way.



I need to set specific rules to pass the engineers report going through my car. 1 being that the air bag suspension is not adjustable while the car is not in park or neutral. The typical system used to control this is around the 1700 to 2500 mark. With a few more bucks i can get a crazy system that controls the whole car.



I have researched a little and have been talking to 1 company in particular. I have been unable to find any information on this company, nor photos, details of previous work.



Can anyone recomend me a company in melbourne that can build a complex car PC.



I dont want to say too much until the car is released, but I want this CarPC to be more than just controlling the stereo and stuff most CarPCs do at this time.



Thank you



Warren

sweet !

i dont know of a company that would do that.

Perhaps if you called a TAFE or university with electrical engineering students ( or similar field ) they could take it on as a project or may be in touch with people who could do that.

I know places like jaycar has generic input/output boards for a PC that could be made to do what you want by someone.

Another idea is to post the proposal up on overclockers.com.au and you should find plenty of *cough* nerds *cough* who may be interested.

But just make sure you get a professional result and they are liable for the quality of their work

it might be difficult finding someone to take on the project, simply due to the fact that it often involves alot of time, research, and sometimes your own software tweaks to get a system that controls the entire vehicle. If you're willing to research it yourself, check out www.mp3car.com, it's a great resource and some people on there have certainly gone far beyond just controlling stereo/nav etc... Sounds like an interesting project though. I'm assuming by controlling whole car you mean things like climate control, voice commands, electric windows etc etc? P.S. - xcesiv - that'd make you the guy with the white stato, lots of mods, soundstream amps yeah?

Yep
Thats Warren

That is me.



Some of the features are loooking to be controlling



* Climate control

* Electric windows

* Electric Boot

* Air Suspension

* engine start

* Engine Stats

* Stereo

* Electric Transmission



There is some more, but thats the main parts



I have foudn no one still to help. Its so annoying.



MP3Car.com hav helped but only to say that they dont knoiw anyone.

Xcesiv, shoot me a pm. what ur after, etc.

A few things might not be possible, but lets have a chat about it. Ive tried to stay away from pc automation in my car, but some stuff would be possible.

I dont like waiting for my PC to boot for things to work.
ie: its a car FIRST a PC/Media centre SECOND .. if that makes sense.
Ice

Have a look into the "Fusion Brain" over on Mp3car. It's a device that helps bridge that gap between electronics in the car and the software on the computer and it's looking very promising, as is the price tag.

I agree with Brycestro. This is what I was gonna cover if u PM'd me.. but heres some of it anyway.

Also, a phidget, which I have is a pretty good USB interface device.
There are many more addons available for phidget at the moment, and it has an LCD module too (which I use ). The fusionbrain will be skinable one day.. but the phidget already has support libraries for just about every programming language around.

Look at both. Both are able to do what you want. just comes down to price, programming experience, dev language, skinning, number of outputs/controls, inputs, LCD, and addons that are already available.

But atleast its some food for thought.
Ice

Hey Ice, you don't happen to have a link to the phidget handy do you? I never actually established whether it was something developed by one of the mp3car users or commerical product that would have a website and everything.



xcesiv - basically to do what you've asked for, and have someone do it for you, you'll probably need to find someone with quite a bit of experience, otherwise you could end up paying a massive fortune to have someone investigating how to do it all before they actually put anything into practice. Finding a professional with the requisite knowledge from both disciplines (computers and automotive) that could make this project happen within a reasonable time frame could be difficult. It's a bit hard to hand a job like this over to most mobile electronics installers because you're starting to deal with more complex software/hardware integration issues than you do with a "run of the mill" touchscreen or simple xp installation. At the moment it seems to be almost only DIYer's doing it.



I'd say at this point in time making this happen would probably require a reasonable amount of research/time spent discussing it with forum members and having to gain a fairly intimate knowledge of how it works yourself. At that point you could probably hand it off to a mobile electronics installer and say "this is what i've got, this is what it does, i'd like you to install it all now". If you find a professional business willing to take on the challenge though, let us know here on the forums. Also mention how much it's going to cost

http://www.phidgets.com/ doesnt get much easier.

Its not MP3car related.

Even has RFID kits and other little things.
I'm not a programmer (an elec eng actually) and I wrote my own app for the phidget, to use in my VY Berlina.

My App does the following:
Interface my steering controls in my VY Berlina with the CarPC.
Autodim the LCD based on Illuminate signal from VY dash sensor.
Extend the power antenna when I go into radio mode (and collapse it when exitted).
I use the LCD to output CPU and Mem usage and also display the bitrate/Khz of the current track. I'll change the display soon, perhaps warning me of speed cameras according to GPS database. If I bought a Valentin-1 (radar detector) I would mount is stealth and run the output warnings into my LCD. [But I wont be doing this - waste of money for me].

If you check out the accessories, you'll see theres a heap of other things you can do with it too.

The Fusionbrain has higher amperage switching relays (im pretty sure), but thats nothing a simple transistor switch circuit cant resolve if you chose the Phidget.

Ice

hhhmm i'll have to look into it. If, as you say, it has more support at present as far as open source coding and customisation it might be worth me getting one. And i am a programmer, so hopefully it shouldn't be too difficult to handle

When it comes to building PCs and programming i havnt done any of it sine i was in high school. If anyone knows me, thats f***ing ages ago. Im nearly 28.



This project doesnt have to be completed till july 2008. That should be plenty of time to organise it.



I have someone that can build and design the hardware side of it, but wont touch the software side. This is my biggest issue.



All these features are possible, just depends on budget. I have put alot of time into how most of it will work and wat is required, the parameters of each device, etc.



We are also thinking of building this software into a product for future sale. So this could be a good chance for a programmer to get his hands into a nice deal if all goes to plan.



As for comments about it being a car first and a PC second and waiting for load times. This car is not a daily driver as you can guess. With the Air suspension and the safety protection i take to make sure the car doesnt get stolen i have to wait about 1 minute for the air suspension to refill before i can start driving anyway.

yeah look I've been doing ALOT of research in to the topic, and yeah it can be done, you can control the windows with relays, i haven't figured out how to interface with the engine yet. the best that i know of is to display the data form the engine. keeping in mind you would need an ect engineer, computer programmer, you would need to be running a Linux OS or the new windows Automotive (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsautomotive/default.mspx) also you would need someone that knows a fair bit about both, to over see the whole thing.... your best bet would be to approach a car company and get there support. the link between the car audio and the PC is easy, the GPS nav and other things like that would be slightly more difficult.

any way keep me posted on what you do...
regards Jason

Engine monitoring is quiet easy. On Board Diagnostics (OBD) is what it is called.

All you need is a serial plug, or usb, and a serial plug to plug into your ECU. Programs are already written. Check it out on mp3car.com. Has its own section too.

yeah but how will you tune the car from the Carputer, and the 32 times a second refresh, its not fast enough for speed and tacko, yeah its fine for recording data over a period of time, however its not designed for real time display. also its rather difcult to get one that just works, most people have trouble with it and takes some f***ing around.

the only way u can tune ya engine by computer is with a aftermarket computer i run EMS in my car and can control everythink and displays all my gauges live

what car and EMS??? i'd love that... lol..

in a 1976 honda civic turbs the EMS is un real live gauges its mad

It is really a pit that we didn't have a distributor in your city. Recommend you to visit our web about car pc. www.hiinfoglobal.com Our aftermarket products is very suitable for your requirements. Such as N52,N53. Still hope you could find your favored carputer in your city.

is this still progressing?