Putting more bump in the CR-V's trunk...

[Billfred]

...or, more realistically, the spare tire well. (The tire is bolted to the back of the car, so it's empty.)

Alright, here's the story. I'm sure you've all heard about my CR-V and its quirks/problems (read my blog if you want to know all the gory details).

The big problem with my car--erm, "light truck"--is that it's got a cassette player. My collection is all CDs...and the few units that I could possibly afford all appear to look like trash when placed within the confines of my car. (Is it such a bad thing to want a nice, simple, basic black CD player that doesn't light up neon blue, flash, or play video images on an itty-bitty LCD screen?) I've got a CD player with a car kit, but it looks just plain ugly. So I think I've hashed out a basic plan...

Step 1) Obtain a wicked cheap laptop. (Or a really small PC, if it can sandwich into a spare tire well.)
Step 2) Equip the computer with wifi, if it is not so equipped. (This way, I can send newly-ripped CDs without having to rip them from the back of my car.) Same for a decent-sized hard drive. Enough to hold a few albums.
Step 3) Either find a car adapter or a power inverter to power this PC from the cigarette lighter that is in the back of the car.
Step 4) Attach an FM adapter so I don't have to use the tacky cassette adapter.
Step 5) Roll out.

I've just got a few problems with this setup, and I'm hoping someone here can help me with it.
1) When the car starts, power is cut to the cigarette lighters. This forces my CD player to lose power as well, meaning I have to not only turn the player back on, I have to start from the beginning of the album. I think I could solve this on a laptop by leaving the battery in, so that it'll stay booted.
2) How will I be able to control the computer, especially starting the music? That's quite a distance between the spare tire well and my bum--and I don't want to run a wire between the two, since that's the thing I'm trying to avoid whenever I can.

If you know any easy tricks around any of these problems, let me know. If you see a problem I didn't, let me know. If you are willing to give me any of the parts I would need on a cheap to free basis, let me know.

[DanL]

Alright, well here's my view on stereos... take the plunge and go for an aftermarket one. Yeah, they silver and chrome the hell out of the light-up blue and green LEDs and LCDs, but for sound quality, its going to sound a hell of a lot better than your stock headunit. Main reason is because of equalizers and other misc. sound enhancing circuitry - you ever turn off the equalizer on Winamp and say, "hey, where did that quality and fullness go?" I mean, I completely understand where you're coming from aestetically - the chromed out bling on my Pioneer headunit sticks out like Dubya at the DNC in the plain black plastic dash of my Accord - but hey, the thing sounds amazing, and the audio quality is what matters to me. Just be warned - if you're upgrading your headunit but not your speakers, the new unit is most likely going to be able to put out more power than what your stock speakers are rated for, so easy with the volume knob.

If, however, you value aestetics over sound quality (again, I'd say you should value quality), you do have some other options. A friend of mine actually did do the computer-in-the-truck-as-an-mp3-player thing. He bought one of those serial-port LCD units for feedback and hooked up a keypad through the other serial port to change playlists or tracks and such. Lots of custom programming went into this to make it work, as well as quite a bit of hardware hacking. I'd personally just go with the new headunit that plays MP3 cds (I've had the same MP3 cd in my car for the past half-year, and I'm still not tired of it).

A third option you can go for is the radio-frequency cd-players. I used to have one of these in my car before it broke on me (the thing wasn't built to last more than 4 years, it seems). Basically there's a CD-changer mounted in your trunk, a control unit put somewhere in the car, and an LCD with feedback buttons that is mounted somewhere near the dash. The LCD is hooked up to the control unit, which is hooked up to the CD changer in the trunk. The idea is you tell it what to read and then the controller transmits the audio over an FM frequency. With this, you keep your system completely how it is - all you do is tune the radio.

Hope this helps.

[KyleGilbert45]

I searched around a bit and found this site...maybe it will help you..maybe it wont...

MP3car.com


EDIT: If you are looking into using a computer to play your music then you could always mount it under one of your seats instead that way if you did have to run wires of some sort they wouldnt need to be as long or show that much.

[Max Lobovsky]

A couple of people have dealt with the same dilemna that you speak of an come up with similar solutions. I recall reading on the winamp forums of someone developing a skin for winamp designed with uber big buttons. Now why would he do that? Cause he was using it with his home-made, built-in touch screen. (Well the touch screen wasn't home made, but he made the mounting and covering and stuff.) It sat in the middle space behind the stick, if I recall correctly. I can't seem to find the one I read, but here is a very similar one: http://forums.audiworld.com/a4/msgs/1734601.phtml. So anyway, if you can get a touchscreen, and you can fit your laptop/computer components (howabout a mini-ITX computer) in the dash or somewhere up front, you should be ok. Try searching about it some more, I'm sure lots of people have put computers for media playing in their cars. The WiFi part is awesome. Drive in to your garage, pull some files from your main computer or whatever, and drive out .

[Matt Attallah]

*1) When the car starts, power is cut to the cigarette lighters. This forces my CD player to lose power as well, meaning I have to not only turn the player back on, I have to start from the beginning of the album. I think I could solve this on a laptop by leaving the battery in, so that it'll stay booted.*

Well - that is the easy way out - but I'm sure your labtop will not like any type of short power spike over repeated times. Honestly - from me working on vehicles for 4+ years - DO NOT COUNT ON THE CIG. LIGHTER. First off it is ment to get the lighter hot. It is not ment to carry current for long periods of time. The wires that they run back there are not very big (I'd like to say under 12 gague) and I personally do not feel safe running even a CD car kit off of the cig. I have had vehicles come back with burned wires for this. And you want to run a labtop off of this?! I say run a dedicated wire from the battery to behind/underneath the dash. You can use a relay off of the ignition wire so when your vehicle is off - everything will be off (or forced to run off of battery power) but double check this - I am not too good with Honda's wiring details. Also - just look at a wiring diagram. Lots of times they use a harness for other vehicles - so you may be able to get a un-used live wire. W body cars on GM (Impala, Montie carlo, ect...) are quite nice for these!

*2) How will I be able to control the computer, especially starting the music? That's quite a distance between the spare tire well and my bum--and I don't want to run a wire between the two, since that's the thing I'm trying to avoid whenever I can.*

I don't know of any way becides running any wires. If you labtop has an S-Video out you can just run one wire under the carpet/seats for ease of choice. I'm sure that If you look around outside that people have had this problem- and i'm sure some one/company has made a program that has a CD/Track disk changer made so you can just velcro/place the changer up in front and just run one long cord to your labtop? (Maybe even wireless?)

There is a TON of sound stuff for vehicles. Just Google it and it's gonna take some time and i'm gonna say you are gonna have to do some wiring...

If you have anymore car tech questions let me know. I can get you help/specs/whatever b/c I work at a dealership.

[Astronouth7303]

If it has a serial port, You can make a controller using a UART chip (see beyondlogic.org) and 8 buttons (and maybe even lights! ). Each button gets a bit, and this is sent to the computer. I can (and have) whip up software to handle this that interfaces with Winamp v2. (I don't think Windows Media Player would be difficult).

If you want a LCD display to put in your dash, I might also be able to help you with programming, though I have no expierience in that.

Feel free to IM/PM/e-mail me with questions/comments.