small pc in car for engine mangment
 

so im thinking of adding adding a small pc into my car for mp3's and what not but i also plan to use it for engine mangement does anyone have any good ideas, tips or suggestions? i would greatly appericate it. oh i already have a screen its a visior minitor already built into the visior so i got that covered. i just dont want this to look ricey everything that can be hidden will be hidden. and since it is extra power consumption i think it would be best to go to an Fd alternator would it not?

i dont know that a little laptop or somethin would cause such a power drain on the system but it wouldnt hurt to upgrade the stock alt anyway

PC's dont consume that much power, expecially laptops. For laptops, you are looking at less than 5 amps.

http://www.xenarc.com/product/cp1000.html

http://www.statikdesign.com/scratchb.../carputer.html

http://packrat.netfirms.com/carputer.htm

I'm using a Mac Mini.

WHY? Have fun with the ignition & fuel program.

Some of the car-pc solutions have 12V DC powersupplies designed for use in a car that won't be damaged by engine cranking.

there was a guy on this site that had a pretty cool car puter he made and put in the back bin. Forgot his name though.

ok let me say this. I'm in the process of doing the same thing. As of right now I'm in the software /dev stages. I have gotten microtechs engine management program to run in linux and I tested a dummy com port connection it seems to communicate without a problem. I'm also working on an amarok interface inside karamba as well as a GPS program, these will all be scripted into seperate screens in fluxbox (yea I am teh uber geek). Basically your best bet is to use a mini-ITX. The location is questionable however I'm considering using a water cooling system and have the cooling radiator near the front of the bay similar to where the radiator is.

The only issue you will have is having it go through a shutdown sequence. You don't want to hard shutdown everytime you turn off the car. If you get that done it's just a matter of keeping the circuits happy.

You could use a UPS to buffer the power requirement and provide power even after the engine is shut down. I knew a guy who managed a real-estate website and had a computer in his car with a similar setup.

I tested this using my laptop. basically what I did was have it measure the voltage, when the car kicked off I had it run a script to do a shutdown procedure while still pulling from the battery...the drain was minimal (this was done under linux and w/o the laptop battery.

No, a nano ITX is a better choice and usually does not require cooling any more than a fan. and its only 12cmx12cm instead of the Mini-ITX which is 16cmx16cm


which then solves:
Linux or Windows embedded solves that

What happens when you need to reboot while you're driving?


-Ted

how about just a laptop or small pc permenantely attached to a standalone?

you would have a problem with it doing the engine managment because computers take a minute to boot up

^^ Why reinvent the wheel? I can see having a computer to do real-time tuning (i'm planning on embedding one in my car), connected to your stand alone. I realize most people in this thread are talking about that, the original poster made it sound like he was going to run his system directly off the computer.. . Which would be a cool project, but it makes a lot more sense to use a Megasquirt or some other EMS, which runs off of embedded code and is booted instantly..

My computer is getting connected to my MegaSquirt.

I've been meaning to setup one in my car too.

I think most people dont get that the laptop in the car doesnt run the engine. It programs the ecu that runs the engine.

I'm going to have the laptop so I can tune my system easily without a dyno and I can monitor whats going on.

http://www.embeddedsys.com/ ->Computer on a chip.
I've been thinking about this for a while now. You can boot a small barebones linux distro (puppy, dsl, ...minix maybe ) in <2 seconds. Really low energy consumption & heat output. If calypso seems to have microtech's software running on linux, one of these could provide a cheaper solution than 1000 for an EMS ( they retail for around 200-300 bucks ).

I've had PCs in all my cars since 1999 or so and wouldn't have it any other way. They're great, but have their limitations.

MP3s and such are fine, but engine management is not going to happen.

Most engine management systems are either running on a microcontroller specifically programmed to perform one function (engine management...) or on a system running a "realtime" operating system. A realtime O/S is designed to run simple programs that must run uninterrupted and in realtime. An example of this is engine control where the system must deliver perfectly timed ignition pulses. This is easy to do with a microcontroller and system running a realtime OS but desktop operating systems (Windows, Linux, etc.) are all preemptive multitasking systems, meaning that they "time slice" tasks to make it appear like they are doing more then one thing at a time. Simply put, this means that it is very difficult to guarantee that you can run anything "realtime" without writing a kernel mode driver. Even then, the PC hardware functions on a system of interrupts meaning that it is possible for your engine control code to be forced to wait while something else takes place...

Simply put, it's not going to work with PC hardware unless you write an operating system from scratch...

Also, the fact is that PC hardware crashes. Not often, but it does happen. My MP3 players crash at least once a week simply because they are not designed for the abusive environment of a car. Vibration, moisture, fine metal shavings, etc. all take their tole on things. If it's just an MP3 player, no big deal. Just hit the dash-mounted "reset" button and be on your way. But if you are controlling an engine, this would be a big, big problem...

http://www.mp3car.com

A PC takes very little power. The FC alternator is fine. Even a full desktop motherboard and HD (what I have always run) takes less then 5A ususally.

If this was the case, you would have to strap a battery to your back to run your laptop. Think about it. :)

This is what I have always used. Back in the day, I had to buy industrial supplies designed to run on 8-24V DC (common in industry). They worked very well and can stand up to abuse but again were not designed to handle moisture very well. So on very damp days, they needed to "warm up".

Now there are a lot of companies making power supplies in ATX form (and other less popular formfactors) for car PCs. http://www.mp3car.com has links and store where you can get them.

Easily done. In my system, I have a key on the keypad set to "shut down". This key shuts down Windows, then I just hit the power switch a few seconds later. My software is custom made so this might not work for your application.

However most of the power supplies on MP3Car have built in shutdown controllers that can perform this function.

I'll give him credit for creativity, but that's a huge hack. :) There are MUCH better solutions.

That's a much better solution. Use the computer only for display and programming, then a proper ECU for engine control...With something like the Megasquirt, you could customize as much as you want...

I'de do the laptop so I can more like Paul Walker.

:)

2 F@st 4 U!

actually my intent is to do real time tuneing im look for suggestion and promblems others have run into or some really cool ideas

i think araon cake gets what im trying to do it is mostly for mp3's and i am going to have an aftermarket ecu i just know shit about them and some help would be nice and i will wire in the ecu to the computer so i can tune it threw there, makes life simplier. i can do a write up on the install if needed i just have to finish getting my parts for it. when im done the car is still going to look stock with only a restart button next to the power mirrior switch

Almost every stand-alone EMS already does this.
Have you done your research properly?

Haltech has been doing this since *1986*.


-Ted

Yeah, there's not much to realtime tuning...Just install the software on the PC and connect via the serial port. :)

The MP3Car site contains everything you would ever want to know about car computing so that is the first place to start. Years ago, I used to Admin that forum so I know it's a good place. ;)