Angry and Confused

I finally got round to ordering the screen mount from ByByte. Was only $30 for the mount, but $28 shipping to the UK! Kinda works out very expensive, but there don’t seem to be any UK retailers for it and it does seem to give the look I want (ie - the OEM look .. no crazy fibreglass, repainting the dash etc). However, to fit into my current car, I need yet another adapter on top! Seems Ford don’t like to use standard double DIN holes … there’s has to be just slightly bigger. There are a few about, all with differing levels of quality. Apparently Ford might sell one, so I’ll try them first. The most common seems to be one from Connect2 who seem to do adapters for many different cars (they seem to be UK based and deal mainly with cars which are available in the UK)

It’s all very well having a nice new 7 inch monitor, but it’s not going to fit in the car like that (unless you like the hacked together look). Luckily, there seem to be a company who make mounting frames for the Lilliput range of monitors. They’re called ByByte and offer this frame for mounting the monitor in a double DIN unit. Apparently their first generation of this product was quite nasty (involved very sticky tape and lots of guess work). However, their new generation seems very nice … no sticky tape and everything seems to screw together nicely. They even supply a cable to mount the IR sensor so you can still use the remote (essential given the monitor controls are now hidden behind the dash). The installation instructions are here and seem easy enough even for me to follow!

I spent a while looking for LCD screens this evening. There seem to be two main brands favoured by people installing into computers. These are ‘Lilliput’ and ‘Xenarc’. The ‘Xenarc’ ones seem better but are also more expensive. The ‘Lilliput’ ones seem reasonably cheap but also seem to have shorter life spans. Despite this, I think I’m going to go for a Lilliput one. Given the wide range of costs and options involved, going for a cheap one seems a sensible idea until I have a grasp of what I really need. Do I really need an expensive transreflective one (much better in sunlight, but much more expensive) … especially given I live in the UK where we get one day of bright sunlight each year.

The one which I like is the Lilliput 629 … which is a 2008 one and has LED backlighting. There seem to be very few suppliers in the UK, but the best price I could come up with was £166 inc tax from here. It seems to have all the requirements for me … as large as I can go (7 inch), touchscreen and good support from the car computer community. For anyone else looking at the Lilliput, there seem to be a range of similar monitors … the 619, 629 and 701. The 701 is cheaper and seems to have worse contrast ratio to it. The 619 and 629 are essentially the same, just look slightly different. If you’re going to be ripping it apart to put in a car, then I guess what bezel it comes with is neither here nor there. However, the 629 was slightly more expensive but also seems to feature in more guides I’ve seen … I decided to go for it just in case there were some more differences that I wasn’t aware of.

I listed the basics behind why I decided to build a carputer here. In the end, it came down to wanting to play about with a cool new toy, but also to find the happy medium between expensive Kenwood/Pioneer/Alpine and the cheap poor-quality world of Chinese imported stuff. My basic ‘concept’ so far seems to be a double din touchscreen mounted in the front of the car and a computer mounted in the boot. I’m thinking that I’d like to have a USB hub in the glovebox (alongside a DVD drive and memory card reader) and that’ll be it! I can’t be bothered with monitors in the back of headrests or anything else like that as I rarely carry people in the back … and when I do, the cramped conditions mean the’re unlikely to relax and watch a DVD!

I’ve been interested in making sticking a computer in my car for a while now. Before, it was because it seemed like a neat way to get lots of cool functions. These days, there are head units about which do everything I want. Now my reasoning for a computer in the car is because it is cheaper than buying a head unit off the shelf. I’m hoping to catalogue my build/install here so people can see what can be done quite easily.