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21 June 2003
Turning money into hardware
After a long period of not being able to
spend any money on my carputer project, I've now been
able to whip out the credit card to spend on some upgrades
and some experimental improvements.
Technology enhancements
 Yes,
I've finally got around to laying down the cash for
a Nehemiah based board. This means I get the benefits
of a 1GHz processor, with improved FPU performance.
A faster 3D system, so that playing 3D games becomes
a little easier.
Additionally this board brings with it 6 channel sound,
USB2 and firewire. A nice set of enhancements over my
current EPIA 800 system.
New casing
 As
much of an interesting learning experience as it was
to build my own case, I believe my project will now
benefit more from an off the shelf case. The one I've
gone with is quite a good looking piece of kit, that
fact alone with certainly improve the performance of
the system ;)
UPS
 The
final new comer is UPS unit from APC.
In the carputer forums there have been many long running
debates about many of the issues involved with powering
a carputer.
As many carputer builder will know, if you carputer
is running before you start you car engine, doing this
will most likely cause a drop in power, thus making
the carputer reset.
The usual high level of ingenuity of the forum goers
has seen many solutions to this problem, from wiring
up an inbetween battery to balance out the power drop,
to using things like an Opus power supply. Which is
designed to prevent such problems.
Another 'problem' in carputering, is how to make the
system start up automatically when you start your car
and shut down whne you stop the engine.
My decision to go with a UPS unit was made to tackle
all these issues.
Firstly using a UPS device will stop the carputer reseting
when the engine cranks, as it'll keep the power supply
constant.
Also I'll setup the unit to by default turn the system
off after 30 seconds of power outage. This means if
the system is running, I can just get out my car, safe
in the knowledge that the carputer will such itself
down.
Once I have the UPS device, I'll let you know my findings.
A look back...
As I sat outside this Saturday afternoon, enjoying a
rare beautiful sunny day in my English (country) garden,
I thought back to how all this began.
About how hearing of the Mini-ITX form factor made me
wonder if I could setup a computer to run from a car.
These days it's easy for me to give advice on setting
up a carputer, after all the trials and problems I've
had to face along the way.
Back at the time, I hardly even knew what an inverter
was. When I first got it wired into my car, I was amazed
at being able to have mains voltage in my car!
Selecting the right display was also a problem back
then, I wanted something cheap to start off with, so
I was very pleased when I found I could buy a s-video
LCD monitor and use that.
Now it feel's like alot of this frontier has been explored.
The Mini-ITX boards are getting more powerful, the power
options numerous. But as long as there's a desire to
continue to improve and enhance these systems, our carputers
will continue to develop! :)
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