For everyone who has talked about adding computers to their cars. This has been what I have been planning to do, just so many other fun things to do to my car first. Here is a great site and resources for anyone looking at doing this project.
First check out
www.dashpc.com
These guys rock, everything you need to know about putting a pc in your car.

Here are the things that I really think are interesting.

1) This is 8 relays that plug directly into your computer and are controlled (requieres linux) in other words, anything relay driven in your car could be controlled by the computer. Windows, locks, defrost, trunk, lights, etc. . .
http://www.dashmatics.com/product_in...products_id=55
Looking on their site today, it looks like they are creating a new USB controller for this, better than having it in your pc, i cant wait to see that.

2) This has been my main hangup with putting a pc in your car. How do you boot it and shut it down properly? You dont want to drain your battery, you want to guarantee that it shuts down and stops draining power. Well the final answer is coming to dashmatics soon. and thats the startup and shutdown circuit. They had an initial product up previously, but when i looked today looks like they are making a new version and will have it out soon. Basically what this does is when your car starts, it boots your pc, when you shut off your car, it forces your computer to shutdown, taking care of all of the power issues.

3) ODB II interface. I have odb I unfortunately, but they sell an ODB II interface and talk about the linux software for monitoring it.

4) their system also does GPS, DVD, MP3, has a wireless network sniffer, and soo much more. Dig around the site. Its everything you could want for putting a pc in your car.

The one thing i would do different than them is get an indash dvd player, instead of using the computer. That way i dont have to go to the trunk to switch movies, and also there will be some shock protection.

Please note, this is not an advertisement, i have nothing to do with any of these companies. I was just so impressed with their products, and previous topics on this, i thought everyone would like to see the info.

I did something similar in windows. I hooked several wires to my printer port and wrote a program to read the data. I hooked the other ends of the wires to stuff like my bedroom door. For example... I had it programmed to pause Winamp when the door opened... and resume when it closed. (Funny to turn the stereo up loud and watch my dad keep coming in to complain about it... opens the door... it stops... closes it... starts again. Drove him crazy for a while ) I just kept adding stuff like that. It was pretty tight.

The only problem was the amount of things you can control... I could only get 4 inputs... with special hardware you can get more.

I'd love to put a PC in my car with a wirles card and have it control my ****... I'd just use my Pocket PC to control everything!

Thanks for the post... lots of good info.

I had a friend of mine bring something like this in-car-pc idea up. Only instead of having it in the dash, u could have the glovebox fold down into a keyboard and then have a small screen and maybe some hardware in the actual glovebox and fiberglass an enclosure for it all to make it look pretty

That reminds me of the old Brief Case computers. The "lid" was the keyboard. It unfolded and/or came off like you describe revealing a 5 inch or so monochrome screen and a 5 1/4 inch drive. My dad had one of them for work, and when I got into the Army, each Platoon Leader had one.

and just think, now theres PDA'* and all that good stuff, MOS, your showin your age

Yeah, I know. It'* funny to think I built my fisrt computer almost 20 years ago out of spare parts. Cost me almost $6000

good lord.......

Yeah, back then you had to knowwhat you were doing, and have some free cash, to own a computer. I kinda miss those days. Now, you got people buying Gramma a NASA quality computer so she can get e-mailed pics of the kids. The the poor woman has no idea how to run the stuff, and freaks out, and calls ME!!

My mother in law for instance... Poor woman. One of my sister in laws keeps going over there to "clean up" the computer. The next day, I'm there fixing it. Don't mind helping her in the least, but if she would just tell her daughter to leave it the hell alone...

Whoops, ranting!!