Carputers bumps and desert heat

[freshspecbluegt]

I keep seeing carputers installed in different cars and trucks and think the idea is pretty cool however beyond my needs. But out of curiosity how rugged are these carputers (mac mini based for instance)? How do they deal with offroading? How about heat, the inside of a car/truck parked in the desert heat can exceed 140F any problems there

Ross

 

[seanz0rz]

when i had mine, i never had any problems due to heat or vibration. my hard drive was shock mounted using a bit of memory foam, which served well to isolate it from the chassis. everything else was hard mounted. i did quite a bit of offroading with it, including some high speed desert stuff and some pretty good rock crawling.

the only issue i had with mine was the touch screen. it HATED pressure changes. so going up and down the mountain (1400 feet to 8000 feet) caused it to stop responding. i still cant really figure out why.

i had a carputer installed since summer of 05 until a couple of months ago. never had a failure due to heat, even in SoCal summers, were shade temps topped 115 for several consecutive days, i can only imagine what the temps were inside my dark colored vehicle were.

the main reason i ditched mine: topo maps. they need a large-ish screen, and so far none of the software options im aware of are "touch friendly".

i may decide to reinstitute my carpc, all be it in a different format with a midsized screen(12 inches or so) and a track pad instead of a touch screen. it was reliable enough hardware wise. of course software seems to be the downfall of all computers, and always something needed tweeking here and there.

 

[Count Fred]

The biggest issue with mine off-road was the hinges on the screen. I have a pop-out fold-up dash single DIN unit and on really bumpy roads the screen would start to fall over. No big deal, just push it back up, but frustrating when trying to use the GPS to navigate. I haven't had it happen recently, but can't remember if I got around to tightening up the hinges, or if my roads recently just haven't hit the right frequency.

As to heat, I have a Mac mini with an internal heat sensor. When it gets to hot it automatically shuts down to protect itself. I've had this happen once, this winter. The mini is under the driver's seat and I had the rear heater on full and it is angled to blast right underneath there. A minor future mod is to make a block off plate so the heat is never directly on the mini again.

I haven't tracked internal temperatures (hmm, perhaps I should) but I've never had it shut down due to heat any other time.

My screen on the other hand can be finicky. If I start up on a cold day or very hot day it will display a constant color, but the touchscreen will still work. Usually if I put the computer and screen to sleep and wake them up again it will be fine, sometimes I have to resort to restarting the mini, but that has never failed to work. No one else has reported problems with my particular make of screen though.

Cheers,
JFS III

 

[off-roader]

I keep seeing carputers installed in different cars and trucks and think the idea is pretty cool however beyond my needs. But out of curiosity how rugged are these carputers (mac mini based for instance)? How do they deal with offroading? How about heat, the inside of a car/truck parked in the desert heat can exceed 140F any problems there

Ross

Here's my 'carputer'...

It's a Acer Aspire One w/ an 8GB SSD, a 16GB Class 6 SD card in one slot and a spare combo flash memory card slot. I run both MS S&T (street nav) and NatGeo Topo for CA (hi res topo maps).

Both software packages have alot to be desired IMHO. I'm going to try the Overland Navigator software. I'll also probably try the Touch screen Mod for this netbook as well. For $100 it may be well worth it if it works.

As for the hinges... no problems yet but then again it's still 'relatively' newly installed so we'll see with age and use how they hold up.

As for desert heat, I haven't had problems at </=100 degree heat but I haven't had a chance to go beyond that in off road conditions. I have stored my laptop under the seat when the rig was parked all day with the windows closed and the internal temp at +100 deg (95 deg outside) and had no ill effect.

HTH

 

[eugene]

I used a laptop hard drive and never had a problem. I had on in for a while back around 2002-2003, I copied the mini-box, the one Apple copied for their mac mini.

 

[seanz0rz]

i should add i also used a laptop harddrive, one with a very good warranty!

operating temperatures are one thing, and we can usually cool the vehicle down enough to fit in that range quite well (most operating temps for harddrives are 120 or less) but the storage temp is what really matters. interiors can reach 150 in the desert southwest by mid morning, so prolonged exposure to that kind of heat can wreck havok on metal platters.

 

[craig]

the main reason i ditched mine: topo maps. they need a large-ish screen, and so far none of the software options im aware of are "touch friendly".

Overland Navigator is 100% touchscreen friendly.

 

[seanz0rz]

touch screen friendly yes (im looking at it now, and its a wonderful piece of software! ill buy it soon!) but 7 inch screen with bad glare that' 3 or so feet away friendly, not really!

yours is by far the best, and will be my software of choice when i install a laptop or other computer in my vehicle!

 

[dave@chingadera]

If you have the money. I would put a SSD instead of a HDD. Somewhat shock proof, heat resistant, uses less power and puts out less heat. Also has a higher and lower operating temperature.

 

[craig]

touch screen friendly yes (im looking at it now, and its a wonderful piece of software! ill buy it soon!) but 7 inch screen with bad glare that' 3 or so feet away friendly, not really!

yours is by far the best, and will be my software of choice when i install a laptop or other computer in my vehicle!

Thanks for the compliment.

A bigger screen is very helpful and it is for this reason a carputer makes sense. A 7" computer screen is significantly bigger than most GPSs available on the market. Compare the topo viewing experience of the popular handheld GPS devices to a 7-12" carputer/umpc/netbook screen and the GPS looks tiny. I personally think a 10" screen at 1600x1200 would be ideal. As big as you can get w/o cramping up the cab.

In some vehicles, glare can be a big problem. In 2002-04 I ran an older Xenarc touchscreen and it had pretty bad glare. I now use a semi-ruggedized EO Tuftab with a sunlight visible touchscreen. The sunlight visible screen is fantastic. It's like looking at paper most of the time. A lot of the ruggedized tablets/laptops also have anti-glare screens. Unless you find them on eBay, they have a premium price tag.

Craig

 

[mhiscox]

In some vehicles, glare can be a big problem. In 2002-04 I ran an older Xenarc touchscreen and it had pretty bad glare. I now use a semi-ruggedized EO Tuftab with a sunlight visible touchscreen. The sunlight visible screen is fantastic.

This is my problem, too. My touchscreen HP TX tablet computer on my Jotto desk would be perfect, except that light through the Sprinter's windows made the screen unreadable. (It also generally made the rear camera display that was part of my rear view mirror unusable.) If you want to be sure of seening things on a bright day in something with big windows, a sunlight-readable display, though it costs may times more, may be a necessary investment.

 

[freshspecbluegt]

Thanks for feeding my curiosity, I guess these units are a bit more stout than I thought they were.

 

[WickedZJ]

For those of you using carputers what front end do you use? I have gotten some good ideas for how to shock proof my system but would think using the standard windows desktop would be a pain.

 

[craig]

I've used Road Runner and Centrafuse. I liked Road Runner better, but that was several years ago.

With RoadRunner you can run 2 nav programs so you can have a street mapping solution and an offroad (topo) solution.

 

[WickedZJ]

can you use say Delorme software for nav or does it have its own?

Sorry if I hi-jacked the thread.