Michaelwagner Wrote: > very cool. > > I considered doing something similar, but as you say, it's just a bit > too big to fit in a standard car audio spot. > > I notice your already built in stereo has an Aux input. The one that > came with my car didn't, so I'd have to replace that too. Starts to be > a big project. ... > > I considered the transducer that pretends to be a tape, but my tape > desk doesn't understand them and keeps switching to rewind (or fast > forward, don't remember) when it can't feel the resistance of a tape. > > There is also the tiny FM broadcaster device. I've done that with a > portable MP3 player, and if you put the transducer right under the car > audio unit, you get not bad results. Not brilliant, but then, it's a > car. You already have all that road noise. > > How did you do the power management for the PC? Does it shut off when > the car does? How? If not, what do you do?
Actually, the stereo is aftermarket - the factory stereo was a double-DIN 6-CD changer. Nice, but it did not play MP3s, only regular CDs, and I hate carrying CDs in my car. Since I needed the extra space anyway, I went ahead and got a unit with an AUX in. For power, the car PC uses a small "M1-ATX" DC-DC converter board (if you go to www.mp3car.com, you'll find these). It takes the car voltage and outputs regulated 5V and 12V. It also has logic that keeps the power on for a user-configurable amount of time after you turn off the ignition. The PC gets a power-down signal and actually gracefully shuts down, and the time delay on the pwoer supply allows this to happen before hard power-off. I ran power wires from the 5V supply to the SB, so the SB will actually stay powered too until the timeout happens. The one thing I had to do (differently from home operation) on the SB is to set a static IP. This is because when you turn the key and the whole system powers up, the PC is not booted yet, and the SB expects to find a DHCP server fairly soon after power-on. If in DHCP mode, it tended to give up before the PC was booted. With a static IP, it simply gives an error about contacting the SlimServer for a while, and then after a while it finally sees the server and everything is OK. -Joe -- skyrush _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
