Hi guys, first post here (first decent car ive owned also lol )

I just got home a 2001 VRX (TJ i think have to check) all optioned, full leather, in black with slight metallic green underneath.

My question is, i was planning a similar setup to ramy_zohair with a carputer system + touchscreen. I will be using a laptop (that has a broken screen) as the basis of this, i just wanted to confirm a few things, especially on the power side, so i have a few questions:

1) As it is a laptop here is how im thinking the power setup will work: I run the power from a non-constant source, set the laptop standby (when off power) to 0 mins, run an extended power button to the console somewhere. So when i get in the car, power on the laptop with the button, do what i gotta do, when the car is turned off the laptop will revert to battery power and go directly into standby. Now the laptop battery should last around 2 days on complete standbye, but this also has a "Wake on Power" option, so subsequent times i turn the car on it should bring the laptop up automatically (and reduce startup times). Is my reasoning faulty, or does this sound allright to everyone :confused: ?

2) Secondly, the power supply for the laptop is rated at 65W ~ 3.6 amps, will this be a problem for the alternator/battery? If not, could i just simple get a cigrette lighter based charger, snip the end of and connect that to another source? Any suggestions on the source that i could be connecting to?

Thats basically all im needing to know at the moment, so any help will be greatly appreciated!!!

lol one more thing, would bains dash removal tutorial be identical to mine? thanks!!!!

The only way you could do it would be to hook up the laptop's power supply to an accessory 12v source, though i would have thought it would need a fair bit of power and that the acc wires wouldn't be thick enough. May be wrong on that one.
You'd also need to have the car running for at least a few hours for the laptop to recharge, otherwise after multiple short trips the laptop battery would just go flat wouldn't it?

Definately do-able. You can always get a power inverter and rig that up to an acc wire source.
Also yes the console removal is identical to bains.

Wow!! less then 5 mins for a reply! nice one!

The batteries on this laptop (IBM Thinkpad r32) are pretty good and take **** all to charge them fully, but i understand what you mean, i may have to take that into account, there are clip on extended batteries which i may need to look at, which would extend the load battery time to around 6-7 hours.

So the alternator should run this fine? I should say along with the stereo system im looking at but i haven't nailed that down for details yet, and the 7.5"" touch screen going in the dash.

BTW thanks for the input, im loving these forums already, bought the magna last saturday, and found this site on monday :bowrofl:

If the laptop is only pulling 3 amps, you wont need to worry about the alternator as a HU pulls up to 10amp and the alternator can produce 100+ (not sure on how much, i think it's nearly 150).
So the laptop will run fine.
It's re-charging the battery i see as your main problem, making sure it wont go flat (unless you mount it in an easily accessible place where you can re-boot it easily).

Hey dude, you can get the kits from places like Super cheap that are designed for laptops in cars ( Mine cost about $69 Aust ) but I think they are cheaper now.. come with a cig lighter adapter but you dont need that! Just hard wire it in and it will give you a normal wall style plug. Then just plug the lappy in and away you go.

* Laptops have awesome battery life when you get them but trust me.. after 1 year or so it will drop down a heap + many laptops these days only run at half speed or a reduced clock rate when they are not running off mains power so you dont want to run it off the battery anyway. Maybe even look at taking the battery out because it will get hot. ( will mean you cant use the computer when the car is off but hey.. )

The way the CPU throttling works will be irrelevant (but also, CPU throttling works by only running the CPU at a clockspeed equal to what is necessary to run the current load, hence you get slight performance degredation (while the CPU scales the clock speed) but increase battery life) because it will only ever be running off mains power when its on. Heat shouldn't be an issue, i will be running it in the boot, so ill get a USB laptop cooler (which will also have some LED's in it, so bonus :P ). I have no issues with the computing side of things, just the power side of things.

Basically what ill be looking at is an external USB soundcard with RCA out, USB GPS, run a usb hub up to the glovebox (for K\B / mouse if i need it + any other accesories (eg my phone etc). I have tested the wireless from inside my boot and it works from where i park it to my router, so ill rig up some kind of script to automatically sync movies / music etc from my server when i pull in.

::edit :: Also the battery shouldn't deteriorate very much at all, as the only thing it will run is the trickle it takes for the laptop to stay in standby when the car is off. BTW in standby, all CPU, HDD, fans and accessories are off, so there is effectively NO heat being generated. All it does is keep the ram "live" (for want of a better word).

Tehehe Yep I know what CPU throttling is dude, I have my own PC shop :D

However if you have a centrino chip your CPU will not run at full speed when your running off batterys ( not sure if this is what you where trying to say or not.. ) regardless it wont make a difference at all because you will have mains/car power when you are using it.


the battery shouldn't deteriorate very much at all
Sorry man.. It will. They all do, its just the way it is. ( I would take the battery out. )

My setup sounds very much like your system ( I got the USB GPRS from Ebay ~ Make sure you get one with NMEA standard, it supports a heap of software including google earth, haha now that can be fun.. )

Sounding like a nice setup hey, keep us posted with regards to the script for moving data into the car via Wifi + the touch screen <-- been thinking about this for a few months now.

I think you will find that centrino based laptops will run at full clock speed when required, i own two and have distributed 1000's of them (i work as the main hardware tech / distributer for Volvo Australia lol ) but like you said, it's a moot point!

Anyway back to the system, how did you mount your GPS? did you have to use an external antenna? I was going to test reception out once i ordered it but any info would be precious!

Also with the syncronising, it can be accomplished using simple startup scripts that scan the remote drive and copy anything not already existing on the car system, however there are many programs out there that can do the same job cleaner and a LOT more efficiently! We use two custom ones at volvo for laptop users to backup their data, ill see if maybe the apps guys could modify them for my personal project :bowrofl: . Ill be using an external 300GB drive for storage, as i have about 250GB of music and movies (XVID) to copy over. So you can imagine how long it would take to scan all that each time you pull in. You would need some sort of persistant list (which i suppose wouldn't be too hard either via scripting).

Ill see how i go and ill keep you posted

BTW what do you think of my car? Lovin the trippy transmission!

Off topic: My Centrino runs at 1.6Ghz when on mains power and runs games etc etc no probs at all but on bat seems to run at only 800Mhz ( RUN: DXDIAG ) and the games run ultra slow.. Will look into this anyway..



how did you mount your GPS? did you have to use an external antenna?

The GPRS Unit I got came with a 1m USB cable that converted into a PS2 Style RS plug that went into the GPRS unit *Magnetic that I put on the roof when it was needed*

** The reception is never as good as they say it is..

It depends on how many satellites your connected to and also if you have anything in the way ( Like the roof of the car ) Its also very dependent on the software you are running for navigation, Google earth will be out by up to 20m I found but this can be the software or the unit so its hard to tell..

Better software like Navman keeps the GPS location on the roads I think so even if the gps tells it that you’re off the road it will keep your marker within the road.
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/USB-Mini-Mouse-GPS-Receiver-FREE-Shipping-Software_W0QQitemZ9706741747QQcategoryZ34290QQrdZ1 QQcmdZViewItem

RE the script: Yep keep me updated I’ve been interested in doing this for a few months now...

Ohh and dude.. Its a 2001 VRX all optioned, full leather, in black! What don't I like about your car! LoL :D