Don
I've finally finished my Car-PC project in my A8 so I thought I show you all how it's turned out.
First of all, the hardware:
VoomPC case
M1-ATX intelligent PSU for soft power-on and power-off
VIA EPIA MII 1200MHz bare bones system
512MB RAM
60GB 2.5" hard drive
Class 1 USB Bluetooth adaptor
Belkin 802.11g USB Wifi adaptor
Logitech Cordless Desktop S510 with media remote
Freedom Mini Bluetooth keyboard
Holux GPSlim236
With the M1-ATX PSU the system will wait 5 seconds after the ignition is turned off before gracefully shutting the system down. It will also allow the system to boot even during the voltage drop when the engine cranks. I've actually set the PC to hibernate rather than switch off when the ignition is shut off as this means I have a 5 second start up time and my music continues from the place it was at when I got out of the car.
The MII is a pretty powerful mini-ITX system and is more than capable of decoding MP3 and DivX video. It's also got lots of connectivity with 2 x USB 2.0, PCMCIA, CF, FireWire, Audio, VGA, Composite video, S-Video, and serial ports. For this project I am using the composite video output in to the AV1 input of the A8's TV tuner.
As the A8 doesn't have a touch screen and there is no where to tidily mount a lilliput, I spent a lot of time thinking about a method of control. In the end I plumped for the Logitech desktop with the media remote. The remote is superb. It operates by RF and every button is configurable. In the middle it has a 4 way scroll wheel and at the bottom the usual media controls such as play/pause, FF, REW, Stop etc. It's buttons are suitable different that I can operate the PC without looking at the remote.
In the event I need to actually do something like browse the web or operate windows, I have a wireless mouse and the Freedom mini BT keyboard stashed in the arm rest.
Software and setup:
It took me a long time to decide on a Car-PC interface. I tried many of them including ones that are designed for home AV systems. In the end it was a close run thing between Media Engine and Meedio. Both are able to be fully controlled without a touch screen. In the end Media Engine won out due to the ease of skinning and low CPU and memory overhead for the interface.
The stock Media Engine skin is horrible and most of the community created ones are just as bad so I decided to design my own to mirror the style of the Audi MMI interface. It took me a few days to create but I think it fits in quite nicely now that it's finished.
I used nLite to strip all the rubbish out of WindowsXP and got the installation down to just under 400MB not including the page file or hibernation file. I did leave a lot of stuff in the installation that could probably be removed because I wasn't sure I needed some of them for other functions.
As far as internet is concerned, I have 2 options. If there is an open wireless access point in the area I can use WiFi, but if there isn't, I've set up the PC to dial my 3G phone for wither UMTS or GPRS connectivity.
The GPS module is there so I can go war driving using Netstumbler.
I sync the media between the Car-PC and my Server at home using Sync-Toy which is a pretty cool Powertoy for Windows XP that is free. It enables you to select a source and destination folder and will analyse what has changed on the source and update the destination automatically. This means my Car-PC always has the same music on it as my Server in the house.
The only thing left to do is the problem that when the car moves, the AV1 input is automatically disabled to prevent you from watching TV while driving. I am having this sorted by Nav-TV UK on Monday so after that, all will be good.
On to the pics:
In the trunk
Remote controller:
Mini keyboard:
First of all, the hardware:
VoomPC case
M1-ATX intelligent PSU for soft power-on and power-off
VIA EPIA MII 1200MHz bare bones system
512MB RAM
60GB 2.5" hard drive
Class 1 USB Bluetooth adaptor
Belkin 802.11g USB Wifi adaptor
Logitech Cordless Desktop S510 with media remote
Freedom Mini Bluetooth keyboard
Holux GPSlim236
With the M1-ATX PSU the system will wait 5 seconds after the ignition is turned off before gracefully shutting the system down. It will also allow the system to boot even during the voltage drop when the engine cranks. I've actually set the PC to hibernate rather than switch off when the ignition is shut off as this means I have a 5 second start up time and my music continues from the place it was at when I got out of the car.
The MII is a pretty powerful mini-ITX system and is more than capable of decoding MP3 and DivX video. It's also got lots of connectivity with 2 x USB 2.0, PCMCIA, CF, FireWire, Audio, VGA, Composite video, S-Video, and serial ports. For this project I am using the composite video output in to the AV1 input of the A8's TV tuner.
As the A8 doesn't have a touch screen and there is no where to tidily mount a lilliput, I spent a lot of time thinking about a method of control. In the end I plumped for the Logitech desktop with the media remote. The remote is superb. It operates by RF and every button is configurable. In the middle it has a 4 way scroll wheel and at the bottom the usual media controls such as play/pause, FF, REW, Stop etc. It's buttons are suitable different that I can operate the PC without looking at the remote.
In the event I need to actually do something like browse the web or operate windows, I have a wireless mouse and the Freedom mini BT keyboard stashed in the arm rest.
Software and setup:
It took me a long time to decide on a Car-PC interface. I tried many of them including ones that are designed for home AV systems. In the end it was a close run thing between Media Engine and Meedio. Both are able to be fully controlled without a touch screen. In the end Media Engine won out due to the ease of skinning and low CPU and memory overhead for the interface.
The stock Media Engine skin is horrible and most of the community created ones are just as bad so I decided to design my own to mirror the style of the Audi MMI interface. It took me a few days to create but I think it fits in quite nicely now that it's finished.
I used nLite to strip all the rubbish out of WindowsXP and got the installation down to just under 400MB not including the page file or hibernation file. I did leave a lot of stuff in the installation that could probably be removed because I wasn't sure I needed some of them for other functions.
As far as internet is concerned, I have 2 options. If there is an open wireless access point in the area I can use WiFi, but if there isn't, I've set up the PC to dial my 3G phone for wither UMTS or GPRS connectivity.
The GPS module is there so I can go war driving using Netstumbler.
I sync the media between the Car-PC and my Server at home using Sync-Toy which is a pretty cool Powertoy for Windows XP that is free. It enables you to select a source and destination folder and will analyse what has changed on the source and update the destination automatically. This means my Car-PC always has the same music on it as my Server in the house.
The only thing left to do is the problem that when the car moves, the AV1 input is automatically disabled to prevent you from watching TV while driving. I am having this sorted by Nav-TV UK on Monday so after that, all will be good.
On to the pics:
In the trunk
Remote controller:
Mini keyboard:
but nice non the less 
