Don't go for an Opus!!! They are far too expensive in this country. You can get exactly the same from Australia for £80, you then have to pay delivery costs to get it here. Luckily I have a friend out there right now if I decide to go for one like that - but I'm not. (see below)
I am in the middle of building an in-car mp3 jukebox system.
So far it has cost me:
40Gb Hard Drive - £22
Mini-ITX motherboard - £35
6" LCD TFT monitor - £45
60W 12v Power Supply - £60
Depending on what you want the computer to do, the price may vary.
The power supply is only 60w for the PC. This is because all mine is powering is the motherboard and a hard drive. No CD-rom, no floppy drive, no dogs-bollox graphics card. This means that the power supply is actually the size of about 17cm * 8cm.
The motherboard is 17cm * 17cm.
All of this fits in a custom box I have made for the glove compartment (now with locking key) and does not overheat.
To attach a computer to a car is pretty easy. A lot of people either use a standard ATX power supply (240v) and then buy a 12v invertor. This connects to your car battery, and you then plug your PSU into this as you would in a socket in your house.
The power supply I have brought (from
www.mini-ITX.com) is by Morex, and to connect to the car, you simply connect to your battery, to ground, and to your ignition - the simplist way of doing this is to run a wire from the PSU to the ignition port on the back of the ISO connector for your head unit - the same one where you plug an amplifier in.
If you want the PC to act as a jukebox, you need a decent soundcard. The best, although slightly expensive even second hand is a Creative Soundblaster Audiogy card, which has an impressive 100dB noise to sound ratio. You configure windows to run at 5.1 surround sound, and get two 3.5" jack to phono cables. You plug one in the green socket of the sound card to the front channels on your amp, and you plug the other in the black connector to the rear channels of your amp. This means that all bass only goes through the rear channels (the .1) of the surround sound, whilst all other sound travels through the front, be it a pair of 6*9's or amped fronts.
You can be really cocky and have another amp set up to a set of fronts, and then run the card at 7.1 surround sound so you get the full works
If you need any help on this project email me at
[email protected] (anyone can email me) as I may be going into a business with this project depending on the outcome. I have a couple of contacts where if I start buying in bulk I get a good discount.
Luke