Is this possible or am I dreaming? LCD monitor mounting.

[MyPetFly]

oh ok well thats good to hear..painting it the charcoal colour to blend in with the rest of the dash are you?i was thinking of moding my compartment under the standard stereo to fit a motorized 7' single din screen in..

Charcoal is the plan at the moment.

The position with the screen as low as the existing double DIN stereo (or lower in your case) doesn't excite me at all. The fact the you have to look down and take your eyes off the road to do anything is dangerous. I also have a VX (series 2 S) and I have a 6.5inch double DIN DVD/SATNAV mounted it the original stereo position and I hate it. The only thing that makes it useable is the fact that it has a remote control that you can hold in you hand so you don't have to look down and take your eyes off the road to use the controls.

When you see the driving position of the screen I am building you will fall in love with it for its practicality (is that a real word?). Easy to reach and look at without compromising your driving safety.

I sprayed a coat of undercoat on it tonight just to see what all the lines look like (it is a bit deceiving when everything is a shade of white). What I did realise is that there is a lot of fine sanding a filing to do to make it look chrisp and sharp.

 

[MyPetFly]

Hi All,

There have been many hours of work since my last post and the "pod" is almost ready for painting (I will post some more pics tomorrow).

I am seriously considering getting it painted by a panel beater as I want it to look perfect. I have applied some undercoat with a spray can which has convinced me that this method will not get me the perfect result I require.

I have also come up with a very inventive way of mounting my screen. I realised that there was not going to be enough room to get a screw driver in the back so had to come up with another option. It looks a bit ugly on the inside but front the outside you couldn't tell the difference (will also post some pics of this tomorrow).

I hope to be able to fully mount the screen and bench test it tomorrow . . . yippee!

 

[MyPetFly]

Being obsessive/compulsive really helps keeping a project moving. I took half a day off work today (I own a real estate agency) and spent 6hrs working on this project. I have finally got to the stage tonight where I could mount the LCD screen and give it a test run and believe it or not it worked first time . . . . yippee.

Still more work on the pod to get it perfect but this time next week I will be driving around with the final product mounted in my car!

Here is a photo log of the results of todays work. The LCD screen is covering in glad wrap (for protection) in case you are wondering what is on the screen.

 

[RichoVZ]

looking really good there mate, smooth as, nice shape...

so have you decided who is painting it? cant wait to see the finish product

 

[hakhawk]

excellent!! now hook it up to a laptop, and go take it for a spin round the town during the day when its nice and sunny, particularly in the mornings when suns not overly high in the sky,driving away from the sun. see how it goes

 

[MyPetFly]

I'm taking a few days off the fabrication at the moment and have moved onto getting the carputer running properly.

I am using an old Compaq Laptop with a 1.5ghz Athalon processor. Did a clean install of WinXP today and then pulled it apart and have soldered some wires to the power on switch which enable me to turn the laptop on without having to lift the lid on push the power button. I am going to connect these wires to a switch which I will mount next to the T/C switch on the centre console.

On the weekend I will pull the passenger seat out and mount the laptop upside down (for air flow) underneath. I think I will just use valcro bolted to the floor.

Once the laptop is mounted there will be no need to access it again.

I also have to remove the IR remote receiver off the button circuit board and use some thin wire to mount it in a suitable position. I am seriously thinking about mounting it inside the centre console air vents (which are directly below the screen). The IR receiver is so small no-one will ever see it.

Next week I will move on to finishing the fabrication.

 

[MyPetFly]

Not sure if anyone is still interested in this project but here are a few more pics of the latest advancements.

For the first time this evening I was able to go for a test drive and road test everything and believe it or not it all worked! The pod is still just undercoated as I didn't want to pay a panel beater to paint it unless I knew it would all work.

It's gettin pretty late so I will just post the pics tonight and give you a bit of a write up tomorrow on the hurdles that I have faced and the improvements I have already discovered for prototype 2.

Here's the pics:

If anyone reading this post is a holden tech I would appreciate it if you could help my little problem with my SRS airbag alarm posted here http://forums.justcommodores.com.au/vz-holden-commodore-2004-2006/63119-help-srs-airbag-fault.html

 

[RichoVZ]

wow looking real good man, i am still interested in it, as im sure others are also. so whats left? just positioning the laptop and cables and your done? what projects do you have in mind afterwards?

 

[6385]

This is looking like a good project, you've done very well. May I ask as to the program you are running on the computer? You say WinXP so I gather that it's a program that your running to the monitor. Thanks for reply.

 

[hakhawk]

looks like hes playing with centrafuse

Flux introduces Centrafuse™

im using roadrunner on mine, have been since i put it in a couple year ago, tried heaps of others, settled on roadrunner.

check out mp3car for a list of the most commonly used and working front ends

Front Ends - MP3Car.com