Car PC TT01 Work blog

Ahhhh, I remember now Your's the the install where the screen replaced one of the air vents I remember reading (translating via babelfish) a very in depth pdf file about that install nearly a year ago now ! Sorry Martin.

I did say 'to the best of my knowledge' though ;-), which clearly isn't quite as much as yours when it comes to car electronics, but I'm getting there

been a while since I posted / updated in this thread, as the car has been off the road for nearly 7 months. In that time I took the carpc out and had every intention of fiddling with it's settings/software and generally fine tuning it at my desk, rather than in car seat..... however, being the numpty that I am,, in a moment of still unexplained madness I wired up the +ve to 12v DC and the -ve to 12v DC..... using a modified desktop PC power supply !! That burnt out the power supply, the onboard power, and corrupted the harddrive in about 2.5 secs !! Much cursing later, I decided to buy a new HD and PSU and start again from fresh, only it took me 4 months to get round to it.

Below is where I'm upto. Music, Sat Nav, Phone, and Mobile Broadband. Hardwired AM/FM radio tuner to be fitted in coming weeks, although I am on holiday next week so it'll have to wait. Went back to the Car Kit for phone, as the Bluesoleil is too tempermental for my liking. Sprayed it black to suit the dash











and can anyone guess what this is ..... ?

just and image bump for anyone who sunscribed to this thread



MF controls are now top of my list.

I have one of these.... http://www.reslers.de/IBUS/install.html

which I'm told by the seller himself that I should connect a 1KOhm resistor across the red (12+) and white (ibus) wires from the MF unit. This is because my car does not have an ibus circuit and I want the pc to be fed the ibus packets directly from the wheel via the ressler interface.



Does 1KOhm sound right ? I have conflicting advice from someone else who has done this mod who stated 10K ohm would be the one to go for (unless it was a typo). Obvioulsy I have asked him for clarification, but had no reply as yet.

To add further confusion, looking at this (incredibly exciting) video of the MF unit sending ibus packet info.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trd6-5TT9O4

With just RED and BLUE connected to LR6 battery all MF button PCB LEDs light up (albeit dimly due to the 9v supply)

Connect an external 12v Led (with protection resistor) +ve wire to GREY and -ve wire to WHITE on MF loom....

Pressing MF buttons now (on lefthand side) produces a variety of pulses in the LED and looks like iBus signals.

Volume UP/Down = constant rate flashing
Track up = One Pulse ON, One Pulse during hold (if held) and One Pulse upon release
Track Down = as above
Speak = as above
R/T = One Pulse ON, nothing upon Hold or Release

All looks very Ibus-like....?? I assumed from this that GREY is the iBus wire and WHITE is a secondary GND ??

HOWEVER the WHITE one is supposed to be the ibus wire, which is confusing me since when the LED +ve is connected to the GREY and buttons pressed, you get the flashing lights (indicating some ibus info being sent).

(Note, if the -ve LED wire is connected to GND with the +ve wire to GREY as before then the LED lights up constantly. No amount of button pressing changes this.)

I provisionally conclude that the system works like this :

The Grey Cruise wire is constant live, and the Cruise buttons vary the power signal sent using preset resistors built into that circuit ?? Thoughts anyone ?

The White Ibus wire is a ground, and the reason why you need to connect a resistor between the Red (12+ve) and White (ibus) wire to get power flowing through the system ??

For the purpose of this test the power for the ibus GND effect is coming from the Cruise wire (grey).

When you press an Ibus button, such as Vol UP (constant flashing), the power grounds through the MF circuits, but the flow of the power is regulated by internal circuitry (temporarily powered by the power flowing to GND) that produces the different packet streams, such as the Flashing, or single pulses ?

These packet streams are then read by the interface and send to the PC using a USB connection.

I just about follow that lot, but would appreciate your thoughts before I proceed

Installed iBusRR.exe tonight and as a result we have FULLY functioning MF controls in my car

This is major step forward for the install as it removes total reliance on the touchscreen at a stroke. It could not be easier in the car now with these controls on the wheel :

Vol UP/DOWN, Track Scroll/Select, Mute, and also Screen Switching (Music/NAV/Home) ! Perfect.

Also added custom e31 silhouette boot screen (Inc matching Orange scrolling progress bar underneath), BMW iDrive splash screen, removal of blue welcome screen and automatic bootup of BMW iDrive clone software immediately at Startup. All this from complete cold start of PC in under 25secs (which is GOOD for winXP).

Feels very very 'Factory' now. I am a happy chap tonight

Timm : that description of iBus is the conclusion I had made with my own tests, but until you posted that I wasn't sure. Thanks for confirming.

another further tweak to the system brings in PC Hibernation. In that upon IGN the system boots up in about 10 secs and straight into the iDrive program, restoring all previous settings and Apps. Turn IGN off and the system shuts down in 15 secs.

I've had the system in for 18 months, and only now am I spending the time to configure everything properly. The goal is to make the experience seamless so that I dont realise there is a pc in the boot. This is getting closer now

All my car pc software is geared towards an XP os, so I will leave that alone.. but does win 7 really boot in under 10 secs, which is where I'm at from restoring from hibernation on my setup (after Bios self test screen).

Also, the first screen to appear from that is the idrive home page, instead of breifly showing and XP desktop and then loading programs from the Startup folder.

All in all I think I'll be stuck with this boot time, an am considering putting the Screen on a 30 sec delay from power source (M2ATX) so that I never see the BIOS and Hibernate screen (unless I bypass that for configuring), and the screen turns on directly into the idrive page. I think that would be a more factory look.

That is right, only in a car environment you need to be wary of power drainage when not in use. The Power Supply of choice for cars/boats etc is the M2 ATX which has several jumper settings to help with this issue.

The PS (power supply) has 3 input feeds, 12v+ ON, GND, and 12v+ IGN.

On IGN the PS waits 5 secs and then powers ON the main power feed to MB and peripherals. Turn IGN OFF and it sends a signal to HD and shuts the PC down normally, or sends to Hibernate, whilst keeping the low power 5V rail open for a set amount of time (I have this set at 2 hours) before a full hard OFF.

The PS also regulates all the power feeds, to avoid damage caused by engine cranks etc, and has an auto low power shut down to conserve charge - basically so you should have enough juice to start your car before draining the batteries fully (if parked up for example).

When I have it configured perfectly, I'll shoot a proper video (on a tripod) showing it's basic funtions and user friendliness.

Zitat von Argonaut;71151

Hibernation mode might be a simpler solution - basically the PC is then more or less always on and should be available again just a few seconds after being prodded to wake up.

just reread this and see what you are getting at.

I do use the hibernation feature, which takes the 10secs boot stated, but during this time you still see the BIOS self test page (10 secs), an ugly DOS progress bar (5secs) and blank screen for a further 5 secs). Therefore a 30 sec delay on the screen power would be better cause it will only turn on once all these processes have completed their loading.

This is to be done using a second M2 ATX, linked to IGN. After 30 secs it will also send remote feeds to AMP and TV module, as well as the screen.

true, but that wouldnt help me now since the car isnt garaged (will be in new house next year - fingers crossed).

So far I have had no issues with battery drainage as a result of my install, so long as the engine is in regular use. Once it is put to sleep in my (new) garage I will install some sort of conditioner for the batteries, and the CTeK one was on the list as it happens !