DC-DC Regulator instead of Inverter

[Deephaven]

I read the warnings on the inverter and the over current potential, but assume this is from the DC to AC and wouldn't hold true for a supply that just went from 12v DC to 19v DC.

Here is the FAQ thread that cites the concern:
http://www.hptuners.com/forum/showth...power-inverter!

This is the Power Supply I would be purchasing:
http://store.mp3car.com/products/car...dc-regulator-2

Lots of people are currently using that in their cars to power permanent PC's which is my long term plan.

Leaves me with 2 questions:
1) Is this okay?
2) Where is it best to remove the power from the OBDII port? At the port itself? Does someone sell a bare extension cable that is easier to trim? At the serial port on the MPVI interface? (serial port extensions with bare pins are easy to find, but I couldn't yet find one for an OBDII)

[gmtech16450yz]

I'm running an Intel NUC in my car so I can save you a little headache.

Answer to question #1- It's absolutely OK, it's actually better because it "should" be a cleaner signal if done correctly.

Question #2 had a few in it. lol.-

If you're talking about semi-permanently hooking up your MVPI, you don't really even need the OBD2 port. If you're ok with a little wiring, you can hook an HD15 connector directly into your car, that's what I did. Just pull the data, power and ground signals from the back of your existing OBD2 port and wire them into an HD15 harness that will plug directly into your MVPI. You can put a switch on the 12v power feed so you can turn it off when you're not using the MVPI. I've actually been leaving my MVPI powered up all the time for awhile, only recently have I put it on a switched 12v circuit. You just want to make sure it has power while cranking so you can log startups if you want.

On the DC to DC converter, I would stay away from that P1900. I had one that failed after about 6 months. Worst part was I had it buried deep behind my dash and actually left it in there disconnected and not working for awhile until I got around to pulling my dash back apart. That P1900 worked flaky from the start anyway. The PC software interface to change it's settings is garbage and the auto turn on and off was always hit or miss. What I did was went with a simple, cheap little DC to DC converter and also wired in a large capacitor to keep the voltage clean.

This is similar to what I'm using for my PC-

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

(Oh yeah and it's 1/8 the price!) This is actually the one I'm using for my onboard WiFi/Cellular, but I think the one I used for the PC was pretty much the same, maybe higher amperage rating. I went to an electronics surplus store and found a huge 20 volt capacitor and used that with a diode going into it to clean up the possible voltage spikes or ripples. These cheap little DC to DC converters are actually pretty stable, I was impressed for a $9 item. I have several of them running in my car for the 19v PC, 12v monitor, 9v Cellular/WiFi unit and 5v for my USB hub and security camera power. They all work great. Ideally it would be nice to have a single unit that provided several clean outputs with voltage and amperages easily settable but I've never run across one. Maybe with more people putting PC's in cars, places like the mp3car store will ditch the old crap like that P1900 and have somebody build an all in one solution.

Good luck and have fun! Onboard logging and tuning is FREAKIN AWESOME!!! No more laptop on the seat with a seat belt around it to keep it from flying around!

[Deephaven]

Awesome. Thank you. I have the 1900 already, doh. I quickly put the NUC in last week right before the Whipple.

Curious how you are triggering the NUC to come on? The P1900 was mimicing a momentary switch I plugged onto the motherboard.

As for wiring, no problem. I'd rather just have wires to a 15 pin. If you know which pins are what I'd love that.

Still have a full size keyboard hard USB'd atm, but working on the rest of the integration now that the supercharger is in. Temporarily using my laptop to upload tunes.

Here is my dash atm:

I should have shot the picture after I hooked up the wideband so it didn't read Sen1, but I was eager as the night before I did the supercharger I finished the dash.

and under hood as of Saturday afternoon:

[Deephaven]

One other thought. Any I reason I can't run parallel power inputs to the MPVI? (and my pc)

Figure one that is switched of accessory power and one that is "direct" fused battery for when the car is off. Would be great to have access to both.

[gmtech16450yz]

Nice! What monitor are you using? This is the one I'm using...

http://www.xenarc.com/1022TSH.html

I haven't been thrilled with it since I got it. Being a resistive touch screen, the contrast isn't very good and you have to use your fingernail to select things on the screen. I'm thinking about trying the newer capacitive touch screen version they have now, it wasn't available when I bought mine a few years ago. I have a convertible so the brightness and contrast is a huge deal. The monitor is fine with the top up, but with the top down it's pretty hard to see. I know the capacitive screen would have better contrast and brightness, It's just a mere $700 though! Plus I paid $450 for the one I have already. Ugggh. I guess it's just another one of the costs of doing this "outside the box" stuff to our cars!

As far as the parallel power inputs, that should be fine. So I also pulled the main power switch input off the motherboard and wired it to a remote momentary switch. I have that switch and another latching switch on my console for turning on and off the monitor and the PC. I have them hooked to filtered battery power so I can have the PC and monitor on or off at any time. (Make sure you put a nice big capacitor on that PC power feed so you don't get any voltage drops when cranking, etc.) Being able to turn off the monitor separately is nice when driving at night since a 10" monitor is kinda bright at night!

On the USB keyboard, I went from a bluetooth keyboard to a bluetooth track pad to only using the touch screen. I very rarely need the bluetooth keyboard, only when doing things like pressing "enter" when trying to boot up after a crash. You can't use the onscreen keyboard when the computer isn't even booted up! Other than that, I use the touchscreen 90% of the time. BTW, when you get to the point of using the PC for your stereo, I learned A TON about that and can save you a ton of headache there too. I use J River software instead of iTunes, through a separate DAC and it is absolutely the best stereo I've ever built, and I've built a few hundred! The onboard sound card in the NUC doesn't have enough voltage on the line out to properly run a car amp. Plus the digital to analog converter is kind of crappy. The separate DAC will give you a cleaner conversion and also be a full 2v line level output. The sound you can get out of a setup like that is far better than any car stereo I've ever ran.

On the pinouts for the HD15 connector... It's been awhile since I did it so there's no way I remember which pins went where! I google searched something like "hptuners serial pinouts" or something like that and found the info online. Let me know if you can't find it and I'll see if I can. Chris or Bill, maybe you can help with that? And maybe there's a better place for this thread? I looks like it's gonna turn into good info about car PC's but it's obviously a little off topic to tuning. ??? We could take it to PM's, but I really don't like doing that because then only two people learn, kind of defeats the purpose of a forum.

edit- found the pinout, I'll attach the image below. I'll pull up a pinout for the ALDL too in case you don't have it.

The learning curve is pretty steep on this car PC stuff, but the potential is awesome! I've got mine doing a bunch of stuff. Check out my build video, it shows the PC and electronics, plus a bunch of other cool stuff. Don't forget to turn your speakers on!

700whp LSA/Sky build video- https://youtu.be/2q9BuzNRc3Q

[Deephaven]

Awesome. Did you have to wire all the pins that are labelled to the 15 pin? Is there an easy location to tap into these?

I can't say that I would like having to press a button to turn on the pc. Guess I am going to have to investigate automating a momentary switch upon power up...

As for other stuff I have the computer doing....well it is music at the moment, but as I get my tune in order I'll spend more time optimizing the setup.

My screen is a 10" capacitive from Chalk-Elec. It is also not bright enough and I haven't been able to figure out how to get multi-touch working yet either.
http://www.chalk-elec.com/?page_id=1...tegory=3094861

Other equipment I have related to the PC are not finished, but here is a categorized list.
Computer & Front End:
Mini-PC: Intel NUC i5 4250
Boot Drive: Samsung Evo 840 500gb
Storage Drive: WD Black 500gb
Ram: Crucial Ballistic 9-9-9-24 2 x 4gb 1600 ddr3 ram
Front End Software: Driveline
Power Supply: Carnetix P1900 (soon to be replaced with Amazon supplies above)
Screen: Chalk-Elec Capacitive 10” LCD/LVDS bundle 1280x800 with 18 bit color
ECU Tuning: HP Tuners Pro
Phone Connection: ?
GPS: Garmin Mobile PC + 2014 Maps

Stereo:
D/A: Behringer UA202 (has Burr Brown A/D)
Mids: Seas U18RNX
Tweets: Alpine F1 Status Tweeters (Scan D2904/6k)
Active Crossovers: 2 @ MiniDSP with hardware volume knob & miniDC Isolator (only using 1 minidsp atm)
Front Stage amp: Polk D4000.4
Sub & amp: nothing yet

Ancillary:
Ebay Bel Radar detector hardwire kit
Bluetooth adapter: IO Gear GBU321 (supposed to work well with Blue Soleil)
GPS: Sure Electronics GPS Development Board
Radio: Directed HD Radio Receiver with MJS Gadgets USB Interface + Metra Chrysler antenna adapter
Backup Camera: Metra BackupCAM1 USB adapter
Steering wheel controls: PAC-SWI-RC + Joyconn Steering wheel adapter
A few generic USB hubs
Keyboard: ?

Undecided:
Bluetooth Handsfree kit. Don’t know if I want the PC to do it or something external. The Blue Soleil software is far from great



P.S. I too would prefer this to be on the forum versus in PM. If someone wants to move the thread and title it differently that'd be great. Something along the lines of Carputer for HP Tuners with hardwired power supply.

[gmtech16450yz]

Awesome. Did you have to wire all the pins that are labelled to the 15 pin? Is there an easy location to tap into these?

I can't say that I would like having to press a button to turn on the pc. Guess I am going to have to investigate automating a momentary switch upon power up...

As for other stuff I have the computer doing....well it is music at the moment, but as I get my tune in order I'll spend more time optimizing the setup.

My screen is a 10" capacitive from Chalk-Elec. It is also not bright enough and I haven't been able to figure out how to get multi-touch working yet either.
http://www.chalk-elec.com/?page_id=1...tegory=3094861


P.S. I too would prefer this to be on the forum versus in PM. If someone wants to move the thread and title it differently that'd be great. Something along the lines of Carputer for HP Tuners with hardwired power supply.

On the 15 pins- no, you just need ign, bat, ground and the data line.

On the power button- Yeah I originally had the same thought on wanting it totally automatic, but in use it didn't work so well. I log startups often, having the computer turn on or off during cranking is an issue. Also, looking at logs or anything else with the engine not running was also a pain because I had to have the ign in accessory mode all the time. The monitor is the same thing, there are many times I want the computer on without the monitor, so a separate switch was way better than having it automatically turn on and off. As far as daily use, having to turn them on and off is a non-issue. These computers, especially in Windows 8, boot up so friggin fast that shutting them down is almost as fast as letting them sleep. Leaving the NUC and all the USB stuff powered up 24/7 is tough on any battery. I keep mine on for a minute or two after saving the log so that it has time to send the log file to my "cloud", then shut it all down. I have a security camera, but it's all self contained with it's own memory card and WiFi so it doesn't need the computer to be on to work. The only other thing that stays on 24/7 is my Cellular reciever/WiFi.

On the monitor- I just tried what I think is the same monitor you have, except it's the full kit with an enclosed screen and all the cables/chargers and junk. It's the Lilliput capacitive touch 10.1". I liked the capacitive touch, but the screen wasn't even close to as bright as the Xenarc I've been using. So far, in my research it looks like the new Xenarc capacitive touch daylight viewable 10.0" monitor is the best solution, it's just a little pricey at $700. I MIGHT try one unless I find something better. You want to try a Xenarc resistive touch daylight viewable 10.1? lol. I might have one for sale if I pull the trigger on the $700 version. The only other options I'm looking into are a couple of custom made monitors by a couple different companies, I haven't heard back from either though. Most likely over $1k solutions though.

The rest of your setup looks similar but different to what I did. Interesting getting the feedback from different approaches to the same ultimate goal!