Originally posted by Pugsley
well about the only one was about how much to expect to pay for the lillput thing. the rest i might have laying around.
I thopught if putting one in and using a parellel LCD 4x40 or 4x20 to display text and do a simple MP3 player... but with a regular head unit that can do it costing ~200 it makes all the troubble not worth going through. But that being able to play movies and MUSIC VIDEOS would be worth the trouble.
I paid $291 shipped for the Lilliput on Ebay. I bought it from the seller translinks. He seemed to be a very honest seller. I thought that my box had not come with a remote - and he shipped another one out to me at no cost and let me keep it when I finally found the remote "hidden" in the box. As a sidenote, Lilliput is a small asian company, so they do not have specific boxes for every unit - this scared me initially. I got a Lilliput box that was for a different screen - but the company assured me that this was their practice. Everything else was included in the box, including the remote that I have to use to turn the unit on.
I also used stuff that I had lying around, but I am looking to upgrade in the future. I can't play DIVX movies very well with my older PC, but I really used it for a temporary solution to test the idea and make sure nothing drastic happened to the PC. I was worried about the GA heat, but it doesn't seem to be an issue, yet. It might become more of an issue with a faster processor, but I doubt it - as no one else seems to have problems. I think the highest temperature that a car gets up to is 110 F or so - I think that temp is well within the specs of most PC hardware.
I agree about the trivial nature of the LCD Car PC. Before putting the PC in my car, I tried using one of the in dash double din monitors and DVD player - and the interface was just annoying. So I sold that model and bought the Lilliput and I like this, paired with configurable software, much better. I definately like the idea of being able to do anything that the PC can do - including internet on the road, GPS, radio through a USB FM radio, DVD playing, and other PC format movie playing, as well as MP3 playing. I can store all 30+ GB of my sorted MP3's in one place - without having to worry about burning them all to DVD-R's. It is very convenient - I don't have to go searching for my DVD-R discs now. It seems to be safer than searching for CD's too..it only requires that you look down for a short period of time, rather than much longer for the alternative. If you are seriously considering doing this, but have any reservations, I suggest you look at mp3car.com and browse the forums - specifically the completed installs section....everyone does their install different and you can get lots of ideas. They also have a forum dedicated to the software that can be used. Currently I have 3 programs loaded for my CarPC and am still trying to decide which interface I like better. I look forward to getting GPS and internet implemented for my system, too....but that will have to come along when I get my faster computer - and when my case finally gets here.
I think this is one of the most rewarding projects I've done so far - but it was also pretty time-consuming to do all the research and planning. Once I got started, it didn't take much time at all, because I had already worked through my ideas in my head. Good Luck! Let me know if you have any more questions.
