wiki:CarPC/Hardware

Version 2 (modified by art, 14 years ago) (diff)

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CarPC Hardware

One part of the project is of course the CarPC. CarPC is acting here as a multimedia system controlling MP3 and video playing. It does also support internet radio and all that nice stuff one can do with PCs :) So on this page I am presenting the used hardware and some statistics incl. pictures.

OpenBM's left button field do control the BMW radio without need of a CarPC. Yeah, it do this by emulating a MID device. The right button field is for the control of a CarPC. Whenever one push, release or hold a button, a message is sent over the IBus. The IBus/D-Bus Gateway is receiving that messages over the wire and sent it as a key-code to the system. So it does emulate just a usual keyboard, so actually very few of those keys.

IBus Receiver

For receiving IBus messages I built a device similar to the well known  Ressler-IBus interface. It is based on the TH3122 and MAX232 chip to convert IBus messages into usual RS232 serial voltage. The ibus interface is connected to the internal COM-Header of PC's mainboard and is living completely inside of the CarPC housing.

Pictures follows...

Hardware

For the hardware of the CarPC, I am using an Mini-ITX board from Zotac, namely the  Zotac ION-ITX Series F. Here is a short hardware overview:

  • CPU: Intel Atom 330 1.6GHz dual-core
  • RAM: DDR2-800MHz CL5 2GB, I think it is from Buffalo
  • GPU: nVidia ION graphic chip, best suited for multimedia applications ;)
  • HD 1: 32GB SSD from OSZ, with really tested 400MB/s read and 90MB/s write :)
  • HD 2: 1TB Samsung Spinpoint-F2, is currently not connected, but will act as external HD.
  • Power: M2-ATX supporting, I think up-to 90W, so around 7.5A.
  • Housing: VoomPC enclosure

The full power consumption of the system incl. TFT is around 3A when playing MP3. So, I think the M2-ATX is more that enough for that. The boot time is around 20sec, which is pretty good. The boot time is still not optimized, and I hope to push it down to at least 15sec. 10sec will be the ultimate goal, but I doubt that it will be possible.

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