11/21/2012

Season 3

Right'o. The winter's knocking on the door again. That means its a new season of make it happen.. I feel positive that this year will be more eventful at the garage point of view because unlike last year, this time the garage is only a 20 minute drive away.

On the other hand, I'm back to school for this year so my incomes are a bit lower than what they used to be. And right now my life is very good, there was a time when it was too much trouble to bother going to garage at the end of the day. Not anymore though :)


So, I expect things to happen. I'm not looking to sell the Probe, I will keep building it to the next level. We've only just begun. ;> I'll do whatever it takes to learn to drive it like an extension of hands and feet.

 Right now the Probe is sleeping under a blanket, in our garage but I will probably have to wake her up for this Saturday, as I said I'd attend a car meet with Probe if the weather permits. Seems like it will, no freezing temps yet!



This year, my aim is to do whatever I want. I wasn't very happy driving the Probe this Fall, I missed my subwoofer and some of the appearance issues were really a sore in my eye.
Power Acoustik RCA Pre-Amp Equalizer (taajuuskorjain)


So...

I'm going to start by taking things apart a bit, and install the audio system. You probably know by now that I love me some gizmos, and I decided not to simply go and get a Pioneer player. That's too boring, and this new more exciting plan is actually gonna end up a lot cheaper!








7" Cheap-O screen (read a lot of positive reviews)
Right now I'm tyring to decide between two;

I have an old softmodded XBox, I ordered a 250GB harddrive for it, and running XBMC it makes the perfect media center. 

Pros are, it uses RCA connectors for video/audio so I would have ready connections for the amps in the back and the screen in the front.

Cons are that I would have to get an inverter, and the cheap ones don't really work that well (30-50€). I could buy a more expensive inverter which produces so called True Sine Wave to eliminate the problem, or I could buy a vehicle intended computer power supply and an adapter to eliminate the need for an inverter altogether. Problem, that route costs about 100-150€, which is way more than what I'm hoping for initial investment. Also, the XBMC dashboard/gui for the XBox, while amazingly good product, doesn't have the cool stuff that the option #2 has...

My dusty Softmod XBox


Option #2;

Raspberry Pi, the 50 euro miracle
 There's this new somewhat exciting product I heard about from my teacher, it's called the Raspberry Pi. Maybe you've heard of it! It's essentially a credit card sized computer, only for the price of ~50€. It has a HDMI, WiFi, 2 USBs, 512MB RAM, it powers with 5V USB (smartphone charger, super easy to set up in car). It has an ARM processor so it can't take a Windows OS, but there's a few Linux distros, Android systems and whats exciting for me, the very new XBMC. It's the offspring of the one my console has, but it's gone lightyears ahead. There's stuff like Spotify, Youtube, Internet browsing, very good looking user interface, equalizer... Sounds good right? Especially since my smartphone can share its 3G connection over Wifi.

A blade has two edges, and on a cheap blade at least one of them SUCKS. Unfortunately the RasbPi has a horrible audio 3,5mm connection with terrible sound quality, I hear. Through the HDMI you could get a better audio, but I would have it convert from digital to analog for my amps, and cheap convertors are not that great I hear.

As the plan is to actually SAVE money making something cool (as opposed to just going to the shop and buying a ready Pioneer unit), it's pretty much a blind shot. May be, that the HDMI adapter audio out is good enough, or maybe not.

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Which one I'll choose? Probably the Xbox, since I already ordered a harddrive to it. But the Pi makes for a nice plan B, and perhaps an upgrade in the future. Xbox has games and better performance, fits nicer to a small screen and has a remote controller than can control the entire system, already have it.


So, next step is ordering the screen and installing it. Then comes the amps and the wiring, after which the systems can be tested. Then I can do more decisions, whether I need the RCA equalizer or not, to buy the inverter or try the Pi, and what not. And at some point I'll try to get a new set of speakers before next summer.

Oh, my good friend and confessed reader of the blog gave me a Xmas present early;


It's one of the best brands available, so that'll definately take the place of the cheap ass filter the previous owner has left me with. It's used and little ugly (dents and bends) but it's a definate upgrade to right now! Thanks Toni!

I might do an update after the car meet. Might be next month though, it'll be still a few weeks before I get the dough to do anything with my plans.