Hey hey,

Started this project a little while ago, and now that its done thought I'd put some pictures up...

Basically I originally wanted sat nav in the car, but when having a look at the prices I kinda thought that it was a bit much just for sat nav, and I checked out what other possibilities there were… GPS usb receivers … I then decided that I’d just get a computer in the car and that could run everything, as in sat nav, music and whatever else (if there would be anything else)… Used the MP3Car forums heaps to get a good idea of how others had done it and designed my own little PC…

Hardware:
Via EPIA Mini ITX Motherboard (1.3Ghz)
M2ATX power unit
1Gb Ram
80Gb SATA Hard Drive
USB GPS Receiver
7” Touch Screen

Software:
Windows Xp
RoadRunner
FreeDrive
Winamp

Started off with the screen… I bought another dash surround so that I wouldn’t have to drive my car around for weeks/months without a dash …

7" Touch Screen 1
7" Touch Screen 2
7" Touch Screen 3

Took the screen apart so I could mould the front of it to the dash and once finished I could screw the rest of the screen straight to the dash, the idea was that I wanted it to look like one piece, and that the same time there is no way you could steal unless you broke the screen…
For it to fit nicely under the climate control I had to cut part of the dash at the bottom, also has to take a couple mm off each side.

Dash 1
Dash 2
Dash 3
Dash 4

Once I got it fitting nicely in the dash I used Araldite to glue it in and the used putty to bog up the sides and sand it back to make it look like one piece.

Dash 5
Dash 6

This came out pretty good, so I put it in for painting…

Painted Dash 1
Painted Dash 2

When I got the dash back, I popped the screen back into it and with the moving/playing around with the dash over the next couple days the front of the screen that was glued to the dash cracked and eventually with a little bit of force it came apart completely. Took some advise from someone in Bunnings and got it plastic welded to the dash… this time before I puttied it all up and made it look good again a gave it some severe testing to make sure it wouldn’t crack again (sorry no pics of this part…)

While the dash was getting re-painted I started to build the case. I wanted to build it in aluminium, but cost and putting it all together (or bending it) just put me off using it… I used persplex instead

I wasn’t too sure where I wanted to have the case, couple of options… in the boot, under the seat behind the screen (in the dash)… Decided to go with fitting it under the seat, so I made a model of the case and had it under the seat until I realised that every time I went over a bump I could feel the case, so scraped that and decided to put it in the dash… Took the dash apart and again made a model of what I wanted it to be like and made sure everything fit nicely then made the case…

Case 1
Case 2
Case 3
Case 4

Note that its actually sitting the other way around now, can see this in a later pic…

At some point in time while I was making the PC I got the dash back…

Final dash

When I was happy that everything was going to fit nicely I finished the case and installed all the software on the machine… tested everything to make sure it would work. As I had the dash back and I’d put it all together I was running it on the 7” screen to see what it would give…

Case 5
Case 6
Case 7
Case 8

7" powered off car pc

Finally got to the stage when it was all ready to go in… spent a good couple hours messing around with it all to get it to fit like I wanted… (very tight fit ) cables everywhere in the pic but was nice and neat once it was all in…

mess!

Put the dash back in and bingo…

Final setup 1
Final setup 2

Pics aren’t the greatest and the glove box still on in on the pic… once I have given the interior a good clean might take a final pic and post it…

At the moment ironing out a few little issue… the main one is sound… playing only MP3s on the hard drive (have 2 USB ports so this is how I add music etc when needed)… the prob with MP3s are the recording levels they are recorded at.. some songs sound awesome, others sound like c#@p! just trying to find some other 3rd party software that will regulate the output of the sound… but yeah… apart from that everything is working sweet…