best laptop for GPS etc

Hey Groove,
I'm Impressed mate. Looks great to me. Where did you find the kit for the battery monitor?I love it when you talk DIRTY !

Its a jaycar kit that cost about $14, actually its two of the same kits squeezed into one case. The original kit comes with 10 individual LEDs but I used the one piece LED bar graph display because it looks a bit better, this is also a Jaycar item worth about $4.

The hard part was cutting the slot for the LEDs in the case, I used a Dremel for this.

The artwork is inkjet printing on a 3M self adhesive product.

Cheers

Groove
where did you get the funky touch screen and how hard was it to install? approx cost...ect. Is it just an extention from the laptop? any info would be great?

Thanks in AdvanceKeep It On The Rough Stuff

Matt (W.A.)

Hi Matt
I got the touch screen from ebay (www.ebay.com just do a search for lilliput). The guy selling them is based in Hong Kong. It comes with or without touch screen option and cost about $400 delivered with touchscreen.

It arrived in three days from the time I placed my order. A friend of mine decided he wanted one after he saw mine and his also arrived in three days.

It was very easy to mount, the bracket supporting it actually sits in where the ashtray used to be. The bracket is very versatile.

To use with the laptop all I did was plug it in to the external monitor port on my laptop and it fired up staight away at 800 * 600 resolution. The touch screen option plugged into the USB port on the laptop, I installed the drivers that came with it and also worked first go.

The touch screen is very effective. Some of the buttons in OziExplorer are too small to use your fingers but the screen cames with a stylus and it works great. Using fingers really makes the screen grubby anyway.

I found a freeby touchscreen keyboard program on the net that pops up a keyboard on the screen for when you want to enter text. A keyboard appears on the screen and you simply touch the relavent keys, this is useful for name searches, naming waypoints etc.

The screen is very bright even on sunny days.

I will document this stuff in more detail on the web site.
Cheers

Groove,
Sounds Great I will investigate further. i have an idea to mount it into the front of the glovebox for the same effect or on the mount so that i can see it whilst driving.

Keep It On The Rough Stuff

Matt (W.A.)

Groove thanks for sharing the info ,I also will be looking at this in greater detail This is not my car anymore
Peter York 4x4

I guess this may be a stupid question but as an IT professional you would be the one to ask.

How do you get your laptop to run with the lid closed? Mine goes to sleep when you close the lid.

John Fenn

Hi John,
The laptop in question a is a toshiba satellite pro, I have two of these about three years apart, both models have an option in the hardware setup that give you the choice of what to do when the lid is closed, either hybernate the machine or the option that I have chosen , do nothing and keep working.

I am not sure what other brands offer this option, in fact I didnt really know that mine did untill I went looking for it.

This type of option would be in the hardware or BIOS setup of your laptop if anywhere. With some computers you see a message displayed birefly when the thay start up, eg press DEL to enter setup mode, this is is the BIOS setup area and allows all sorts of configuration options to be set. With the toshiba laptops I have used over the years the hardware setup is a program that is run from control panel. This program is usually installed by default but if it not there the appropriate version for your OS and machine is available from the toshiba web site.

Some laptops on the other hand simply do not shut down if the lid is closed if they detect a monitor connected to the external monitor port. You can test this by plugging in a normal desktop monitor to your laptop, when you see an image on both screens shut the lid and see what happens. Sometimes you have to press a combination of keys on the keyboard to direct output to the external monitor. If it works with a normal monitor it will work with the type of screen I have used.

If this option does not exist it would not be too hard to diable the small switch that is tripped when the lid is closed.

Hope this helps.

By the way in answer to the original message I was at a computer market today in North Rocks in Sydney that had a large number of second hand laptops all very suitable for this application. All brands and models. Pentium III processors up to 1ghz all under $1000.

Cheers

groove , my screen is on the way, just what i was looking for
can you remember what web site you downloaded the
on screen keyboard?

Ratt,
There is an on-screen keyboard in Windows XP in Programmes-Accessories- Accessibility-On-screen Keyboard, it just depends on what operating System you are running.

HTH
Keep It On The Rough Stuff

Matt (W.A.)

>How do you get your laptop to run with the lid closed? Mine goes to >sleep when you close the lid.

I manage this from xp:

Right click the desktop
click Properties
screensaver/power/advanced
there is an option about what to do when I close the lid of my portable computer:
Do Nothing
Standby
Hibernate

I may be mad but I'm not crazy
Hooroo
Ray

Groove
This is not my car anymore
Peter York 4x4

Groove , please help I have never used ebay and have no idea how it works , I have been looking for the supplier of the screen you have in your Patrol ,is there an eisier way to contact the supplier as there seems to be several differant adds thanks for any help ( key board challanged driver)This is not my car anymore
Peter York 4x4

Yes well that's fine except I am running an older Mac and you cannot do it because the cooling intake is through the keyboard. So I shall just make a little bracket that keeps the lid about 1cm open.

Thanks for the help guys.

I may have just found the one reason that I would buy a PC.

NAH!

John Fenn

Hi Therat,
As Matt said there is an oncrseen keyboard that is standard with XP. I use win98 on this laptop, it works fine and I never got around to changing it. The keyboard I use is called click-n-type. I downloaded it from www.download.com. Go to this site and do a search on "onscreen keyboard" there are quite a few but this one is the free, most of the others are trial version that you can try for time period but then have to buy.

Hi Peter,
I found this guys add on eBay a bit confusing as well so it’s not just you.

Basically you buy the goods by clicking on the "BUY IT NOW" link on the eBay site. The supplier sends you an email to say thanks now I will send you the goods when I receive payment. Then you use a third party internet payment service to send the supplier the funds and the supplier sends you the goods.

This is the link to the item on eBay
7 inch touch Screen

I used the Pay Pal site for payment, when I received the email form the supplier there was a link to this site in the email. The supplier will also accept other forms of payment such as money order etc. The paypal site is reputable and takes credit card payments. When paypal send the payment to the supplier the supplier send you the goods

The suppliers email if you wish to contact them directly is Extreme_audio@shaw.ca

Cheers

Hi John
About the fact that you use a Mac, well nobodys perfect!
Cheers

Hi Bob

Car Battery monitor kit cat KA-1683 $16.95 (rated simple by Jaycar)
Led Bar Graphs Cat ZD-1702 $4.50

Thanks for the compliments guys I guess I really am a nerd at heart. I have found that I tend to use Oziexplorer much more since I installed the touch screen. I have it set up so that when the PC starts up it loads Oziexplorer automatically and starts moving map display automatically, so basically I press one button and a short while later up comes my position.

The only thing I havnt figured out is how to set a default zoom level so that when Ozi starts up and the map is displayed it will automatically display at 150% zoom. Any Ideas anyone?

Cheers

Groove, Re Ozi, you could try in config, go to system, then in the " at start up " box, tick " Set last zoom and position ?? problem is of couse if you close on a different setting...

Jarrod.

Thanks Jarrod I tried this a couple of times and it doesnt seem to work, I will keep playing.

Cheers

Thought about the water crossing issue John and have taken a few precautions.

I have wired a circuit breaker into the wiring that feeds power to this gear and I cut power to the area. Also I have left enough length in the cables so that I can lift the whole thing onto the rear seat, this is also handy if I need access to the laptop for whatever reason. I figure if I'm in that deep I will have a lot more to worry about than a wet laptop.

I can also vouch for grays, they have a lot of good gear at reasonable prices and a laptop for use with mapping and Oziexplorer does not have to be the latest and greatest.

Groove, thought the best precaution may be to have the inverter and the motherboard up under the roof in a pod actually and hang the monitor from the top by the mirror mount or replace it. That 7" one I think inverts.

I would like to protect me in the car and the electricals, as one does hear of trucks getting stuck in water crossings.

I did think about a roof pod but ruled it. The screen is simply a bit too bright (especially at night) and I thought it might be a bit distracting up high. However if anyone is interested in this approach the bracket supplied with the screen will allow it to be mounted above or you can run drivers to invert the image that comes form the computer.

I dont run an inverter I actually use a dedicated 12v laptop power supply (targus) so there is no risk of 240V electrocution, but a very good point to keep in mind if running an inverter.