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MikeFish wrote:Cuppa, did you notice the capacitor making any difference?

The general concensus on the Talk Audio forum is that they are a waste of time and don't do anything. Even the big bass head cars no longer use them.
And with the size of your battery / alternator / sub I'd have thought there was plnety of juice there already.

In terms of SQ then yep, no discernable difference. It does, however, seem to help keep the temperamental Bit One operational rather than tripping out.

Ah ok, I see the point now. I used to have a very early hard disk (domestic 3.5" drive) MP3 player in a car years ago and that used to keep crashing due to the instability of the car voltage. A DC-DC convertor fixed the problem. Basically as long as you were feeding it something between 9-17v it would spit out a steady 13v (or anything else you set it at, within reason). No more crashes! If the cap works for you then this doesn't matter but if you find you are still having problems let me know and I can dig out the make / model / spec (assuming they still make them).

MikeFish wrote:Ah ok, I see the point now. I used to have a very early hard disk (domestic 3.5" drive) MP3 player in a car years ago and that used to keep crashing due to the instability of the car voltage. A DC-DC convertor fixed the problem. Basically as long as you were feeding it something between 9-17v it would spit out a steady 13v (or anything else you set it at, within reason). No more crashes! If the cap works for you then this doesn't matter but if you find you are still having problems let me know and I can dig out the make / model / spec (assuming they still make them).

That sounds great, if you can send me the details then maybe I can get rid of the cap.

OK, I just dug my old one out of a water filled bag (garage flooded after the storm this week, my flight case with the 3-way Focal Utopias with passive crossover filled with water!!!!).

It is a Mean Well SD-50A-12 and it looks like they still make them using the exact same model number (I've had mine at least 12 years) which says to me it must be a fairly good product.
http://www.meanwell.com/search/sd-50/sd-50-spec.pdf

50.4W
4.2A
Input range 9.2-18v DC
Output range 11-16v DC

RS are selling them as their own brand but the one here is identical to the one I have, even down to the font on the label.
http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/product/1 ... tAodrm4Aig

Seems to be much cheaper than when I bought mine too!

A night shot of my car, courtesy of valetmagic.com and Nick at nwvt.co.uk

And another...

Quality.

A few updates...

Dashcam hardwired in




P3Cars Gauge fitted


Okada Plasma Direct Ignition Coils fitted



Went from 5/10 spacer setup to 10/15 spacer setup


Got hold of some Avery Conform Black Chrome wrap for the front lip and door mirrors (took the old ones off and bought some second hand black ones to wrap off eBay). Still highlights the traditional S/RS aspects, but tones the brightness down and makes it a little stealthier.





Off to MRC soon for a bit more work and got some new wheels on the way in about 4 weeks - can't wait.

Another little side project to get 24bit FLAC audio playback via digital coaxial in my car

Pi makes a lot of sense in a car. You programmed one before?

Learning fast. Installed Volumio on it which will then play back the files from the voyager air HDD - currently it can be remote controlled from a smart phone which will act as my UI. Will attach a hifiberry digital to get the digital out when they are available to buy again.

Looking into replacing the stock 7" screen with a 7" touchscreen one to link up to the Pi, but working out how to get the standard screen feed to display on the new screen also will be interesting. I may just have to pipe the pi feed out into an OEM TV tuner input if I can't work out how to do it. I'd like to look at an interface with the MMI controls, I know they exist in RS232 form, but just need to figure it all out and put something together which works well. I might even toy with the idea of another smaller touchscreen fabricated into the dash somewhere to control the Pi audio - still shaping things up in my mind.

A few things to work out in the long run, but short term goal of audio playback (with smartphone control) will be straight forward enough - just looking to integrate into the main dash so I don't need the smartphone control.

I've thought about doing the same. As an experiment I put a laptop in my boot with the optical out plugged straight into my Alpine processor. Then I connected it via an ad-hoc network to my ipad in the front (not installed, just on my lap / passenger seat as a test). The laptop was running a version of softsqueeze and the ipad had the squeezepad app (I use this for listening to FLACs at home so I am already familiar with it and already had the app on my ipad). It worked quite well, the only problem I then had was being able to do sat nav / phone integration as well.
Centrafuse running on a Pi was the obvious option for integration. I have a spare Pi at home that I built as a media server indoor but it doesnt support full HD sound passhtrough over HDMI was didn't last long in that role, so I kind if have a psare one doing nothing at the moment.
But last week I got fed up with all the options and bit the bullit and bought an Alpine INE-W928R 8" bad boy. Fitted it late on Monday night so not had much ime to play with it yet but essentially I converted all my FLAcs to ALACs and put them on an ipod. Far from ideal but a temproary solution. If I can work out how to get the Alpine to control the Pi and plug the Pi into my processor it will be a good result!

Interested to see how you get on with the MMI integration and what OS and software you install on the Pi ( know you've already installed Volumio but I guess you might change before the final solution); keep us posted!

Will do, I thought you might be interested

Good info, I look forward to reading how you get on.

Replaced the Audi rings with black chrome ones to match the other recent changes