Wednesday, July 28, 2010

CarPC basics (Part 1)

I had been using a carpc for the past 3 years and have never failed to amaze people when i say "I have a PC in the car!". I can't imagine my car without a PC these days!

Many questions came up. Questions like why do you need a PC in the car? How do you power up and power down the car pc? How to get the audio from the car pc? How much it cost etc etc... And that's quite a lot of questions.

And this is the purpose of me embarking on this write up. I hope to be able get more people interested in the hobby, and with more information, knowing how simple the setup is, more people will be willing to take the plunge and install a car pc into their car and also try to answer any queries that you may have. This will be a series of write ups that I hope to complete in a few days. With these, I would list out my experiences, cost and where to get the items.

Why do you need a PC in the car??
- Not really a need, but I'm a cheapo and I cannot afford a good 2-din headunit from the likes of Alpine and Sony, but really hated the intefaces and sound quality of china 2-din.
- I have some computer spare parts, why not let it to good use.
- Plus point for me is that, I'm a competent DIY-er in both PC and car, so it's easy for me to take the plunge.

There are tons of resources in the internet that one could search about carpcs. A good place to start will be http://www.mp3car.com

What can a carpc do??? (non-exhaustive list)
- Large quantity of songs in any format
- Large quantity of videos in any format (rmvb is impt to me)
- Organised playlists (that takes a lot of effort, but imagine a 5000 song cd changer!)
- GPS (optional). GPS software can run concurrently with songs playing in the black ground.
- OBDII (optional). Able to reset check engine light, and know what's wrong with your car.
- Bluetooth (optional).
- Ipod control (optional)
- Mobile broadband (optional) internet access on the go for your passenger and internet radio stations etc.
- Cheap mobile tv solution
- Basically, anything you can do with your pc, can be moved to your car!

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