Car Stuff

I recently purchased a Mazda RX-8 and aside from wrecking it in the first few weeks of ownership I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. It’s fast, sticks to the road like glue and handles like a race car. All good things.

As I’ve written a million times before on this blog, music is a giant part of my life. In the need to get more music in my car I decided to install a Mac Mini “Carputer” and this page is going to be the dumping ground for my adventures with it.

Check out some of the links below for more information.

GPS Stuff – See where I am and how fast I’m going

Tech Stuff – How it all works

Picture Stuff – Pictures of my (mis)adventures

GPS

My Carputer has a GPS hooked up which constantly keeps the computer up to date with my current position and speed. Currently I use this data to show a map on this site of where I am and how fast I’m going. You can also replay the GPS history to watch my previous adventures.

Current Position and Speed

Previous GPS Data Replay

Technical

I’ll put more content here later but for now here’s a quick rundown:

  • Mac Mini w/ Airport and Bluetooth
  • Carnetix CNX-P1900 Power Supply
  • Garmin eTrex Vista GPS. This will soon be replaced by a dedicated module.
  • Nokia Bluetooth Phone for Internet connectivity. This is borrowed and will soon be replaced by a dedicated module.
  • Custom control software written by me. Allows voice control of all Carputer functions.
  • Custom made enclosure for all the gear
  • Zip Code Database from Zipwise ZIP Code List for doing distance based services in the car.

Pictures

Here are some pictures relating to the Carputer project

The first day of surgery. This was an exploratory surgery on the car, learning how I was going to route all the wires.

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