Built-in computer in the car instead of the standard radio

In my toyota corolla 2003 release, the manufacturer installed only cassette recorders. Of course, I didn’t listen to the tapes at all, and I had to manage only with the FM receiver.

I would not say that I am a big music fan, however, I always wanted something better in the car than a simple radio. There were options to install a regular CD radio, buy a “native” on eBay for $ 70 (albeit without MP3), or buy a fully fancy audio system for $ 600.

None of these options really suited me. Firstly, standard radio tape recorders do not allow you to use the on-board computer, and secondly, expensive or used radio tape recorders for me personally are not an option.

So the idea came to install in car a computer. For quite some time I collected everything I needed to implement this idea. It turned out that I had all the necessary parts, from relatives and friends.



So, the equipment was as follows.


Motherboard PCM-9386. Its main advantages are the presence of a passive cooling system, as well as its small size. The processor frequency is 600 MHz, the memory is 512 MB.


The power supply was a small block of 12 V. All this I got absolutely free. The case for the motherboard I made them a 16-port switch.

As a storage medium, I installed a flash drive with a capacity of 4 GB, as well as a 40 GB hard drive.

Since the speakers in the car cannot be connected directly to the computer, I came up with the following sound scheme: USB sound card + power filter + audio filter (as an “earth” isolator) + amplifier + speakers.


The USB 5.1 sound card is just used as stereo for me.


I connected the amplifier to the usual four-channel Chinese. Compared with the "native" it works much better. I placed the amplifier between the seats in the glove compartment.

I did not set as my task to provide super sound and used speakers from the former FM receiver.


The most expensive part was the monitor - at a price of $ 320.Among its advantages are two inputs from car power, a touchscreen, automatic inclusion and automatic switching to the rear view camera. For convenient control from the touchscreen, a shell was installed on it. Directly below the monitor, I placed the case with the motherboard inside.


Also, a USB hub with external power was purchased.

I also used a wireless keyboard with a trackball.

I carefully mounted the USB GPS navigator under the steering wheel mount.

I connected all the wires, buttons and controls, fuses and other small things, and the work was completed.



As a result, in this system all the functions of multimedia, GPS, OBD (tracking vehicle parameters) and the Internet were implemented, which allows to identify the location of the car on google maps (both from the car itself and from home). In the future I plan to implement the function of a rear view camera, as well as monitoring tire pressure and radio.

The author of the idea -