One of the great things about working with really interesting systems for our clients is the inspiration it can give for those personal side projects. After working on a touch screen application for one client I had the thought to mount one in my car (a 1996 Nissan 300zx) and drive it with one of Apple’s Mac Mini computers (being older, the car doesn’t have a CD player so it made sense to skip a few generations and go fully digital). After some research online there were a few folks who had successfully integrated the mini into their car’s systems but no one had taken the functionality to where I’m envisioning. This series of articles will cover the research, install and evolution of my in car computer system.

Of course it has to handle the audio system (using iTunes for the music library and playback) but I’m thinking about slightly more advanced applications as well. Additional features I’d like to implement are checking email using a broadband wireless card and then having the system read any new messages to me while driving. GPS integration with a simple positioning device can then be linked to something like Google Maps for live traffic conditions. And with an always on internet connection the car can do all sorts of data collection such as sending video streams from in car cameras, providing a great test bed for some of the video streaming projects we’re doing in the office.

To get started, I dove in to the systems others had put together to see the components that seemed to work well and those to avoid.

The key components boiled down to:

• Xenarc 700tsv 7″ USB touchscreen (more on this one later — works great, just too big for my car)
• CarNetix P1900 power supply with Mac Mini cabling
• Griffin Powermate (programmable function control knob)
• Apple bluetooth keyboard
• Mac mini
• ActiveTuning Nissan AUX Input plug (the silver bullet for getting audio into the existing Bose system in my car)

Following the same process we would for any fancy military system, the next step was creating a system diagram to show all the wiring points, approximate cable lengths and power requirements. It looked like the best mounting setup was to put the mini and power supply in the trunk and run cables for everything else back to the front of the car. I was able to purchase a copy of the service manual for the car which helped immensely in finding the right points to tap. Using the diagram as the master plan, I purchased the components and hooked everything up on a workbench to make sure I was happy with how it all functioned prior to installation. Not wanting to run the auxiliary device power output from the CarNetix supply all the way back up to the front of the car I opted for a simple unpowered USB hub in the dash rather than a powered unit that would need to be switched on and off.

So everything was planned out and tested. Next step — Install Day in part 2.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Systems Engineering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.