in car mp3 player

I've decided to start a little project that involves me removing my car stereo and replacing it with an mp3 player.

I have some software that decodes and plays mp3's from dos as i figure this has a quick boot up and does not need any shut down.

An LCD screen can be attached and mounted in the dashboard (which i am going to re-design myself) and a numeric keypad from a standard keyboard will be used to control playback(skip fwd, back,chang track etc).

I am only going to need an old m/b with a decent hardrive (for storing 1000's of mp3's) The lCD will attach to the printer output and i am also thinking of keeping the cd-rom attached so i can play normal cd's.

Has anybody ever done anything liek this and can offer advice or is there any suggestions to improve the system?

I have seen plenty of websites from people who have done this but i am interested in hearing every1's opinion on it.

Add in a wireless card so you can update your songs from inside your house.

---John Holmes...

How are you going to control the output to the LCD display?

I have seen this kit (http://www.markuszehnder.ch/projects/lcdplugin/) for Winamp that shows all the info on the display. Naturally winamp needs windows to be on the machine which is one small problem. The bootup time would be a lot more than DOS and when you turn off you have no chance to shutdown

the lcd will be connected via the printer port. power for it will be taken from the joystick port just now to allow for backlight etc.

I dont wanna use winamp because,like you say, it needs windows. I have found software that is basically winamp for dos which should work fine. I think i will look for an old laptop m/b because it will be small and have enuff processing power. Only need about 5mb ram. should be easy enuff to find that!

The trickiest part is going to be a power convertor to allow the power from the car battery to run the m/b.

Sepodati...nice idea about the wireless card...didnt think about that one!!

Could you adapt one of those phone chargers that run off the car's cigarette lighter?

what is the maximum hdd a dos system can support tho?

My opinion- I bought a low-end Sony car stereo (about $200) that plays CD-RW and MP3s, and reads ID3 tags. I can get ten albums per CD . . .

Not nearly as cool as 4dr14n's plan though.
(lots easier however...)

Yeah, buying a head unit is the easy way. i plan to redesign the entire interior of the car and have a completly custom dashboard and stereo.

There are some pretty cool looking lcd displays with white text on a blue background. I am looking at getting some kind of graphic equalizer as well on it.

As for the dos thing, i dont know what the max hdd capacity it can cope with is. i know it can do at least a couple gig...hoping it will cope with the 120gb i got planned for it!

The power system is a bit more complex. i will need to compensate for the fluctuations of the car battery. it may be rated at 12v, for example, but it could change from 10v up to 15v depending on if the engine is running and the load on the battery. Using a mobile phone adapter would be a good idea but unfortunately a bit simplistic i think...altho i am looking into it!

I am looking for ways to improve this system so keep the ideas coming! i really like the wireless update one!

Who knows how far we can take this? only limited by our imagination!!!

What you really need is a a voltage regulator for the 2volts part and then wire up a transformer for the 5 volt. The 5 volt transformer should be at least 5-10 amps to make sure that it can handle the power drain.

Just out of curiosity, what kind of car is it?

I drive a renault clio just now but this mp3 will be going into an mr2.

I wanna get the mk1 version coz i reckon they look really nice and a decent sound setup like this would finish it off nicely!

Looking to view one this weekend hopefully. There are not too many for sale round my area and i dont have time to go very far away which is dam* inconvenient!

Hey, this is a little off-topic but you talking about MP3 PC with LCD reminded me of this PC/Stereo Amp. I saw the other day.... http://www.headroomx.de/images/con0104.jpg

Its a great machine... I want one Full details about system can be found here http://www.headroomx.com/mods/viaetm/index.htm

i found a similar one of those the other day while looking for info on my car mp3 idea. It was done by a spanish guy who devoted a website to it. It looked like he had put quite a bit of effort into it...some of the translations from spanish to english are a bit touch and go at times but the general idea was there!

I cant remember the address just now but i will find it and post it...it is worth a look just to see it i reckon.