The 1900 has a terminal which acts as an on/off signal. When voltage exists on that terminal, it tells the 1900 to turn on and/or stay on. When the voltage goes to 0, it tells the 1900 to do whatever you have told it to do- be it stay on X minutes, stay on until the battery voltage drops to Y volts, or until you manually force a shut down. It's all very configurable.

 

I just got to see the pandora for the first time yesterday, availability is really low on these yet. It does fit through the 2" x7" hole in the current single DIN converter, I have no idea if the metal pole will block it from being installed, but I am pretty confident there should be some way to fit in the upper glove box that avoides the pole. Mp3car bought out the entire supply from its distributors so they should have some more real soon for at least a little while.

I've actually been considering doing a Single DIN coverter for the A-Open for quite some time, since it was announced a number of months ago, but A-Open just wasn't able to deliver on any of announced deadlines for shipping us a prototype so we couldn't devote any resources to it. Although it gives you a DVD drive up front, which can come in handy, finding places for all the accessories. i.e. XM radio, power supply, USB hub, and all the wires that run in between them up front will probably make the install much tougher then a trunk mounted one which is why we developed the spare tire case and just decided to not deal with all the little issues with it now. A G35 version of the A-Open is something we may consider productizing in the future after we get something to turn it on automatically, it really is a well put together and small machine and should work with the single din converter with some redesign, but in any case, this isn't something that we would be able to do for at least another 6 months.

 

I totally agree about power, that's why I'm splitting up the install. I only need to find room in the dash for two power supplies and a usb hub. One of which I plan on installing behind the shifter in the cavitity in the console. The other I am not sure where I will cram it, but it should not be hard, the P1900s are not that large.

One USB cable will run from the dash to the trunk, where it will connect to a powered USB hub. The USB hub will have the XM radio, USB GPS adapter and USB SoundBlaster connected to it. This buys me a lot of room in both the front and the back, but does require a more complicated install (definately not a plug-and-play solution).

 

i've found that some usb devices don't like going through a hub (like the GPS receiver that came with my CoPilot Nav system) - just a word of caution if you've not tried it with a hub...

 

I guess we'll have to see. I don't see much way around it considering my PC only has two USB ports. everything can't have a straight connection.

 

I had the same issue with my CoPilot gps mouse and wifi. You need to have a powered usb hub, that will take care of your issues. There are generally 5v inputs on them which you can tap onto from your pc.

 

Just what I wanted to hear. I already planned on implementing powered hubs just to avoid any such issues. I found this hub:

http://industrialcomponent.com/usbstuff/vighubkit.html

Which looks perfect for the car. Going to power it off of a Opus 5v POL.

 

I do power the hubs. It works sometimes but not reliably. I don't understand why the GPS and my USBUirt did not like the hub. Again, the hub is powered and sometimes both devices work fine.

With the hub though sometimes I had to unplug and replug to get them detected - who knows why? Some kind of delay?

Anyway direct plugging got them to work...

 

It may be due to the amount of power the usb hub accepts. This is the one I actually use... http://cgi.ebay.com/7-Port-USB-2-0-Hub-Powered-Aluminium-Stylish-Very-Small_W0QQitemZ5868513781QQcategoryZ96866QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItemI chose it since the ac adapter was rated at 2.1a. Most other usb hubs I found where much lower and I figured they might not ditribute as much power well. Mine is currently runnig of 3a from the psu and works flawlessly.

 

To Audio/Video Guru's: Is it possible to hook a carPC to an existing unit like the Pioneer AVIC-N2...for instance as an additional AV output source?

 

If the Pioneer AVIC-N2 has additional video input jacks, then yes. But it will look horrible through composite video. You really want a VGA connection. And you won't have touchscreen control for your carPC.

 

is there any kind of adapter that can allow for a VGA connection through regular video imput jacks, or is that just wishful thinking...lol

 

Of course! Some video cards/motherboards w/ integrated video come equipped with composite video outputs. If you don't have one of those, you can always use something like this: http://www.aitech.com/site2/products/webcable.htm

 

Thank you very much for the response Setatcos ...I was thinking of integrating a very basic Carputer into my current AVIC setup. The main reason is to have another external DVD drive (which I was planning to get from a PS2 or something of the sort) and I was also interested in getting a DVD/CD Changer. I already have GPS/mp3/DVD playback/etc. with the AVIC-N2 system but I figured by adding a carputer I'll be able to satify both needs by including a DVD drive into it and also the harddrive would allow me to upload my whole catalogue of music (so there would be no need for a changer)....amoungst many other PC like functions. Installing it in the upper glove box would be the best likely scenario. We will see what happens.