casper
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- Joined
- Jan 22, 2009
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The wife has cut down on her hours at work in return for a few hours of work from home, so being the considerate husband I am, I thought rather than bug her while she's trying to work I'd head out to spend some time with the ute.
There's so much I want to do to it. Body lift, rock sliders, rear bar, quater panel chop and the list goes on. But I don't have the knowledge or tools for such jobs. So I thought it was time to start working on another project I've had my eye on for a while... an in-car PC.
This would be an all in one system. Turn by turn navigation, off road navigation, music, video, hands free phone control and internet. Eventually I want to include rear camera, front camera recording and engine diagnostics... later though, that shit costs money.
So I need to get the UHF and stereo out of the dash because I don't want the screen to be external and cables running everywhere, it has to be neat and look as close to factory looking as possible. So unless I mount the screen from the roof, which still leaves me with the issue of where to put the computer, I need it to go into the dash.
So, first things first, the most logical place (for me) was to move the stereo and UHF to a roof console. A quick browse around almost stopped my project in it's tracks. Those things are expensive!!! So I had a closer look at the design and thought... I could do this myself. After about 90mins of buggering around I had a rough template sorted. Getting the roof shape is the hardest. It was pretty rough, but good enough to warrant bringing out the saw. I had a sheet of 9mm MDF already, which I thought would be fine so I cut it up. I then fitted it together with a few pieces of timber and have bolted the frame onto the roof for a week or 2 of test running to make sure I like the shape and size before I cover it.
Well I don't. I've hit my head on the corner of the front section a few times and I think I drew blood the last time.
The section at the front where I want the UHF to go, I based off the original Navara stereo I still had. So it's HUGE. Much bigger than I require so I have to get it out and pull the UHF out of the dash. I'm pretty sure the UHF is much shorter, so I'll be able to make a significant change to that section.
In the meantime, I've been working on a front end for my PC. A frontend is the term for the program that runs everything. At the moment, I'm playing around with a program called Centrafuse. Centrafuse is a fairly slick program. It comes ready to go out of the box and a 5 minute read at mp3car.com shows that some very smart people have made it very customisable. Be warned though, 5mins at mp3car, very quickly turns into hours.
And hours.
And hours.
There''s another program called Ride Runner that is free (Bonus!!!). It's open source so it's extremely customisable. There are an infinite number of plugins and add ons for Ride Runner and it's starting to look like it could be the go. Plus there is an awesome looking Oziexplorer plugin for it. It's no where near as eassy to set up though & requires much more brain power than I can be bothered mustering.
So, the console has been finished for a week. I'm pretty happy with it so far. I haven't hit my head... that's always good. I had all the wiring rerouted and extended at an auto electrician. All good except that he didn't have an aerial extension lead... doesn't matter anyway it seems as the day after installing this I found out we're having another baby, so the Navara no longer suits my needs..
Here are some pics of my car pc screen and roof console pictures will come soon.
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There's so much I want to do to it. Body lift, rock sliders, rear bar, quater panel chop and the list goes on. But I don't have the knowledge or tools for such jobs. So I thought it was time to start working on another project I've had my eye on for a while... an in-car PC.
This would be an all in one system. Turn by turn navigation, off road navigation, music, video, hands free phone control and internet. Eventually I want to include rear camera, front camera recording and engine diagnostics... later though, that shit costs money.
So I need to get the UHF and stereo out of the dash because I don't want the screen to be external and cables running everywhere, it has to be neat and look as close to factory looking as possible. So unless I mount the screen from the roof, which still leaves me with the issue of where to put the computer, I need it to go into the dash.
So, first things first, the most logical place (for me) was to move the stereo and UHF to a roof console. A quick browse around almost stopped my project in it's tracks. Those things are expensive!!! So I had a closer look at the design and thought... I could do this myself. After about 90mins of buggering around I had a rough template sorted. Getting the roof shape is the hardest. It was pretty rough, but good enough to warrant bringing out the saw. I had a sheet of 9mm MDF already, which I thought would be fine so I cut it up. I then fitted it together with a few pieces of timber and have bolted the frame onto the roof for a week or 2 of test running to make sure I like the shape and size before I cover it.
Well I don't. I've hit my head on the corner of the front section a few times and I think I drew blood the last time.
The section at the front where I want the UHF to go, I based off the original Navara stereo I still had. So it's HUGE. Much bigger than I require so I have to get it out and pull the UHF out of the dash. I'm pretty sure the UHF is much shorter, so I'll be able to make a significant change to that section.
In the meantime, I've been working on a front end for my PC. A frontend is the term for the program that runs everything. At the moment, I'm playing around with a program called Centrafuse. Centrafuse is a fairly slick program. It comes ready to go out of the box and a 5 minute read at mp3car.com shows that some very smart people have made it very customisable. Be warned though, 5mins at mp3car, very quickly turns into hours.
And hours.
And hours.
There''s another program called Ride Runner that is free (Bonus!!!). It's open source so it's extremely customisable. There are an infinite number of plugins and add ons for Ride Runner and it's starting to look like it could be the go. Plus there is an awesome looking Oziexplorer plugin for it. It's no where near as eassy to set up though & requires much more brain power than I can be bothered mustering.
So, the console has been finished for a week. I'm pretty happy with it so far. I haven't hit my head... that's always good. I had all the wiring rerouted and extended at an auto electrician. All good except that he didn't have an aerial extension lead... doesn't matter anyway it seems as the day after installing this I found out we're having another baby, so the Navara no longer suits my needs..
Here are some pics of my car pc screen and roof console pictures will come soon.
Like my logo!
Selecting an artist lets you select their albums
