Car + Computer = Carputer. Car + Pandora = Car-dora?

[davidgutierrez]

I've been thinking for several months about turning my car into a carputer: a car with a low-powered PC with touch-screen which is used as a media center, GPS, video-game console (just in case you are waiting somebody and he/she comes late) and other useful tasks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer

I thought that a VIA motherboard+CPU with a lightweight Linux distro would be the perfect choice, but Pandora should be capable of doing most of these tasks, so... do you think a "Car-dora" would be possible?

 

[Kramy]

Would probably be possible - but the voltages supplied by a car are pretty volatile, so you'll have to research power supplies carefully, or just use Li-Ion battery packs.

Hey, anyone know how stable the voltage is from a lighter socket?

 

[Chip]

Hey, anyone know how stable the voltage is from a lighter socket?

Nobody has said what the DC voltage will be for an external PSU, but it probably won't be 12V. You're going to need an adapter, and that will smooth out the voltage.

 

[greendots]

it should be easy to power the pandora in the car from its mini usb port (my gps is powered the same way). Tv out could be used with a monitor.

 

[Squidge]

Hey, anyone know how stable the voltage is from a lighter socket?

Between 8 and 14.4V. The low voltage would be when cranking, and the high voltage when the engine is running. Some car also cut power to the lighter socket when the car is cranking.

Really you need an efficient way of regulating the voltage down (ie, switch mode PSU) rather than a linear reg. Lucky for you that you can buy them including the lighter plug and usb socket pretty cheaply.

 

[Snu]

i had thought of turning an old pentium 2 laptop into a carputer, but good quality touchscreens aren't cheap... i thought of just mounting the laptop under the dash on some kind of slide out, but i never got around to figuring it out...
anyway, pandora would handle carputer tasks easily - all you need is to wire up a fairly cheap inverter, plug in the pandora's ac adapter to it, and there ya go.
are you thinking of a permanent mod, as in removing the pandora's screen and attaching it to the dash, etc? maybe you'll want something more efficient than converting dc to ac and back to dc then.
i plan on using the pandora as my car mp3 player, just plug it in to an audio jack.

 

[GaidinTS]

I plan on having a Pandora carputer. When I am in the car, I will pull the pandora out of my pocket and use it.



Brilliant!

 

[quote]

I plan on having a Pandora trainputer. When I am on the train, I will pull the Pandora out of my pocket and use it.




Brilliant!

 

[Karel Jansens]

I plan on having a Pandora Pr0nputer. When...

Oh, wait...

 

[astro]

WTF? :rolleyes:

 

[quartercast]

I plan on having a Pandora WTFputer. When I pull it out in public, people will go "WTF??"