Computer display for Cerb

[Julian64]

Can't remember who was the pioneer for this. Looking to put a touchscreen in the cerb connected to a computer.

Anyone paved the way on this willing to give some spec notes?

[trooper1212]

'twas me I believe.

I think most of the details were on a post titled headlining (obviously )
What do you want to know?

[tony-tvr]

Hi Trooper, did you manage to connect the cars systems to a laptop/palmtop so you could get readings like bhp, torque, mpg and 0-60 times etc??

[TVR Slag's Bil]

Would a PI Dash not do? I am sure they would have something like this in their product line

[trooper1212]

tony-tvr said:

Hi Trooper, did you manage to connect the cars systems to a laptop/palmtop so you could get readings like bhp, torque, mpg and 0-60 times etc??

Nope, you don't get that info out of the ECU as far as I am aware. You can buy a box for about £150 that will give you the majority of that information.

one of these for example...
www.microsmith.co.uk/dplus/dplus.htm

Plug that into the laptop and your away.

[j_s_g]

trooper1212 said:

'twas me I believe. I think most of the details were on a post titled headlining (obviously ) What do you want to know?

Pah... you were merely a follower.

I never got the MPG, BHP, etc. either.

[trooper1212]

j_s_g said:

trooper1212 said: 'twas me I believe. I think most of the details were on a post titled headlining (obviously ) What do you want to know? Pah... you were merely a follower. I never got the MPG, BHP, etc. either.

I think to qualify as actually doing it, you need to put it in a car

[j_s_g]

trooper1212 said:

j_s_g said: trooper1212 said: 'twas me I believe. I think most of the details were on a post titled headlining (obviously ) What do you want to know? Pah... you were merely a follower. I never got the MPG, BHP, etc. either. I think to qualify as actually doing it, you need to put it in a car

It was all in the car... then it got taken out of the Cerb and transplanted into the Tuscan. Then it got taken out of the Tuscan... and now I've lost the GPS receiver. Ordered another one yesterday, and think I'll sell it all off when I get that, as I fancy changing the colour of the Tuscan and need to finance that.

Julian... I've got an IBM Thinkpad (including DVD drive), proper in-car power transformer (i.e. not a cheap battery-crippling inverter), remote control 7" widescreen touchscreen monitor (with another in-car adaptor, in-car mountings, etc.), GPS adapter (well, I will have when the replacement arrives this week!), navigation software etc., and all the cables, leads, and cigarette-lighter doublers you could wish for. And yes, it's got a serial port for plugging it into the car's ECU.

Was planning on selling the lot for about £600, so feel free to mail me if you're interested.

[Julian64]

Hi all. A few questions. Are you all using touchscreens and if so which one. Does lilliput at £160 ring a bell?

Second, why are you using an inverter to change a 12V signal to 240V and then a power supply back to 12V. Surely a DC regulator from the battery will supply the 5v/12V supply a lot more efficiently?

[j_s_g]

Julian64 said:

Hi all. A few questions. Are you all using touchscreens and if so which one. Does lilliput at £160 ring a bell? Second, why are you using an inverter to change a 12V signal to 240V and then a power supply back to 12V. Surely a DC regulator from the battery will supply the 5v/12V supply a lot more efficiently?

I'm using the Lilliput one, but by the time you get the one with touchscreen, both mounting brackets, and pay the import duty on it, it came to more like £200.

Wouldn't recommend using an inverter at all. Most laptops are more like 16-24v, though, so need a transformer, and a half decent one that can maintain a fairly steady voltage at that. I even managed to supply Joolz with one of the ones I use.

Edited to add: The Lilliput screen itself came with a standard cigarette lighter adapter, as it's 12v, if I remember rightly, and that works fine as-is.

>> Edited by j_s_g on Tuesday 24th August 14:33

[trooper1212]

Julian64 said:

Hi all. A few questions. Are you all using touchscreens and if so which one. Does lilliput at £160 ring a bell? Second, why are you using an inverter to change a 12V signal to 240V and then a power supply back to 12V. Surely a DC regulator from the battery will supply the 5v/12V supply a lot more efficiently?

Lilliput touchscreen is the one i'm using. Had to send the first one back as it didn't work, but the second one was fine. Not the best quality of screens to start with by all accounts, but if you get one that works it should be ok.

I'm using an inverter because it seems to be able to handle it better. The original solution was to use the 12v supply via regulator, but the quality of the 12v regulators was shocking. After they blew fuses and burned out (Literally!) I went for a quality inverter that is grounded to the chassis. A good quality 12v regulator that can handle a constant 5A draw would work better, but the ones I tried were rubbish.

[j_s_g]

One other thing about the VGA connector on the Lilliput screen... it won't work with all PCs/laptops (something they fail to mention in their sparse literature)

I tried it both with a Compaq laptop and an HP before it worked on the Thinkpad. Both of those laptops would output to a normal TV fine, and their TV-out support worked with the Lilliput's composite in (but that's waaaay too blurry to read).

[plotloss]

Done it on a Mini, not a Cerb.

Fully featured using a very very clever power supply indeed.

Screen, permanently fitted PC/DVD/CDROM, sat nav, all the toys no worries.

If its done right, with the right components its an absolute doddle.

[Julian64]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=14946&item=5715887825&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW#ShippingPayment

Seem to be 169 all in here. Was the one I was going to plum for. an 18" touchscreen.

Mouting brackets are going to have to be home made because I want it to sit recessed below the radio, out of sight and out of sun.

Will look again at the inverter/regulator issue. Going to fit it to a PC mainboard rather than a laptop. Some nice micro sized fanless ones.

A nice frontend menu to hide its windows origins.

[trooper1212]

plotloss said:

Fully featured using a very very clever power supply indeed.

Any details?

As an aside, I've found that Windows XP is totally useless in the way it handles hibernation and standby modes, pressing the power button on the laptop randomly switches between hibernating correctly and just shutting off the laptop immediately without shutting down windows.

[plotloss]

Not that I can post on here!

I am currently speaking to the manufacturer of them with a view to distribute them in the UK.

They arent cheap, around £200 but all the usual issues that you find in a CarPC install are more than adequately handled.

[davidd]

would it not make more sense just to use a PDA? I'm sure you could get all the interfaces you need....

D

[j_s_g]

Julian64 said:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=14946&item=5715887825&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW#ShippingPayment Seem to be 169 all in here. Was the one I was going to plum for. an 18" touchscreen. Mouting brackets are going to have to be home made because I want it to sit recessed below the radio, out of sight and out of sun. Will look again at the inverter/regulator issue. Going to fit it to a PC mainboard rather than a laptop. Some nice micro sized fanless ones. A nice frontend menu to hide its windows origins.

Yeah, that's the non-widescreen one. You'll probably want to run it at 800x600 rather than 1024x768, though... they get a bit blurry at top-res! Note that you're importing it from Hong Kong... you're liable for duty on that if they spot it (£30 extra).

If you're running an ITX/NLX/whatever motherboard, then you can, in theory, use a regulator, as they can run on 12v. Personally, I felt that the laptop option was a much better one, as you can get a laptop for about the same price, and you can also take it out of the car if you're staying over in a hotel to do work on, etc. too.

There's some proper in-car front-end software that's designed for touchscreens, integrates with MapPoint, WinDVD, etc. available too.

If anyone wants mine - all configured and ready to plug in - I'll be sticking it up in the classified in the £500-600 bracket over the next couple of weeks.

[trooper1212]

Julian64 said:

Seem to be 169 all in here. Was the one I was going to plum for. an 18" touchscreen. Mouting brackets are going to have to be home made because I want it to sit recessed below the radio, out of sight and out of sun.

The 7" widescreen will fit in the centre dash where the speaker would fit in an early car. You might find 8" 4:3 a tight squeeze to fit it in that space, let alone 18"

[j_s_g]

trooper1212 said:

As an aside, I've found that Windows XP is totally useless in the way it handles hibernation and standby modes, pressing the power button on the laptop randomly switches between hibernating correctly and just shutting off the laptop immediately without shutting down windows.

Interesting... works fine on mine (I use hibernation), assuming you don't hold down the power button for long enough to do a hard reset. You tried flashing the BIOS/getting any XP updates for it?