Rep Power: 369

Ha ha well except for a whole ton of horsepower and luxury that is. I just had to show this off, I'm very proud of this new mod. I have a carputer in my EL, running WindowsXP on a MicroATX format board, Celeron M processor, 1GB of RAM, blah blah blah I won't bore you with the details. My big fun thing this time is that I got a Motorola Q for myself as a "no one else got me a birthday present this year" present, and as soon as I got it I started to modify. Since the Q has a Windows operating system and a more robust Bluetooth version than my old Treo, I was able to finally try this. I'd been dealing for a while with trying to get my Treo650 to sync with my carputer using USB and some proggy called PhoneControl, but it just couldn't deal with the Treo's shabby Bluetooth stack.
When I got the Q and picked up a Bluetooth 2.0 USB adapter at Futureshop I was able to use Activesync over Bluetooth to sync up tasks and calendar items on my carputer, but I wanted to be able to control my Q from the screen. Along came a program called Pocket Controller Pro (SOTI.net). With this I was able to actually load an image of the phone and what is currently on the screen onto my carputer's touchscreen. Essentially I'm now able to dial from my touchscreen while my phone sits in its holster. Here's a quicky screenshot of how it looks on my carputer screen:


That was taken using the Q while it was hooked up BTW. So far I still have to wear a bluetooth headset or go speakerphone as I don't have a microphone hooked up in the car, but when I do (via the webcam that's going in this spring) I'll be able to put it into speakerphone using the car's audio system. Currently I'm running into a problem where if I put the carputer into standby and bring it back up, bluetooth doesn't connect and I have to reboot the phone or rediscover the bluetooth device. Not so big a deal I guess, it's a limitation of Activesync (I have v4.5 beta) that will hopefully be dealt with in a later version.

Now some of you would likely just say "Why not get an Alpine deck with bluetooth capability"? Sure but for just over $1200 CDN plus hours of personal labour I got myself a bluetooth-enabled car system with 80GB of mp3's, music videos, pr0n, MS Office, GPS, and a nice slideshow gallery of car pictures I've taken over the years. Oh and did I mention pr0n? I did? Good.

 
Rep Power: 258

damn dude. that looks absolutely killer. youre making me a want a carputer now.

 
Rep Power: 389

Haha, so how much did it end up costing you in the end compared to the 1200 alpine? BTW, If i'm judging the shine on the console, is that custom fiberglass, or did you just pick it up somewhere? Looks good bro, very nice to see people trying new things every now and again.

 
Rep Power: 369

I didn't actually compare it to a $1200 Alpine. The parts and materials that ended up being USED cost $1200CDN. All the other stuff I ended up not using in the carputer (and put into one of 3 other home machines I built in the interim) cost about $2000. When I first started I didn't listen to peoples' advice, thought I could just cram a regular PC in there and it would work. 909 (an oldskool member on here also with a carputer) eventually guided me to the right path.

 
Rep Power: 369

BTW the console was molded using bondo-glass, sanded, primed, then sprayed with Duplicolor Metalcast base coat then "anodized red" finish. I'm glassing a new one this spring as this one was just temporary (damned bondo) that sorta became permanent.

 
Rep Power: 278

Welcome to the carputer club! What kind of screen do you have and how is it in the sunlight? That's my biggest problem. Also the angle of the screen, all the colour shades are off because it's angled towards the ceiling in the 7th generation Civic.

 
Rep Power: 369

Thanks, LOL. I actually did this project back in 05, it's been through 1.5 winters now. I've got a Xenarc 700TS in there, the housing was molded into a Civic Reverb console. Anyhoo, what I did was recess the bottom of the screen in more than the top, so there's a little bit of a "ledge" along the bottom. With some trial and error, along with a thin pliable coat of automotive goop to play around with the angle. When I got it right I used JBQuik to hold it in place then used the bondoglass to fill, sanding and coughing all the while. This way my screen actually displays correct pictures from where I'm viewing it, as well as from the passenger seat and middle backseat. I may put something in back for the other two passengers, but I have a lot of other gear and power issues to sort through first.

Below is an old shot of my screen when it was first installed. You can kind of see how the screen is recessed.

 
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VERY nice +1 for you

 
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no pics in this thread anymore?

 
Rep Power: 369

Hostedimage (my hosting spot) exceeded their bandwidth. It was just a pic of the screen anyway, but if you want to look there should be a pic or two of the carputer in my gallery on this site, you can go through via my profile I think.