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Mud console with 7 inch touch screen ?


mad_pete

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Okay maybe I'm getting carried away but I've bought a mud dash and I can't help thinking the big hole in the middle could really do with a 7 " touch screen much like you find in jaguars and then I'm toying with the idea of mounting the laptop in the top of the passenger footwell. Then run megatunix ( gauges look prettier ) all the time.

I have a gobook 250 so it should be pretty tough and I already have a 12v power supply for it.

Any comments on

a) why this is a great idea

B) why this is a terrible idea

c) 7" touch screens ( good, bad , ugly ? )

The stereo fold out screens look like they would fall apart so I was thinking proper mount like the ones in the back of headrests.

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I did plan to do this, as I have a complete CarPC chassis lying around, but then I sat down and thought about it and realised that with all the security of an outhouse, the Defender wasn't the best place for it. The CarPC will go in the Focus instead.

For the Defender, my battered old laptop plus a small inverter will do me fine for greenlaning with a USB GPS unit and a copy of Memory Map.

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The only thing you might have a problem with is the native resolution. A lot of the 7inch touch screens are only 640x480 native and when trying to display at 800x600 they look a mess with text fragmented (unreadable in many cases) and so on.

Windows XP and later doesn't support anything less than 800x600 and, as a result, most of the apps you might want to run (MemoryMap for example) won't even launch below 800x600. You can force XP to run at 640x480 with a bit of messing around in the display settings but you can't convince a lot of the apps to launch.

I run an 8 inch touchscreen which is native 800x600 but, sadly, it's too big to fit in the mud dash.

This won't be a problem with megatunix, it just severely limits any other uses for the screen such as on road navigation or mapping utilities.

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I was thinking last night what about one of those little Eee Pc's. You can get touch screen attatchements for them cheap enough on eBay. And the laptops themselves arent overly expensive when you consider how much the touchscreen LCD monitors are.

Should be easy to mount aswell, and easily removeable so not to attract the wrong sort.

Mick

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  • 1 month later...

Not thought about putting a carpc in the disco yet but I've got one of these combos for my legacy so I can tweak maps in FCedit etc and get power curves with Dataloglab without needing me laptop.

AAAAAhp-7nwAAAAAASLMKw.jpg

On top of that the hard drive stores tons of music and I can add in numerous satnav apps.

They're a lot of mucking about to get working just how you want but dead handy things to have!

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 10 months later...

Finally I have a car pc running Unbuntu 9.1 with tuner studio MS and I have the touchscreen working.

Used one of these Transcend - IDE 40 Pin Vertical - 2GB Flash Module (SLC) (although need the 4 gig one really there are great)

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Great minds think alike?

I had a go at this, I fiberglassed mine into a headrest holder so the screen can still be removed from the front for security.

I run a laptop in a custom padded and insulated compartment in my rear storage, using memory map and centrafuse.

Ive attached the best pic I have at the moment, I never actually took one when finished!

I smoothed in a carling switch holder as well to make it all just a little neater!

James

post-8941-127533476327_thumb.jpg

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as requested a 'finished' (but not quite ever finished!) picture.

Just needs a good clean out now after my last adventure and the other switches finishing.

Ive made quite a few different car pcs over the years, first one that actually has a real benefit over a standard head unit!

Just a shame im not OBD compliant!

post-8941-127542131148_thumb.jpg

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  • 4 weeks later...

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