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Eh I got an old computer for free from work. I was just wonderin if our car can power it by using a power inverter(hooked up straight to the battery of course). Would the load be too much? I was thinking maybe get those tv output for the comp and hook it up to lcd screens rather than a huge comp monitor. This way I can have unlimited amount of music, play dvd, etc... Not sure if i'm going to do it but if its possible, why not

oh and if it could work, how many watts should the power inverter be?

 
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It can be done. Carputers are essentially just smaller form factor desktops. But if you're using a big PC, you might want to look at getting an appropriate power supply for it, just to make sure your draw isn't too great - mp3car.com has a listing of power supply stuff for a mobile computer in your car. And with a mobile PC power supply you won't even need an inverter.

 
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I agree, Computers run off direct current. It'd be pretty wasteful to convert to 110AC, then, through the power supply back to 12v,5v DC. Just get a nice power supply for it like said above and not worry about an invertor.

 
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maybe you could sell the computer from work and use the money toward a better car computer solution like something low heat and smaller.

 
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haha seeing what these guys are telling me, i just might. but then its a pretty old comp so i'll probably only get like $20 for it . i havnt even turned it on but I think its like a 233mhz. oh well free gas money

 
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Uhmmm.... a computer in a car is a bad idea (at least if I understand that is a desk top) With all the viberation from your car, the hard drive and such might last a month. Not to mention the need for a monitor key board and mouse, where exactly are going to put all this? And do you really want to boot it up every time you start the car and power it down every time you want to leave? You will be far better off getting an MP3 player. I've even heard that now they have MP3 players that can read a burned DVD, 4 gigs of MP3's is alot, and that's only one disk.

But if you want to try the computer thing, generally a desk top need 5-7 amp and a monitor needs 2-3 amps (or at least the computers from the time that you are talking about). It should be on the back of each device.

Unless you already have some sort of TV in the car, you will need a 110 Ac inverter for the monitor.

 
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a Computer in the car isn't such a bad idea. Laptop drives are made for such vibration, and you can use a touch screen to do all the navigation, there's free software out there just for the car.

 
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You can do whole lot of stuff with "Carputer"

Gps, wireless interent, mp3, movies, obd2 scan tool.
I've been looking around for touchscreen and they usually go from $300+ for 7" monitor.

I just need to figure out where i am going to mount cd player or i could just get rid of it and run sound through computer then to the small amp.


Dannn from mp3car.com

 
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You can buy voltage regulated 12v power supplies to use in a car. You can keep power continuos even when starting the car from the ACC position.

 
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You are still going to need a monitor, that's why I siad you will need AC converter...

If you want to go all out and buy the touch screen, that's cool, but that's $300. Then you are going to have to buy the notebook hard drive, a 20GB is about $20-$30 on EBAY. I thought the point of this thread was to use an old desktop in your car? From what you guys are saying he really won't be using any part of it other than maybe the motherboard. All I am saying is that the desktop is a bad idea, not that having a computer in you car is bad, I love the navigation system in the Accords.

 
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The power draw from a full sized monitor would probably be a bit too much for this application. I agree - and I am seriously considering putting some sort of portable computer type thing in the Civic once I get that far, but it will be with a LCD touch screen.

DC Powersupplies are much better than transforming the power twice, and although hard to find, not much more expensive than AC->DC power transformer.

 
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Where do you get this kind of stuff? I mean the software and the wiring schemes and stuff?

 
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get something fast

 
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buy an old laptop for like 60 bucks and use that my 27 1/4 cents

 
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To Jrfish007: You don't have to boot it up and shut it down manually. You can get a little device from mp3car.com that is basically a 12v relay combined with computer power switch electronics. You can even have a timeout so it won't shut the machine down for a certain amount of time after the car is turned off.

The key is always to have a computer that boots up and shuts down really quickly. In my experience, Windows sucks at this. Having a computer in your car is still not a terrible idea. Hard drives made by Fujitsu and even IBM are pretty solid, but you'd want to pad it somehow anyway. I've seen car computers that use rubber stripping and even SPRINGS to suspend the hard drive so it won't fail.

Let us not forget that hard drives a dime a dozen these days and it isn't like the car computer is the one last copy of some files you have. Just use Symantec Ghost to make an image of the drive with all of the OS and basic software on it and you'll be good to go!

I always thought it would be really neat to have a touchscreen that could be GPS, an audio system, and also an engine monitor. Unfortunately I'm poor and completely helpless when it comes to fiberglass.

 
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I don't disagree that computer in the car would be nice. But if you live where I do, it is impossible to avoid every pothole, infact I probably hit 2-3 a day on average. I knoe people (other college people) who have carried their computers (desktops) back and forth to school in there car, not running, just setting there. They do this because they want a gaming computer and can't afford a high end laptop. So they bring their deskyop in once in a while. With the vibration from the car, two people now have ruined there motherboards and processor from the extreme shaking and major temperature changes. When you take something made of metal from a 70 degree house to a car that is at 0 degrees and rattle it around, things come out. In one guys case the about 5 pins on his processor fell out from to much thermal expansion.

Now if you live in an area where the weather doesn't get cold and the roads are always smooth 1. I'm jealous 2. maybe this would work. I'm not saying it's not possible to hook a desk top up, but you will be contantly replacing parts. So buy the time you buy a few hard drives and you powers supllies and you go through a processor or two and the motherboard cracks, you've basically paid for one of those car computers that are designed for your car shown above, so why not just start with that?

 
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I agree with you on all of that, Jrfish007. I live in Connecticut, and we definitely get the cold winter. Nevertheless, I think it's possible to hook up a machine that will run just fine under all of those circumstances. Probably not the 233MHz free desktop that VNlilMAN got, but definitely possible.

First off, the cold isn't really a problem. It's a good idea to keep the machine in the trunk so that in the winter months it STAYS cold. Computers love the cold. Drastic temperature changes would be a problem, as you said, but this machine would always be in the car so it would only be subjected to the gradual temperature changes of the weather.

As for parts failing because of bad roads and so forth, of course that's a concern. I have never heard of a motherboard failing because it was bumped around too much, unless a card or ram stick came partially dislodged while it was running. If I were building a carputer I would use a mini-ATX motherboard and have it firmly fastened to the frame of the car, and I would have the hard drive mounted as I said before, between rubber and springs or another form of shock-absorber.

I have also heard of people running a carputer with such a streamlined installation of Linux that they needed no hard drive. The entire system ran from compact flash memory. You can get 8 gig compact flash memory cards now, so that's even enough to store your music collection.

Carputers are awesome when done right.

 
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That's my point and I totally agree with you. A car computer done right would be great... infact I would love to have one that had GPS... I'm always getting lost.

 
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If GPS is all you want, you could always pick up a WinCE handheld, like a Dell Axim, and get a GPS module for it and a dashboard mount. All said, it'd probably cost you half of what an entire computer would cost. Of course there's always the Garmin StreetPilot series, as well.

If I were going to build a carputer, I would expect it to do an awful lot more. Maybe even pick up wireless Internet connections and stuff like that.

 
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Well... GPS is only part of it, I would like a voice activated system that controls everything from heat to radio, basically mimic the Accord's system... but that's probably out of my price range. I've always wondered if the Accord's Nav system could be modified to fit a civic.