http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/au...OMPUTERS.html?

A Computer in Your Car, but Not Under the Hood


REWIRED Greg Planthaber connected the touch screen in his 2003 Lexus SC 430 to the PC he installed in the trunk.

SILVIO FIORITO is the proud owner of a Subaru WRX and, like any engineer, he is happy when his hard work speeds up his car from 45 seconds to 5 seconds. A good engineer can always improve on what comes from the manufacturer.

He’s not talking about the car itself, but the PC he installed to link the navigation, music system and video playback systems. You can go get a cup of coffee while your desktop starts, but a car is different.

“If my girlfriend gets into my car, she shouldn’t notice,” said Mr. Fiorito, 29. “If they don’t even realize that I have a car computer in my car, it means it’s working properly.” So he tore apart his version of Windows, tweaked the start-up routine and ripped out every unnecessary part.

“You don’t need a printer in your car computer,” he explained and paused a second, perhaps imagining what he might do with a printer in the back seat, and then added a qualification to the next sentence:

“If you don’t have a network, you don’t need the Windows fire wall.”

Engineers like Mr. Fiorito, of Reston, Va., are just some of the car lovers who want an able computer in their vehicle to complement the turbocharged engine and the fat brake pads. They’re also wiring these computers into the stereo, the cellphone, the backup cameras, the Onboard Diagnostics Port (OBD-II), the navigation system and almost any electrical part. Then they tinker with the PC to make it easy to control everything with a few taps on a button or a touch screen.

While many car computer hobbyists speak admiringly of the commercial systems like Microsoft’s Sync available in some Ford cars, they like the freedom to experiment, and an open platform offers many options. The simplest do-it-yourself modifications take a few hours, but some people devote more in search of a computer that acts like a telepathic navigator with perfect taste in music.

Tom Berry of Corning, N.Y., an engineer who works on the air traffic control system during the day, started in 1984 with an Atari XL. Today, he has a Mac Mini in his 2001 Beetle and is working on replacing it with a Marvell SheevaPlug, a Linux-based computer smaller than a three-inch cube.

“The connection to the Web is a pretty big one, and then you can stream Internet radio and Pandora,” a streaming radio Web site, said Mr. Berry, 46. Adding a connection with a cellular modem lets him escape the limits of the AM or FM bands.

Greg Planthaber, 38, a government contractor in Falls Church, Va., has an HD radio and a Sirius radio wired into his system, but he also added his music collection to the disk of the PC he installed in his 2003 Lexus SC 430.

“I don’t have to worry about carrying around CDs,” he said.

Mr. Planthaber has added connections to other parts of the car, like the transmission and the car’s central computer, using the OBD-II plug built for mechanics. When he shifts into reverse, a screen on his dash displays an image from a camera hidden by his rear license plate.

“A backup camera wasn’t a factory option for my car,” he said. “I added it as part of the video interface I installed.”

The music and other options can be changed with a few taps. Mr. Planthaber rewired the touch screen that came with the car to connect to the PC in the trunk. He and many others interviewed for this article use a popular program called Centrafuse to control all of the wires. It runs on top of Windows and displays a collection of menus in a customizable array. Others speak well of packages like Ride Runner from Nisu Automotive.

“I’ve used my onboard diagnostic for more than gee-whiz stuff,” he said, and explained how he figured out that a loose gas cap was causing the check engine light to flash.

“I don’t even want to know what the Lexus dealer would charge me to tell me that the gas cap was loose,” he said.

While Mr. Planthaber diagnosed the problem from the car itself, others are hooking up a remote connection. Will Meyer, 33, another engineer from Arlington, Va., used artificial intelligence techniques to program his computer to parse questions posed in text messages. Then he taught his computer to recognize the names of all data gathered by the car’s computer.

“It knows all of the stuff in the OBD-II,” he said, “from the air-fuel ratio to the timing advance.”

Now he can track any detail about the car’s performance with any cellphone.

“I’ve left the realm of practicality a long time ago,” Mr. Meyer acknowledged. “I can instant-message the car and ask it how fast it’s going, and it will tell me how fast it’s going. It’s hard to justify, but that’s not the point. It’s kind of fun.”



This is probably as famous and I'm ever going to get so, I've posted this article here and in the NELOC forum, since the two groups rarely delve into the other forum. I hope the OP's don't mind. I hope both groups find it interesting.

 

cool. you're famous-ish. well deserved.

 

Wow the NY Times !! Great write - up, you should work on the next James Bond car !!

 

And we knew you before the fame. So what does your publicist have scheduled next? Network television? Movies?

(Way to go!)

 

You DE Man

Buddy

 

Thanks! This is how I feel about it. It's not like Leno's called me yet. If you knew who I was, you'd know me from the article. I don't think I'm going to get stopped in the street any time soon with someone going "Didn't I see the side of your head in the NY Times recently?"

Thank you! My only complaint about the write up is that the little anecdote I told the writer about the loose gas cap...he left out the part about it being my WIFE who didn't properly tighten the gas cap. A key piece of information, if you ask me.

I'll have to put you in touch with my attorney...he's a big-shot DC lawyer. I'll PM you his name.

Thanks Buddy. My wife tells me that all the time. But she usually says it when I bang my head into something or break something of ours....hmmm.

 

That's really cool , nice recognition of your good work

 

I like the fact that the CarPC is hooked up to diagnostics and OBD codes.. Very impressive..

 

Thanks! Sometimes hard word DOES pay off. Who knew?

Thanks! I've also got a plug-in for the Centrafuse software that displays OBD-II data as gauges on the CarPC screen...MAF rate, timing advance, intake air temp, throttle position and engine load.

This is a crappy pic of it, but you get the idea (looks much better in person)...

 

wow! truly amazing work and glad you got the appropriate credit. share the love! Group Buy?