Xbmc For Your Car, development of xbmc for easy use in car Options

[j_guzzler]

Yes you could, but its cheaper to go out and buy an inverter that can be used for more than just the xbox instaed of building a dc to dc converter with regulator....it makes no difference really, when it comes to 50W, there isnt really that much power loss with the inverter.

I dont have time to really make a tutorial and plus it would differ for each vehicle/setup, but If you PM me I can give you my email and then you can ask me questions, etc....

beastiekid: sorry i jsut saw the media portal x, but i use the orbs, or x360 they are very simple to navigate...

[djdafreund]

Yes, i swap mine back and forth with my xbox. I have a honda show car (in a car club) and I have a 16x9 7inch display monitor hooked up to it. I use the Orb skin (very clean and easy to read) and already know the 16x9 mode is correct ( ;-) ) and i personaly tried various power supplies (AC/DC voltage adapters). I found one at 'Walmart' for i believe was $46-49 and has 2 outputs to be more then adequite. I have yet had any glitches when used, or freezes to date. I house a 250gig hard drive inside, a blue backlit LCD panel i made on the front, and $30 worth of color changing vinyl material that changes colors depending on what angle your looking at it, along with a IRMOD adapter to remote power it on/off at will. And a USB plug i added of course.

I use the optical output of the box to a spdif-RCA left/right box from Mars Music for no distortion and clean signal. If you have a good audio system, even when used with the Walmart power invertor, there is not too noticable of any ground loop noise in the signal. Good stabel power rails used inside for the transformers. Depending on the trained ear, it ranges from barely noticable to not noticable at all. Also depends on the quality of your car amps used as well of course. IE-If using factory equiptment, your in better shape already. Hope that helps give you guidence.

This post has been edited by djdafreund: Jul 29 2005, 03:53 AM

[minimoebius]

All you people who put xboxes in your cars, do you run the xbox while driving? If so what do you use as a schock absorber? PC HDDs are not designed to be able to operate while taking the shocks that are experienced in cars. It may seem fine but I gurantee that you will eventually start seeing bad sectors. Notebook HDDs are more forging. So if you put it in a car you will want to use a notebook HDD. Even then I would still recoomend somthing to take some of the shock. Just look at things that are designed for cars, ie the rockford fosgate omnifi DMP1. Its a 20 Gig mp3 player. The main box is a notebook hdd sitting in a spring contraption similar to those found on CD shuttles.

[djdafreund]

It depends really. Most hard drives today have a certain gforce impact that would be more then adequite for ANY car, so i wouldn't even worry about that. (IE, the average shock obsorption in a car fine.) I have pretty stiff suspension in my car (lowered,racing shocks-yet not real rough) and use mine all the time while i drive, and it's year sold, and haven't had any problems at all.
If your worried, you could simply purchase a sheet of foam grey material from Home Depot, and cut it the size of the bottom of the xbox, and use that to dampen all impacts. But i can personally verify from very hard tesing in a race car, it's not something the normal stock vehicle owner should EVER worry about.

Just to give you an idea of Gforce pressure a drive can handle (after serious hand s on experience) and don't recommending trying this yourselve as i did it over history for a room mates bet, and i won. I would purposely knock it around every day 7 days a week, pretty good and hard (something that would never be possble in a car) for quite a long time now (probably a few years now.) just for bets, and still haven't had a single issue to date. There A LOT more stable then drives 6-7 years ago.

[j_guzzler]

Hey Djdafreund, using the Orbs I see, me too, it really is a great skin . Sounds like you got a nice little setup.

As for the hardrive, vs gforce, for the average user, by the time any jolt gets to the hardrive unit in the xbox, the vehicle has abosorbed most of it, this isnt the 60s where everything was built so solid that you need hip surgerey cause of driving.

Speaking of all this, I wonder if it might be good to make an actual XBMC skin for mobile use, it could be easy, and it could autoswitch if lets say it doesnt detect a network.....hmmm, not sure if there is actually any merrit in this, but might be something to look at.

Speaking of networks, my buddy has the same setup, i wonder if we had wireless game adapters, if we could play system link....that would make group ski trips much more fun.....

[djdafreund]

Hmmmm... Mobile skin. . How bout the doughnut controller. . DOH!!!!

Actually, i played head to head with the Linksys Wireless G adapters last week with a friend who's got one in his car. Didn't use XLink the way we were using it. If you had a computer nearby, or another xbox running linux and linux XLink, that would definitley work. We played a lot of Forza head to head. His ride is a Supra turbo. I beat in the real world, so we have fun playing forza head to head so he can still have a chance. LOL. He has a few more screens in his ride, but similar setup as me, i installed it all for him.

[mrcleeo]

All you people who put xboxes in your cars, do you run the xbox while driving?  If so what do you use as a schock absorber?  PC HDDs are not designed to be able to operate while taking the shocks that are experienced in cars.  It may seem fine but I gurantee that you will eventually start seeing bad sectors.  Notebook HDDs are more forging.  So if you put it in a car you will want to use a notebook HDD.  Even then I would still recoomend somthing to take some of the shock.  Just look at things that are designed for cars, ie the rockford fosgate omnifi DMP1.  Its a 20 Gig mp3 player.  The main box is a notebook hdd sitting in a spring contraption similar to those found on CD shuttles.

i have mine running right beside 2 12" kicker L7's i have yet to hear a skip and its been 2 years

[mrcleeo]

apextek i also suggest you put your music into catagories

hiphop rnb
trance
rock
reggae
EMO
metal

and so on i find it much more easier to navigate..i also put a "fav cd" folder and a "new cd folder" so i know where to find the stuff i like more quickly

[MrFish]

i have yet to hear a skip and its been 2 years

You won't hear a skip; you'll hear a crunch, and then no music off that hard disk ever again.

In a hard disk, the head flies a fraction of a millimeter above the surface of the disk, using 'ground effect' just like an ekranoplan. A bump of sufficient force to disrupt its alignment and stop it reading is also of sufficient force to make it hit the disk. If a head hits the disk even once, it takes sufficient damage that it can never fly again (the outside of a 7200RPM disk is travelling at 80 miles per hour). The damaged head scrapes along the surface of the platter, scraping off the magnetic medium. Chunks of the stuff ricochet around inside the drive, and hit the other heads, causing them to crash as well. If the drive tries to seek or park the heads, it can lathe off all of the magnetic medium on the entire drive.

The result is something like this ( http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~ken/crash/ ): the drive is a write-off, and the data is unrecoverable. http://gfx.ibas.com/news/pictures/total_head_crash.jpg - high-res picture of a head crash.

I'm thinking you could probably protect against this by mounting the drives in a cage supported by something with a bit of give; not so much to cushion normal bumps, but to take the edge off what might otherwise cause catastrophic failure. A silentdrive ( http://www.mikhailtech.com/articles/enclosures/silentdrive/ ) might work: its mounting plates have a bit of wiggle in them to prevent the drive transmitting vibrations to the case; presumably it would work equally well in reverse. A 5.5 to 3.25 inch adaptor might also do the trick, behaving as a primitive leaf spring.

[apextek]

All you people who put xboxes in your cars, do you run the xbox while driving?  If so what do you use as a schock absorber?  PC HDDs are not designed to be able to operate while taking the shocks that are experienced in cars.  It may seem fine but I gurantee that you will eventually start seeing bad sectors.  Notebook HDDs are more forging.  So if you put it in a car you will want to use a notebook HDD.  Even then I would still recoomend somthing to take some of the shock.  Just look at things that are designed for cars, ie the rockford fosgate omnifi DMP1.  Its a 20 Gig mp3 player.  The main box is a notebook hdd sitting in a spring contraption similar to those found on CD shuttles.

I built an inexpensive wood cabinet enclosure with swing down doors on both ends and spring loaded hinges. It is only slighty wider than the xbox and a few cm taller. It has a lock inplace pull out drawer base made of a sheet of aluminum with a small handle. I picked up the lock in place drawer tracks at home depot in the drawer section for a few dollars.
the swing down doors are great for 1. in the front letting the rf controller dongle have free range for better connectability, and the door makes for easy hook up of a wired controller. 2. in the back for quick setting up of the cables in the honda. when I take it out all of my wires the dongle and controler quickly store in the encloser so as not to juggle many components to and from the suv.
the great thing about the box is xbox is nice an snug in it allowing for alot less bounce and shock. A pair of 2x4's run along the bottom for feet allowing less heat from the undercarrage to get trapped under the xbox. these feet also keep it secure so it doesn't slide arond the honda's cargo bay.
i rounded all the edges on the box and painted it with stone fleck paint. so it looks like this prehistoric stone enclosure from the flintstones on the outside but is all technology on the inside. I'll put pics of up on my site along with progress on the whole project hopefully this week.
thanks again for the contributions as want to expore the bleeding edge of tech in this project as much as possible.

[j_guzzler]

"catastrophic failure" sounds as if you are holding national security data on your Xbox hardrive, not sure about anyone else, but i just sotre things on my xbox hardrive thats backuped on my pc, when i go on trips, i just ftp to my xbox what i want, and off we go.

I think what we are trying to say is, for the sake of convenience and portability, we are willing to take the 1/500 chance that we wont go off roading while watching a movie. Sure if it was a hardwired unit in the vehicle, then yes precautions may be taken to ensure hard drive longevity. Although I guess that if i was to take the time to mount the hardrive in a "cage" in an already tight xbox case then it would protect my xbox from any earthquakes that happen up hear in good ol Alberta, Canada...lol.

I also have my xbox mounted on top of my 2x12" subwoofer box and have probably gone on at least 50 8 hour or more trips using it, and its still all good. I guess i would be devastated if i lost a backup copy of all my mp3/movies/games if i did get into a near fatal accident that would cause the hardisk failure....

I am just razzing you....just saying that when its the sake of convenience and portability, I will take the small minute risk....

[Tranman]

I've had no issues with my hard drive either. It's been permanently mounted in my car for the past few months. I have a stiff ride on my car as well, sport coilover suspension and 19" wheels with low profile tires.

Honestly, I am more worried about heat destroying the hard drive than vibrations. I have taken it on a few road trips and its working fine...the only issue I've had is the wireless controllers that seem to get stray signals and messing up for a quick moment...I will probably go hard wired controllers instead in the future.

[MrFish]

"catastrophic failure" sounds as if you are holding national security data on your Xbox hardrive

Such a colourful lexicon computer-related subjects have: you tear-down a large collection of objects when your program's exiting, if a program's misbehaving you kill it, and formatting over a hard drive can be referred to as 'nuking' it...

You have to admit, though, a head crash is one of the most spectacular things that can happen to a computer: the disk starts making a noise like a hammer drill, smoke comes out the top, and goo comes out the bottom.

FWIW, A speedbump taken at 30 does 80Gs ( http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:l15OO...mp+shock+&hl=en ) ; if your car had no suspension, this would be outwith most hard disks' operating shock tolerance. I'm guessing, therefore, that it wouldn't take an earthquake to crash the heads, merely an unnoticed pothole or a dog taken at 60. You're right, though: hard disks just aren't expensive enough to get worked up about anymore. It would probably be as efficacious and much less hassle to just keep a spare one in the car in case of head crash (you have to hit them about five times as hard to damage them when they're not running).

[apextek]

"I think what we are trying to say is, for the sake of convenience and portability, we are willing to take the 1/500 chance that we wont go off roading while watching a movie."

Actually I thought it would be a great commercial if : you see a close up of a couple guys haveing a great time going head to head in madden or burn out or some other media, the camera pulls out to see they are in the back seat of the car. It zoom out farther and you see they are in an suv in a field in the middle of nowhere buried to the windsheild in mud from off roading.
If XBMC was a marketable product the tagline would be "XBMC, your life anywhere" or something to that effect"