Hello folks, just thought I'd share this project with you guys.
I was originally going to put a gps in the place of the dash speaker vent, until I realized I had all the parts laying around to make a decent Carputer. The speaker area turned out to be the perfect size for a 7" screen.
Everything done in this project is completely reversible, nothing on the car had to be altered in any way (except my radio). Don't mind my cracked windshield, it'll be replaced soon.
The wiring runs right from the battery, with a fuse near the end of the wire. The pc itself is powered by a small DC/DC converter attached to the motherboard.
I was going to stuff the computer in the glove box... but decided to mount it under the passenger side of the dash instead.
Here's the lid to my custom aluminum case.
Here I was testing the screen, and routing the cables. But then I decided not to put it in the glovebox, so I had to re-route them.
The mount for the monitor started out as this piece of aluminum shaped to fit the speaker area.
The two screws are only holding the screen to the mount, they don't touch the dash at all
I glued some foam to the mount so I could wrap some vinyl around it.
It came out a lot puffier than I wanted, so I'll probably redo it later... it looked much sleeker on paper.
Here's the temporary mouse pad, I want to make a nicer one that will take the place of the ashtray. You can also see two extra switches in this picture, one turns on the computer, the other runs to my Monterey SQR-22 to switch from radio to the AUX input I added.
And here it is up and running. Yeah, I put that Ubuntu sticker on the case, but it's actually running XP pro :P
Total cost for this was $0 since I had all this stuff anyway, but I am going to add a $25 usb gps. Hope you guys like it.
-George