Small touch screen monitor

jozi

I'm going to be doing a little project I've wanted to start for a long time with the car and building a car pc.

Would anyone know of small tft/lcd screens, by small I mean something thats only a couple of cm tall and what ever width.

The idea is to replace the car radio with 2 small screens, preferably touch screens.

Solitaire

Missed this Moved to Tweaking & Modding.

Anyhow, how will this work? Is the unit fitting in a single-DIN or double-DIN (double-height) bay? Do you know what internals you can/want/need to use yet? And what purposes will the unit be used for? This also affects hardware size and position as carputers can end up running a lot of stealthed peripherals inside them - radio cards, TV cards, mobile internet modems for passenger web-browsing or Internet Radio, bluetooth transmitters for interfacing with mobile devices and linked microphones and even webcams for handsfree, card readers and external USB ports, GPS trackers... the list goes on Not to mention the variable-input DC PSU which can be surprisingly bulky in terms of footprint unless you get a small 12V convertor and hook it up to a (fixed-12V only) PicoPSU... and all in a space too small for a regular mITX mobo! :eek:

Unless someone can come up with a brainwave a lot of this stuff will be coming from DealExtreme due to non-lunacy-booth prices and simply availability of stuff that's hard to come by in Europe

My guess is that with a single-DIN carputer the best option would be a pair of 3"-diagonal 4:3 touchscreens probably best pilfered from reverse-camera systems, as those have at least an RCA-in. Now here's the rub: what Pico-ATX system can you think of that has dual-monitor capability? And you'd need two big ol' VGA/DVI-to-Composite active converters too :o

This casemod is gonna be FUN! :P

jozi

I'm not sure how it will work yet :P

Your a bit ahead of me in terms of what I might want it to go. Reckon I'll be using a mini-itx board for this. Not thought about the dual monitor capabilities of the board yet, We'll worry about that later on.

As for the monitors, single din is what I'm aiming for. IT means the least messing with the dash and keeps it looking original :rolleyes:

What I'll be using it for will mainly to be control music or what ever other functions I'll be stuffing into it, hopefully be able to take some readings from the engine etc (oil temps, airflows, charge rates etc).

It really still is an idea that depends on how small a monitor I can get away with using for this.

Solitaire

Panels that will natively fit single DIN:

4:3 aspect - 3" diagonal, maybe 3.2"
16:10 wide - 3.5/3.6" diagonal
16:9 wide - 4" diagnonal. Maybe. Just.

The one advantage of 4:3 here is that you could fit two in side-by-side, run an extended desktop across them and still have enough room at the side for some ports etc. Mind you 640*240 is a slightly non-standard resolution... worse, I can't really find any 3" panels anymore, let alone cheap and/or touchscreens!

I think you should be aware that when most people talk about carputers, the actual business end of things is hidden in a heavily-armored project enclosure somewhere in the glovebox, side/top of footwells or even in the boot! The reason being that until the advent of PicoATX you just couldn't fit them in a DIN slot - mITX is 170*170mm², and while you might be able to slot that 170mm width into a DIN slot (if there's no plastic fascia in the way! ) 99% of car stereo DIN slots simply aren't deep enough to accomodate the 170mm depth of the board :o Often the DIN unit only contains the carputer's monitor and maybe a concealed amp to drive the speakers!

Some pics of the dash area would be nice - there might be some leeway to Dremel Time or cleverly work in a larger, more practical monitor in there, which would make life much easier in many ways. Also, you do know that adding in vehicle/ECU sensor readings is probably the most difficult aspect of any carputer attempt? All the cabling and even signalling is completely proprietary from model-to-model, not even manufacturer-to-manufacturer! :eek:

jozi

Any idea where I'd get an off the shelf monitor that kinda sizes?

I've only broadly thought about what I want for this. Screen(S) to fit single din, hooked up to a lowpower main boards, athom or maybe something with a bit more oomph (although with small screens like it i wont be doing much video watching.

I'd like it to do what I mentioned above, satnav would be cool and the posibility to record from a cam is tempting as well.

This is what it's for

I've a lot of work planned for it and a car pc fits into that somewhere.

Plenty of room in the boot, there's 2 pockets either side where I was thinking of putting all the gear, either there or under one of the frotn seats.

It doesn't have to be to small really so long as I can get small enough screen on the dash, which is like this only mirrored


It's all very old fashioned in there hence why I'm after small screen to replace the spot where the radio sits.

Solitaire

Due to cable lengths the PC itself in its armored enclosure usually ends up in the glove box or under a front seat

If you were up for some extra work you could do something like my brother done to his E30 a few years back:

Solitaire

Where the hell can you get that amount of Bondo over here without blowing hundreds?!?!? :eek::eek::eek:

No hundreds spent on the surround, MDF template, wireframe and fibreglass

jozi

That centre dash looks like a lot of hard work! Not my kind of thing though but I can appreciate the effort that went into that.

Little bit of googling earlier.

Single DIN slot is 180*50mm which looks like a 3.5" screen won't fit, unless there's a bit of room to play with behind the heater panel

It's hard to tell and I won't really know untill I rip my dash out and get messing with it over the coming weeks/months.

Ideally I'd like a touch screen as it could rule out a input device, or at least a input device can be simpler/smaller and hidden away for rare occasions when its needed.

There's a few 2" screens here and 3.5" which might just about not fit Some lcd monitors here but no 3"
Found a 3" screen here couldn't find anything widescreen. Some of the above don't have a touch screen either which would be prefect.

Think I might be able to gain a little bit of extra height by using a radio bezel, will have to investigate this!

Solitaire

I really, really think you're better off doing some rewiring/repositioning of the window heater/warning light toggles so you have a larger available space to put a monitor. Two tiny little touch monitors equals a lot of money for something with a wildly non-standard resolution, needs two inputs for two touch systems and two outputs for two monitors :o Plus there's the fact that such small touch monitors can be goppingly expensive and I doubt a regular monitor in those sizes will have third-party mountable touch systems available for it either :(

With those accursed switches out of the way though you have free space from the bottom of the stereo up to the bottom of the blowers! You could even fit a standard 7" wide touchscreen then (so long as the bezel isn't too big!), and only have to mess about with one touch interface and one video out to the screen!

This for example. A bit too pricey IMHO but for ~€105 you get a monitor that has a VGA input instead of those oh-so-tricky Composite plugs!

jozi

That would be to easy



This looks alright but very low down


I preffer not to go with a larger screen like above, it just doesnt look right to me. I'm only opting for 2 screens because 1 small one would leave a big gap to fill next to it.

The interface for this will have to be something knocked up as well. What are the implications of having non-standard resolutions?

Solitaire

Someone is making a mighty big rod for their back... :P

jozi

Haha, I like to go about things the hard way.

who knows things might all change! I think the deciding factor will be what information I can get from the car in relation to voltages, temps etc.

Between this and the engine conversion I'm planning I have lots to be googling