Building Budget Carputer... where should I start ??

[illnastyimpreza]

hey guys whats goin on ?

I'm looking to start building a budget carputer.

Basicly All I care about being able to do is, tune my car via USB... all else is frosting on the cake.

I would like to be able to store some MP3s/window media files and possibly use GPS and surf the web as well...

whats the best place to start ???

I would like to spend no more than 400-500 including monitor... BUT the cheaper the better !!!

 

[NightSurge]

Sounds like a pretty complicated build for that small a price range. Is this going to be mounted in your car?

EDIT: Wow, I must be tired. OBVIOUSLY it will be mounted in your car. Anyways... this type of thing is too advanced for me, but I'm sure you can look on Google and find many people who have done this and documented it.

 

[ohGrFreak]

Buy an EMS, plug laptop into EMS. If you want to tune A/F ratios and gear ratios with this thing, you do NOT want to skimp, do it right.

Now if all you want is a A/V monitor and a harddrive to put all your music and videos, sure, you can skimp out on that, that won't blow up your engine.

 

[illnastyimpreza]

any idea on some Hardware to start with ??

Motherboard?
Harddrive?
dvd/cdrom ?
memory?
video card ?
power supply?
Case ?

am I missing anything ?

 

[illnastyimpreza]

well I just bit the bullet and won one of these ... 88 bucks shipped HP Compaq EVO D510 e-PC P4 2.4 256 XPP SP2 Computer - eBay (item 170204590210 end time Mar-31-08 20:14:28 PDT)

P4 2.4 , 256mb DDR ram upgradable to 2GB.... integrated video and audio though

But its 3.5'' x 10'' x 12'' !!!

Now I just have to choose a decent VGA screen...

 

[ohGrFreak]

That'll work, you do not need a powerful computer to run audio and video. The monitor might be pricey though, I myself can't find a screen smaller than 15 inches that'll work with a basic vga input, and those are almost the same price as 19 inch models. You could get a cheap 17 inch and mount it on your ceiling, lol, if you don't have a sunroof of course.

Are you still going to tune your car with this? You still need a tunable EMS system. You can't just plug this thing into your stock ECU and expect it to work.