Fitting a CD Player into Glove Box ???

[Brian C]

Has anyone one retro fitted a CD PLAYER / RADIO / CASS etc. into the glove box before ?

 

I'm thinking of doing this on my 280ZX...since it is completely stock...and still has the original radio / cassette...though it doesn't sound very good... ... hence this idea..

 

 

I'm hoping I can mount a new CD / radio player into the glove compartment...and then have it work indipendantly from the original... so as both can still be operable..

 

Ideally, a unit with a remote control would be good...though...not sure if it would work with the glove box door closed anyway...

 

So if anyone's done this...or has any advice.. please let me know...

 

P.S. I've also posted a request for a 280ZX glove box interior...as I really don't want to cut or screw into the original...so if you have one... again please let me know..

[zedevan]

look around http://www.mp3car.com, there's numerous installs of various bits in various places. you can get/make an infrared retransmitter so there's a pickup on one side of your glove box and a transmitter that sits just infront of the pickup on the headunit so the remote would work with the door closed.

 

i thought i may as well make the most of the one advantage i see in a 260z dash over a 240z dash, the square opening, so i've bought myself another centre console and the bit around the heater controls and am looking into which screen to buy from where atm to sit in there. i was thinking of just doing like a decent headunit that controls an ipod or something but for the same amount or less [using an old laptop] i'll soon have in car navigation, mp3's, dvd's and other videos and all that other exciting stuff...not that i need it hehe, but i reakon an accurate speed reading would be good though + the fact i own no cd's so now will just be able to simply wifi songs to my car!

[Brian C]

:shock: aha...that's a good idea about the iR retransmitter for sure.!

 

I'll have a look around for one of those...plus check out that site too...

 

thanks Brian

[zedevan]

here's pics of my screen in its been like this for awhile now, i really need to get a slot load dvd drive, which is going to go in the hole beneath the heater controls, and make up the panel for all the switches, which is going in the hole beneath that, where the switches normally are, atm i just plug all the power in as i need it which is getting annoying

 

i've also bought a joystick i'm going to put in the ash tray and use it as a mouse using drivers that do so, and hence it will give me about 10 buttons i can program for stuff so i dont have to look at the screen and touch it, also its hard to double click and right click on the touchscreen when your driving :lol:

 

also looking to put a keyboard in the glove box so the passenger can type in the name of the next song etc, then gps at some stage, also a tv tuner card so i can get fm radio though the comp, atm i just have a portable fm radio i can plug into the amp thing

 

and ofcourse i need to get a main screen bit that doesn't have a honda logo on it! also i sprayed part of this centre console grey, but its really quite ugly, so i'm going to try to get some of the colour thats on 350z dashes as its nice and brown and am planning on spraying the surrounds of the gauges in it also...when i can be bothered, but this project is basically done and i'm happy with how it is, so finishing it will probably take forever as i'm happy using it as it is, it sure beats using cd's thats for sure and being able to edit the playlist while at stop lights is handy, all for the price of a 30gb ipod video! (so far)

 

it was pretty easy to fit, i'm using the bracket that normally runs beneath the heater controls to hold it up behind the screen to hold it in, i'm concidering cutting up a spare one of the plastic bits thats meant to go where the screen is to make it look nicer but then i have to have holes there for the air to come out. the only bit of the heater controls which no longer works due to the cables being out of place is i can't push the main slider any further to the left...but i never turn it off anyway and while it doesn't look like its on cold air it is

 

well i've said to much, if anyone has any questions or thoughts just ask and i'll post up more pics when its finished

[Kirby]

Z carputer

 

what size is that screen?

guessing its from ebay?

[zedevan]

hey, its a 10.4", they are availible off ebay but i got my dads company to go directly to the company that makes them somewhere in china, it only ended being $50 cheaper though. its a lilliput which is the dodgier brand out of the two main ones used for this sort of thing, i kinda wish i'd gone for a xenarc which are the best ones but they are nearly twice as much...Either way it's alot cheaper than jaycar's crappy little 7" one!

 

the only sad thing is i haven't improved on this setup yet at all...and how long has it been? my sister everytime she gets in my car is like "does it tell you where to go yet?"

[dave_hl]

Ah Evan i was wondering if there was a post about your massive touch screen in your car. and i have now stumbled across it. After seeing yours when you were at my place ive been thinking about doing the same.

 

I was thinking about using my old school laptop and set it up as a media centre PC and then also having my GPS bluetoothed to it as well as my digital TV card hooked up, and with the bluetooth dongle have it networked to my home PC so i could update my car with movies and mp3's whenever its within range, sitting in the driveway.

 

My problems are though, my laptop isn't very good (900mhz celeron, 128meg ram), so i was thinking of going with a desktop, but that uses too much power and id need an expensive(?) transformer to run it off 12V.

Also 10.4" touch screens are 300+ bucks on ebay so i was thinking of going with either an 8" for possibly 150 bucks or bigger one but not touch screen. Do you use the touchscreen function much? or do you normaly use the joystick (you got that hooked up yet?).

 

Another option is to upgrade my laptop with some more ram and use the 14" screen off it and mount that in the dash... much cheaper but a 14" screen would be dam hard to fit in.

 

I would then have all the audio hooked up to a 4 channel alpine amp i just bought on ebay, and then some JL audio splits ive got lying round, probably mounted in the rear.

[zedevan]

all i currently use is the touch screen, got lazy half way though playing with the joystick as windows kept forgetting what button was ment to do what. there are lots of little wheel type things, generally used for video editing, that ppl hook up and use them, but i guess ti comes down to if u get it working with the software well enough etc.

 

I'm currently running centrafuse which is made specifically for carpc's and has heaps of functions built in, and doesn't require double clicking all hte time, which is one thing thats dam hard to do on a touch screen, although its a beta so the guys eventually going to charge for it, although it is probably worth it, as i went from hating the stupid thing to loving it again. there are a few different free programs you can use but they all take awhile to set up, so never got around to it lol

 

the laptop i run is only a 533, and has as much ram in it as possible, which is only 196. somewhere on my desk i have a 128 or 256 if u want it for $30 or so, although i'd have to find it...was out of gf's decent laptop as it was upgraded to 1gb...i am planning on buying a laptop at some time most likely so will try to get one with a dock connecter thing so i can just plug it in when i'm in the car with the one plug. mp3's dont require the greatest computer, and i just let mine hybernate all the time so doesn't take to long to turn on, speically when u dont load anything on it but whats needed

 

either way you're best off to get a proper power supply, laptop ones are around the $100 mark, and desktop type ones are $150 or so for the good ones, with autoboot on power up, and auto shutdown etc with the ignition.

 

if i had a slot load dvd/cd drive i'm sure i'd like the system even more, as sometimes its handy to have it, and relying on windows networking to upload new songs to it sucks as it always seems to not be able to find the other computer in the great windows way, and i assume ur meaning wireless (802.11) not bluetooth

 

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Lilliput-7-Touch-Screen-XGA-TFT-Car-Monitor-629GL_W0QQitemZ110085613743QQihZ001QQcategoryZ14946QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

get something like that for the screen, alot of the non touchscreen ones only run tv type resolution on them so computer looks crap on them. however lilliputs are regarded as cheap screens (although not the cheapest still), mine is a lilliput and the main wire connection to the screen internally is loose so i have to bash it sometimes to stop it going all green, its an easy to fix problem but once again havn't been bothered, as it works so i'm happy. the best are xenarcs but they are close to $800, then to fix the problem of not being able to see them in daylight (like most phones etc) ppl put a special coating on them, which i think is similar to whats on new laptops, but it cost a few hundred to get down, so normally only bmw guys do it etc

 

dvd slot drives are a bit over $100, so for what you get all up compared to a 3g headunit car pc's are heaps better, but compared to a $230 jvc mp3 headunit u kinda needa wonder if its worth all the stuffing around etc. i really need to finish my system off, hopefully can this year, but i'm keen to do the rear lights

 

long post, but hope i answered most of ur questions and have given a better impression of what i think of having it now that i have for awhile. driving another car the last week has made me miss having the radio, so i'd like to set that up too. a few ppl run headunits and computers, so thats one option, or can get tuner cards, but my laptops to crap to run the one i got

 

look round on mp3car, i havn't for ages, but there was one guy who had a 15.4" screen (off a laptop) rotated so it was portrait and had upgraded the backlight in it to using heaps of water cooled leds and it was really quite psycho. i generally turn off my screen at night as its to bright and just let it play though a playlist. i'm interested if cops would defect me for it as they have a similar thing i their cars lol, all the places i took my car to get a rwc didn't say anything about it...

[dave_hl]

Cheers for the reply.

well yeah the laptop would be fine for running mp3's (except for the 14gig HDD) but it wouldn't run my TV card or play movies that smoothly i dont think. And im not sure how much oomph i will need to run the GPS software. if its a 256meg thing of ram then i think id happily pay 30 bucks for it. I need PC100 if that helps.

 

According to a mate you can network via bluetooth to a PC connected to a LAN and then the bluetoothed computer becomes part of the LAN. I don't know heaps about networking or computers but apparantly works...

As for hibernating with the ignition etc, i have a sweet idea. theres a button that when pressed by the screen as it is shutting puts the computer to sleep, so i wanna take that button and make it into a hidden switch on my dash which does 3 things: turns the computer on, turns the 'remote' wire on the amp on, and acts as an immoboliser to turn the dash on.

 

I saw an 8" touch scren go on ebay for 150 including shipping, which is about 100 less then any of the others, didn't have very good resolution, but meh. (dont think it was a lilliput)

 

in terms of is it worth doing for the cost, i have the laptop, id need 150 for a touch screen, maybe 30 for ram, a bit for power for the laptop, and not too much else. or mount my 13.3" (i think) computer screen and have a little joystick or something set up... i have some very nerdy friends who would be able to help me with that bit.

 

And yeah a Cd rom drive up front would be good ey, i rekon a transplant out of my laptop would be a bit hard though. or may be do-able.

 

Do you know much about those things you put over normal LCD screens to make them touch screen??

 

cheers.

[zedevan]

i dont know how much the overlays are to buy seperately and if they are a pain to set up, my assumption is it would b, and the price of them would out do any saving of buying a screen without it. the overlay still works when the screen is on, so since i know the position of the buttons i can still go to the next song with the screen off lol

 

while you could get buy on a low res screen it will look crap...when i got this laptop out to use it looked pretty crap compared to anything thats currently around as its only running 800X600 on a 12.1" screen, but it made me decide that i didn't really need to pay the extra 100-200 for a 10" screen that ran 1024x768 as then all the buttons and stuff get to small unless u reskin it urself...which as you could tell i probably couldn't b bothered doing

 

on mp3car there's stuff on how to modify that switch ur talking about amongst other ways of getting around it. i have a spare laptop power supply, as i bought one then my dad happened to have one for some reason and it put less noise onto the screen (i need to put the screen in through a coil or something to stop the noise completely) the memory i have sitting around is ddr2, so yeah shoulda remembered old laptop means different sort sorry lol

 

you may as well try running everything on the laptop to see if it will do, what gps software you have? i've been meaning to get some but it aint that often that i go somewhere where its really needed.

 

i was going to extend the cdrom drive up to the dash but for the hassle and the fact its only cd, not dvd as well, and you can get a dvd usb one for $100ish it probably aint worth it. the other thing thats a good idea is a higher quality audio out of the laptop, i had a decent external sound card but i managed to blow it up (had to turn it off by unplugging it as was to lazy to put in a switch for it, and one of those stupid things where turning it off still leaves it on draining the battery, and i kept shorting it as i was plugging it back in and yeah...opps)

 

i'd be tempted to just get an ipod, unless you were caught up on the gps thing or wanted it to play around with the whole thing, as they are still heaps faster to find a song on than my carpc software, althoguh it might help if i sorted through my music collection properally. i belive once on mp3car i saw an external mouse that was a usb ipod wheel, kinda cool.

[dave_hl]

Yeah getting a standard headunit and hooking an ipod up might just be the way to go. I am about to purchase a broken 3rd gen 20gig ipod off ebay for about 40 bucks delivered. (i worked out how to fix all those broken ones i think) and my brother has an old crappyish pioneer headunit.

 

I was just measuring my laptop LCD and its 28.5cm x 21cm... i could kinda make it fit but i dont wanna go ripping out the centre of my dash. But if i did make it fit the i could get a joysticky/scrolly mouse thing to control it.

 

I would love having the GPS hooked up through the computer instead of my phone though. don't have any software yet to put it through the computer, at the moment i am using tomtom on my phone.

[zedevan]

just go get whatever bits your going to destroy out of a car at a wrecker, there's heaps of 280zx's at one in clayton