I was using a Creative SoundBlaster Live! 24bit External on one of my home PC’s. This card rocks because it sounds awesome and doesn’t need any additional power other than what it gets via the USB port. I moved this into my car, and it is now ROCK SOLID! I had no new power requirements, and because it was connected via a USB cable instead of being screwed into a PCI slot, small vibrations and even big jolts have ZERO impact.

I bought a SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS to replace it on my PC, and I am most happy with that card too.

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I also had a very strange problem where sometimes when my car lights were on, the screen would switch very rapidly between AV1 and AV2, and although I have both these inputs connected to the Media Center, the clicking as it switched was very annoying. However, sometimes it was very bad, but sometimes it would hardly do it at all. I was stumped. It had nothing to do with the connection to the PC, because it would do it wven when it was completely disconnected.

Last night, I discovered why!! The screen is getting power from the same line as the radio. I suspected it was a power problem, but wasn’t sure how to fix it. My car has a dashboard light dimmer on it. It turned out that this is a simple rheostat and when it was dimmed, the screen would behave very badly, but when it was bright, everything worked fine. I now just leave it on bright, and we’re rocking and rolling!!

I did see that a company in the USA called Blitzsafe makes adapter cables for head units without AUX in by fooling the unit into thinking it has a CD shuttle installed, and giving female RCA leads to plug whatever you like into. That would have saved me some time and stress!! Doesn’t look like they make Opel or Vauxhaul cables, so I wouldn’t have been in luck.

It’s the best car radio I’ve ever had!!!!

My Car media Centre v0.99b is installed and working beautifully. All I need to make it version 1.0 is a small video splitter cable, as for some reason my screen switches to AV2 when I turn my lights on. If I connect my MCE to AV2, then it defaults back to AV1 when the lights are off, and I have to manually switch to AV2. I plan to work around this by connecting the MCE to both AV1 and AV2, then all should be well.

The journey has been long and frustrating, but well worth it in the end. The first major challenge was finding an Auto Electrician to install my inverter the way I wanted it. I have no issues ripping my car apart, but as I stated in my last post, messing with the electrics could have bad repercussions. I finally found one. Cape Auto Elecrical in Cape Town. All the others didn’t know what I was talking about, or were too afraid to do it. These guys did a great job. It is wired directly from the battery via a fuse and a 70Amp automotive relay. The relay cuts power to the inverter if the ignition is off, thereby preventing a flat battery. The power cable is running a double wire and was done very neatly. I had a small problem with the ground, and had to take it back once, and they fixed it and I haven’t had any problems since. Below is the relay and fuse in the engine bay. This normally has a cover over it.

Once the power was sorted out, I installed my screen. This all worked quite well. I had a bit of noise on the screen, but it was only noticable when looking closely. I didn’t mount the screen fully in the dash. I live in South Africa where we have a small petty crime issue. I need to be able to remove it when parking in any dodgy spots.

The audio was quite a challenge. I have a factory fitted Philips VDO radio and CD shuttle. My last CD shuttle in my previous car had a control cable and Left/Right Audio RCA cable. I foolishly assumed this car would be the same. It wasn’t. VDO equipment now uses the HSSX bus cable. Basically this is one plug with contains all power and audio signals. My original plan was to leave the CD shuttle control cable connected to my head unit so it would think it had a CD shuttle but the audio would be coming from my Media Centre. This now wouldn’t work. The only other option I could come up with was using an FM Modulator. I installed this, and tuned into 88.5FM and I had sound. But, it sucked. It crackled and buzzed and was downright horrible. I decided I have to figure this HSSX thing out. The problem was that I wanted to keep my car as standard as possible for ease of trade in or sale later. I didn’t want to cut up this cable incase I messed it up.

I phoned around, and eventually found a Car radio installer that would sell me just the cable. I don’t know where this guy got it, but he let me have it for half price.

I examined this cable, removed a small bit of the shielding, and thought I had figured out which were the audio lines. I pulled my dash apart again, and cut the red wire with a CD playing, hoping the right channel would go dead. It did, but not for the reason I had hoped it would. The radio display said, “Error”. I had cut the wrong cable. Good thing I wasn’t on the bomb squad. I repaired the red wire and tried again. The next one I cut the right channel went dead, then I was sure I knew which was the left, and cut it and it went dead too, but the CD was still playing!! Awesome!! I soldered 2 female RCA jacks onto the end of the wires, plugged my audio leads coming from my MCE and there was sound. Not great, but there was sound. I had a loud buzz on the left channel. I checked my soldering, as I was never a master, and it had been some time since I had last soldered a decent joint. It looked ok. I put everything back together, and left it at that as I had somewhere else to be.

The next day, I spoke to a work colleague about the buzz and he said I should try running a grounding wire from the chassis of my machine and this should sort out a lot of the noise. He was right. The ground wire did the trick. The sound was much better. The left channel was still quite muffled though, and I wasn’t sure what was causing this. I changed the audio cable coming out of the onboard sound card, but it made no difference. The new cable was not a vast quality improvement over the last one, but I wanted to try anyway. I then decided to try a different sound card. I had an old Sound Blaster Live lying around, and I installed that. The sound was radically improved. I disabled the onboard piece of garbage and am loving the sound now. There is still a slight hum on the audio, but I suspect that is the cheap cable I am using from the PC 3.5mm jack to RCA. I will sort that out post haste! I had to fiddle a little with the settings on the head unit, as the bass was a bit high, but I think now it really sounds good. Below is the inverter with the ground wire connected from the chassis to the ground terminal.

The next issue I had was the UPS. I had planned on using a UPS to handle graceful shutdowns once the ignition was turned off. The problem was that the UPS did not want to charge via the inverter. It seems that a UPS required a sinusoidal AC source. So I took it out. Now the machine powered up as soon as I started the car, and switched off as soon as I switched the car off. This was fine, unless it was for a very short trip, like moving my car or something. I then had to wait to it to hibernate again before switching the ignition off, otherwise I would lose my currently playing list. I installed a switch in the front of the car now, and set the BIOS to always Soft-Off on AC resume. Now it only powers up when I push the button, and this works very well. You can see it below, just below the IR reciever. It also hibernated with this button, or the PC button on the remote control.

I also ran a USB 2.0 extension cable to the glove box for using my USB Memory stick, or a USB Hard Disk etc. I will eventually get a USB DVD drive as well, and mount it in the glove box. I haven’t found one for cheap enough yet though.

From a software side, I found a program called Synchromagic which works really well for keeping my music synchronised between car and house. If I know I have added music on my home Media Center, I simply scroll to More Programs, and select “Sync Music” in the car before shutting it off when I get home. This checks the folders for changes and copies all the missing music to my car over Wifi.

Below is the PC mounted in the boot.

Please leave me any comments or questions or suggestions.

Thanks

All my pieces arrived on Thursday, and I got to work putting it all together. The specs of my machine are as follows:

Gigabyte GA-7VT600 Mainboard, with onboard LAN and Audio

AMD Sempron 2400+ Processor
512MB RAM with a Copper Cooler
Gigabyte 3D Rocket CPU Cooler

350W PSU
Vortex Hard Disk Cooler
PowerCOM 600AP UPS
Leadtek Geforce FX5200 Graphics Card
40GB IDE Hard Drive (which I will upgrade as I need to)
CD ROM Drive (to become a DVD drive soon!)

I was planning on building the machine in a box I was going to build myself, but I found that my old full tower case I had worked better, and would be more stable, although it probably is a bit heavier than I was planning. I can fit the UPS inside it as well, making the unit almost self contained.

I covered it in carpet to make it look like a speaker box. I haven’t quite finished yet, but here is what it looks like to far.

I will neaten up the wires poking out the front shortly. Inside, it looks like this:

The UPS is mounted in the top section. The reason for the UPS is that I am going to wire my inverter to the ignition, so it will power off when the car is off, thereby saving my battery. I have set the UPS to shut the Windows down gracefully 10 minutes after it looses power. This gives me enough time to start the car up again and resume power if I am just running into the shop, or stopping for gas without the machine shutting down. Currently I have it set to power up again as soon as power returns, but I may change this and put a switch on the dash for powering up. All this has been tested and is working well, except the inverter installation. That I am going to get some help from an auto electrician for, because as I see it, it I get something wrong with it, 4 things could happen:

1) I could cook my car battery.
2) I could cook my inverter.
3) I could cause a fire, and burn my car out.
4) I could send 240V through myself and anyone and anything else in the car.

None of these options are good. (Especially not the last two!).

I have it all wired up in my spare room right now, with my car screen, so I have included some pictures of it in action.

Playback of video is also very good. I have set my resolution to 960×600, which causes XP Media Centre to play widescreen video properly.

SO far I’m very happy with the way things are progressing.

I have ordered some parts I need. I will go into greater detail on these later. I plan to start testing this weekend.