Hello and welcome to past #10 of my blog on how I built my own in-car computer based entertainment and vehicle management system. In this post I will discuss the various tests I put the system through and how it fared.
This past Easter weekend I took my vehicle to a popular camping and 4WDing spot located around a large irrigation water dam. The area includes hilly terrain, bumpy gravel tracks, water crossings, rock climbing, mud flats and muddy holes. I drove my Patrol through each of these multiple times.
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| My Patrol parked atop a hill climb overlooking the dam. |
I'm extremely pleased to report that I experienced no hardware faults of any kind with the computer system at any time during the weekend. This was the first real field test for the hardware and everything functioned exactly as it should from a hardware standpoint.
However, there were a couple of minor bugs with other parts of the system, specifically the four channel amplifier that drives the satellite speakers. While there were no problems with listening to music at very high volumes (this was tested for an extended period of time), on the second day the music cut out unexpectedly while driving. Closer inspection revealed that the amplifier's inbuilt protection system had activated, possibly due to overheating. The problem soon cleared itself an hour or so later and has not returned.
There are still many software issues to sort out which i am still working on.
The next hardware fix I am working on is to improve the FM radio reception through the USB SDR dongle. Currently RF signals are received through the small magnetic antenna which is magnetically attached to the roof, but this is not sufficient for receiving signals far away from suburban areas. To rectify this I have ordered a series of adapters to transmit the signal from the vehicle's factory fitted electric antenna up to the computer and the USB reciever dongle.
Here is a list of parts that I ordered to do this.
- Factory FM plug to standard aftermarket plug adapter
- Standard aftermarket plug adapter to BNC fitting
- BNC Extension Cable
- BCC Female to male MCX to fit the USB SDR stick
In addition to ordering the adapters I have rigged the electric antenna to raise up via a manual carling rocker switch mounted in the roof console.
That's it for this post, as I continue to improve and update the system I will post new updates. Thanks for reading.
