Hello again and welcome to post #6 of my blog on the design and build of my very own custom made in-car pc solution. A lot of progress has been made from the previous post, so without further adieu let the build continue!
First thing's first. I have resolved the cooling issues once and for all. The two 40mm high performance fans have been installed in the case and the computer re-assembled. I have run stress tests and the thermal performance is more than satisfactory. However, the fans are extremely loud, so a system to regulate their speed and therefore noise level is required.
To regulate the fan speed I chose the Corsair link system. Corsair Link is a dynamic cooling system which has many applications in monitoring and control of internal pc components such as cooling fans, temperature sensors, RGB LED lighting and even real-time power consumption meters. The system is modular and highly expandable and versatile, which is perfect for my needs. I won't explain in detail how the system works, for more information see the link above.
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| Link commander mini unit |
Installing the corsair link commander unit was slightly tricky, as it was never designed to be used outside a computer's case. The link commander system uses a SATA power connector normally used to power hard drives and optical drives, and due to the very limited nature of the computer's power supply there were no spare sata power connectors. Luckily, I found a double sata power adapter cable in my workshop and used that as a workaround.
Getting the USB interface to work was another small problem. As mentioned earlier, the link system is designed to be used internally, so the USB communication cable has a motherboard header attached to it instead of your typical male USB type A plug. The motherboard of the car computer doesn't have two USB headers, and its only one is already in use for the two USB sockets on the front of the case. To rectify this, I simply chopped off the motherboard header and soldered on a male USB plug from an old USB cable.
After a bit of cable management and sleeving I could refit the cases' original front cover plate.
I have a small complaint about the the PC case, specifically the build quality of the 8 pin plug & socket used for the power, ground, acc and amplifier remote on cables. For starters not all of the pins are populated on the computer side, but on the plug there a couple of seemingly random wires installed. I cut these off as there was no way to use them. However problems started occurring during software testing as the other pins kept coming loose from the plastic plug & socket pieces, resulting in an unreliable and tempramental power connection to the PC. After unplugging and pushing the internal metal pins back in place only to have them pop out next time I plugged the plug in, I got fed up. I simply removed the plug and socket and ran heavy duty wires directly to the power supply, using male and female blade crimps instead. This an annoying and unnecessary modification, as the computer case should have been fitted with a better quality plug/socket!
Now comes the time for software installation. For the sake of not repeating myself and writing hundred page blog posts, I won't go into much detail about how I installed the software or why. I am not a software expert or a computer programmer but I do have an above average understanding of the windows operating system. So here we go:
To start the software prototyping and hardware testing phase I had the PC set up in my workshop using a standard LCD computer monitor, USB mouse and PS2 keyboard and some old desktop speakers. I powered the computer from a nearby parked car's battery, making sure to check the voltage periodically to ensure it could still start the car.
The first software I installed (excluding the drivers for the audio, wifi, bluetooth, display, ect) was for the corsair link system. I downloaded it from the website and installed the latest version. There was some difficulty in getting the link commander to work properly but after restarting a couple of times and power cycling the commander unit the drivers initiated properly and I could start setting it up. The corsair link software itself is extremely customizable.
The next item was the GPS. I downloaded and installed the drivers using the link on the Ebay page from which I bought the unit. For GPS navigation software I used Navigator. It's a free GPS navigation suite that supports my GPS receiver. Installing it was a breeze, and it even had its own utility to automatically detect and use the GPS without any manual configuration. As a huge plus, it already has large touch optimized buttons which will come in handy for use on the smaller touchscreen.
**11/15 Update: I am not using any navigation software on the computer as presently it is easier and better to use google maps on my smartphone. I was also unable to find good off-road navigation software as these days it comes pre-loaded with GPU units.**
Finding an application for listening to FM radio through my USB dongle was slightly challanging. I settled on Radio Receiver, which is a free app that actually runs through the Google Chrome web browser's language (chrome doesn't have to be running for it to work) to achieve real time SDR (software defined radio). Basically this means that the USB stick receives the FM signal and relays it as a raw digital signal to the app, which then processes it into an audio signal and pipes it out of the computer to the speakers. There are a huge amount of apps out there for doing this, as it turns out the USB sick I chose (there are many out there similar to it) is capable of receiving a huge range of signals (including analogue and Digital TV, Digital radio and UHF signals used by aircraft for communications). For my application I needed something that was simple, only received FM radio, was touch friendly and could be activated with one or two taps, hence why I used a simple app rather than a full software suite.
**11/15 Update: In post #19 the dongle became faulty and I had to replace it with another one, which led to an interesting discovery.**
Getting Radio Receiver to work with the USB stick was problematic as I had some issues in getting the PC to recognize it. To get it working I used an utility called zadig. Zadig is basically a program that replaces the generic drivers for the USB stick with better ones to allow the USB reciever to work properly. After doing this and restarting the PC there were no more issues with Radio Reciever.
For web browsing I use Google Chrome. Enough said.
For power saving and general monitoring I'm using AI Suite 3. This is software that came with the motherboard and is handy for fan control (Used only for the CPU fan in my case as the case fans are ran by the corsair link system), and active power saving by dynamically limiting the CPU power consumption. This will be handy for extending battery life when the PC is left on wile the vehicle is parked.
So far, all the software and hardware is working perfectly. Until my touch screen arrives there isn't much more I can do. Until then, goodbye and thanks for reading.
Getting the USB interface to work was another small problem. As mentioned earlier, the link system is designed to be used internally, so the USB communication cable has a motherboard header attached to it instead of your typical male USB type A plug. The motherboard of the car computer doesn't have two USB headers, and its only one is already in use for the two USB sockets on the front of the case. To rectify this, I simply chopped off the motherboard header and soldered on a male USB plug from an old USB cable.
 |
| The front of the PC in its final iteration. Note the USB cable plugged into the right hand USB socket is for the Corsair Link commander. |
After a bit of cable management and sleeving I could refit the cases' original front cover plate.
I have a small complaint about the the PC case, specifically the build quality of the 8 pin plug & socket used for the power, ground, acc and amplifier remote on cables. For starters not all of the pins are populated on the computer side, but on the plug there a couple of seemingly random wires installed. I cut these off as there was no way to use them. However problems started occurring during software testing as the other pins kept coming loose from the plastic plug & socket pieces, resulting in an unreliable and tempramental power connection to the PC. After unplugging and pushing the internal metal pins back in place only to have them pop out next time I plugged the plug in, I got fed up. I simply removed the plug and socket and ran heavy duty wires directly to the power supply, using male and female blade crimps instead. This an annoying and unnecessary modification, as the computer case should have been fitted with a better quality plug/socket!
Now comes the time for software installation. For the sake of not repeating myself and writing hundred page blog posts, I won't go into much detail about how I installed the software or why. I am not a software expert or a computer programmer but I do have an above average understanding of the windows operating system. So here we go:
To start the software prototyping and hardware testing phase I had the PC set up in my workshop using a standard LCD computer monitor, USB mouse and PS2 keyboard and some old desktop speakers. I powered the computer from a nearby parked car's battery, making sure to check the voltage periodically to ensure it could still start the car.
The first software I installed (excluding the drivers for the audio, wifi, bluetooth, display, ect) was for the corsair link system. I downloaded it from the website and installed the latest version. There was some difficulty in getting the link commander to work properly but after restarting a couple of times and power cycling the commander unit the drivers initiated properly and I could start setting it up. The corsair link software itself is extremely customizable.
The next item was the GPS. I downloaded and installed the drivers using the link on the Ebay page from which I bought the unit. For GPS navigation software I used Navigator. It's a free GPS navigation suite that supports my GPS receiver. Installing it was a breeze, and it even had its own utility to automatically detect and use the GPS without any manual configuration. As a huge plus, it already has large touch optimized buttons which will come in handy for use on the smaller touchscreen.
**11/15 Update: I am not using any navigation software on the computer as presently it is easier and better to use google maps on my smartphone. I was also unable to find good off-road navigation software as these days it comes pre-loaded with GPU units.**
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| Photo of the navigation software. Mu aplogies for the poor quality. |
Finding an application for listening to FM radio through my USB dongle was slightly challanging. I settled on Radio Receiver, which is a free app that actually runs through the Google Chrome web browser's language (chrome doesn't have to be running for it to work) to achieve real time SDR (software defined radio). Basically this means that the USB stick receives the FM signal and relays it as a raw digital signal to the app, which then processes it into an audio signal and pipes it out of the computer to the speakers. There are a huge amount of apps out there for doing this, as it turns out the USB sick I chose (there are many out there similar to it) is capable of receiving a huge range of signals (including analogue and Digital TV, Digital radio and UHF signals used by aircraft for communications). For my application I needed something that was simple, only received FM radio, was touch friendly and could be activated with one or two taps, hence why I used a simple app rather than a full software suite.
**11/15 Update: In post #19 the dongle became faulty and I had to replace it with another one, which led to an interesting discovery.**
Getting Radio Receiver to work with the USB stick was problematic as I had some issues in getting the PC to recognize it. To get it working I used an utility called zadig. Zadig is basically a program that replaces the generic drivers for the USB stick with better ones to allow the USB reciever to work properly. After doing this and restarting the PC there were no more issues with Radio Reciever.
 |
| Radio Receiver in action |
For web browsing I use Google Chrome. Enough said.
For power saving and general monitoring I'm using AI Suite 3. This is software that came with the motherboard and is handy for fan control (Used only for the CPU fan in my case as the case fans are ran by the corsair link system), and active power saving by dynamically limiting the CPU power consumption. This will be handy for extending battery life when the PC is left on wile the vehicle is parked.
So far, all the software and hardware is working perfectly. Until my touch screen arrives there isn't much more I can do. Until then, goodbye and thanks for reading.
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