Thanks and a bit abotu me. Was:Re: [Diy_efi] TBI or TPI?

[Ian Molton]

Ashley Evans wrote:

> I like the car pc.  nicely fitted in to an iso slot!

Thanks :)

Im actually on the lookout for a bigger radio to house it in - the 
blaupunkt radio in a friends car is about 1.5 to two inches deeper than 
the junker I gutted originally and doesnt have an annying hole just 
where I need to put a mobo mounting lug. Time to visit car transplants I 
think...

> and the usb on the dash is a nice touch.. perfect for copying oggs.

That it is - Im gonna set it up to auto play any mp3s off a memory stick 
if/when inserted, and will have it pop up a 'copy' button on my (touch 
sensitive) display for grabbing those must-have tracks.

 > I thought about doing
> one with a wireless card that automatically syncs when in range :)

Im doing that too.

 > I'd
> like to know the full tech specs of the system and costs?  I see you 
> using ide -> CF which is good but still I think there's going to be heat 
> issues?  Is the psu a custom job? does it use power saving to run 24/7 
> to avoid long boot delays? 

Woah! slow down :)

The system pictured is actually in bits - the mobos internal USBs turned 
out to be dead. the mobo was a Via ME6000 mini-itx board.

Ive replaced it with a SP800E which is very similar, but has a faster 
CPU and better chipset, and also has *six* internal USBs rather than two 
and a nicer board layout and connector setup.

the CF adapter was also an early design reject - I've opted for a USB 
stick instead. the reasoning is that it fits inside the casing. the CF 
adapter would have required me to buy a low profile DIMM.

the machine has no moving parts at all - passively cooled and boots from 
the USB stick.

the PSU is an M-Systems one, designed for car use. I was thinking of 
DIY-ing it but its a nontrivial bit of design to get right *and* 
eficient *and* small. It also has a few cute features like auto shutdown 
once the battery drops below 10.5V and the ability to wake the PC from 
sleep and/or fully shut it down. it will power the PC from a 6V supply 
during cranking, and up to 30V. it claims to protect the PC from spikes 
on the powerlines too.

I had to remove some caps from the PSU to get it to fit in my casing 
over the mobo like that. however the SP800E might allow me to put them 
back on (remove = attach to flying leads and hot-glue elsewhere on the 
board).

The system layout is intentionally all USB. it *so* simplifies things.

the boot stick is internal to the machine, and three of the internal 
ports will be brought out to 4 port powered usb hubs in the dash space 
(these run from a seperate regulated 5V supply).

the three hubs will run the other devices:

hub a (left hand side) runs the two cameras and the dash mounted ports.
hub b (middle/accessible via glovebox) will carry a USB audio card (just 
got that today) a memory stick (1GB at present) for storage (the 
internal one will be read-only to prevent wear and is only 64MB), a 
bluetooth card. One spare port.
hub c (right/drivers side) will run WiFi, DVB, and GPS receivers, which 
will likely be mounted on the roof in a custom enclosure. it will also 
(eventually) house the EZ-USB based EMU I have planned.

one of the dash ports will be used to attach the 'head unit' which is a 
Siemens 'Simpad' PDA (8" touchscreen, runs linux)

 > I was going to run a laptop with default
> lilo option set to "incar" mode would have a VERY minimal kernal.  ide + 
> sound only. not even VTs or anything and pass it init=my_custom_stuff to 
> keep boot up times down, but I think there's scope with a permanently 
> installed device to have it powered all the time, maybe even voltage 
> monitoring so if the car is left for a long time it will shutdown, but 
> for day to day use it's always on... just a thought really.

All already planned :-) although since I have suspend / resume 
capability I will used that for 'instant on' ability.

> What are you going to run on it?

Custom software. I havent written that yet though.

 > I see there's something that looks like a camera on the mirror?

Correct. thats a sweex mini webcam. Unfortunaely it appears they dont 
have the dynamic range needed to be actually useful (sun blinds them). I 
will have to investigate a camera with an auto-iris I suspect but thats 
for later.

I intend to run software to measure numberplates to guage distance to 
other vehicles, and also record a loop of the last 2 mins driving into 
RAM (which will be stored to flash in the event of an accident (that 
doesnt kill power)).

 > I'm looking up the ez usb thing now. looks
> interesting, it's not one I'd come across.  I'm very interested in 
> getting on with my own engine management system running. but the 
> electronics side is a little beyond me, If I could get a base cpu/io 
> setup that I could run linux with real time addons on I could program it 
> up for the uni project, as just the software would be the project.

Well *in principle* you could pilfer a few spare GPIO lines on the e750 
and use those but I dont know that itd be very robust. You could buffer 
it somewhat I guess.

> On the llu/dsl thing.

Thanks for that, looks useful - will have to have a proper read.