Sunday, October 12, 2008

Carputer / CarPC in Honda Accord 2004: Intro

Why have a carputer in a car? Thats something my wife has asked me several times. I don't have one big answer but I have several reasons:


  • Main reason: My car has OEM Navi with a touchscreen and two secondary screens behind the head rests built in tempting me to tap it.
  • Wouldn't it be cool if I could, listen to any music in my MP3 library on voice command, play any movie, use my 3G phone via bluetooth for Internet access, have Google maps display my GPS location instead of the quickly outdated stock Navi DVD?
  • Finally, and perhaps most importantly, what a fun, techy and geeky project!! Right up my alley!

So, enough explaining, on with the project. Main phases were:
  1. Get video to video system along with a switch.
  2. OEM Navi touchscreen must control PC
  3. Get true audio straight into the audio system. FM Modulator currently used will not do and needs to be replaced.
  4. Cables and power system routed and hidden.

Three Main Goals..
  1. Its gotta look completely OEM or better.
  2. No modifications to the OEM equipment. No cutting into the OEM wires or components for me. It has to be completely unpluggable.
  3. Don't break/scratch/ or damange anything.
VIDEO:

If you can't get the video working.. thats a red flag which is why I started here. All the other steps are easier.. right? So, time to break into the dash to see what we're working with. Breaking into the dash without causing any blemishes is a time consuming task.

Go to the Video post.


AUDIO:

If you can get the video running on the PC, it would really be a shame to put your great MP3's through a FM Modulator. I want high quality audio.
Go to the Audio post.

WIRING:

If all the above works, we need to get all the power needs addressed, auto-on - auto-off so it doesn't drain the battery, and USB/audio cables routed.
Go to Wiring post.

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