Carputer: Acer w/ topo maps + GPS

[cody c]

I decided I wanted to have a GPS in the cruiser for exploring trails (and finding my way home).

There is a lot of different options out there as to what to use, but I was finding that the costs seemed to add up with A large enough GPS to have a decent field of view, $oftware was often adding up to as much or more than the GPS itself, and then there was the issue of mounting it in the vehicle.

So, heres a small build thread on a project I did that might be something useful for other members on here.

I started with an Acer Aspire, you can pick up a decent used one for about $100, which is exactly how much I paid for mine...

Went with the Acer by recommendation, its cheap (wont cry too much if it gets ripped off) and is the "mustang" or "jeep" of laptops when it comes to aftermarket support. Also, the other reason I picked this one is because it is small, and doesn't hamper too much of your view compared to larger laptops.

Pictures:

 

[cody c]

The black tray above, was folded out of thin aluminum. Aluminum is great, cheap, easy to work, and doesn't rust like steel. I had a friend who works at a sheet metal place, make a couple bends on a hand brake machine to build the tray, then I notched it out for usb ports, and power supply. The piece of aluminum showing is the beginning of the support for the laptop, it is attached near the stereo supports with 3 large screws, exits at the seam in the dash, and supports the main part of the tray via two 1/4-20 nutserts, and captive thumb screws from mcmaster-carr

The actual gps receiver was purchased from gps city for about $40, it is a global sat bu353 US GlobalSat BU353 USB Cable GPS, 05-BU353-W

 

[cody c]

The main (black powder-coated) portion of the tray, was cut and bent by myself, then I handed off to Kevin (AWL-TEQ on mud) to weld the seams on the radius and corners of the tray. If you've seen his work on 45 series parts and stuff, you know what kind of work he does. Kevin also sourced and pressed the captive screws for me as he can order from Mcmaster-carr through his work, they wont sell to canadians without a large business. Heres some more pictures of the assembled support on the dash, and kevins handy work.

The power source/plug in was sourced off of bay for around $15

The captive screw make it really modular, easy to remove the laptop or the whole bracket and have less equipment in the vehicle when you don't need it, I think this bracket is the cat's pajama's over RAM mounts, but I never owned one either.

 

[Enigma]

So the 'puter is velcro'd in to your tray I gather, for easy removal? What software did you end up using?

I'd like to do something like this one day as well, I have a Garmin 60csx, and while it works great, the screen is just too damn small to look at when driving. We do have a netbook that I might be able to steal off the wife one day for such use.

Asutherland has a pretty cool set up using an older industrial style tablet, it was pretty slick I thought as well.

 

[cody c]

I built (with Kevin's help) the tray/mount for the dash in order to avoid the "ram" mount style of laptop trays. Most of them are pricey, and compromise the space in the passengers seat.

The topo maps now can be viewed easily from both seats, and my visibility is only compromised in a small area when the laptop is folded up.

I also have a touchscreen adapter kit coming for it from deal extreme, it should make operating it while on the trail a bit quicker and easier:
Wide 8.9" USB Touch Screen Film (Makes LCD Screens Touch Sensitive) - Free Shipping - DealExtreme

and a keypad protector
Silicone Protective Keyboard Cover for Acer Aspire One 8.9" Laptops - Free Shipping - DealExtreme

 

[cody c]

So the 'puter is velcro'd in to your tray I gather, for easy removal? What software did you end up using?

I'd like to do something like this one day as well, I have a Garmin 60csx, and while it works great, the screen is just too damn small to look at when driving. We do have a netbook that I might be able to steal off the wife one day for such use.

Asutherland has a pretty cool set up using an older industrial style tablet, it was pretty slick I thought as well.

Ah, I forgot the hard parts (software).

I had a friend who plays with computers help me out and source free software.

I did a work trade and adjusted his turbo and re-sealed his split case.

The software is garmins Nroute and I have to use Franson gps gate, which is an emulator.

Gpsgate takes the signal of the global sat antenna and makes it look like there is a signal at one of the usb or serial ports, so that the gamin software will work.


The tray has a lip at the back, and is boxed in on the other three sides, to remove the laptop, you need to lift the front of the laptop and pullet out towards you. There is a hole on the underside of the tray so you can push it up and pull it out, the velcro prevents the front edge of the Acer from bouncing up.

Garmin only made their receiver antenna's for a short while as they realized they were making more money selling complete units, so your best option is to find a gamin receiver (rare-they stopped making them) or buy another receiver and fiddle with it to make them talk.

gps gate was a free download, and has been pretty good, even had my friend contact them with some questions about their free software and they were helpful.


All in (costs) $301

laptop $100 used
power supply-ebay about $25
mount (not including traded labour and a few beers I still owe kevin) $40
silicone keypad protector-dealextreme $4
touchscreen kit adapter (still in the mail from dealextreme) $52
usb CD/DVD rom drive (still in mail from bay) $35
Software (traded for some elbow grease) free
gps receiver $45


although the touchscreen kit, CD drive and maybe the mount costs (powdercoating) could have been avoided, and kept the costs under $200 if you know where to source the software.

 

[CanuckMariner]

The Franson's GPSGate can be had online free and works full time for only two instances. Other wise if you want more you have to buy it.

Topo maps for Canada, and USA can be had for free as long as you are Garmin compatible.

Garmin mapping software: MapSource; nRoute

With this and what Cody has written up above, Bob's ur Uncle! Good Luck!

 

[cody c]

The Franson's GPSGate can be had online free and works full time for only two instances. Other wise if you want more you have to buy it.

Topo maps for Canada, and USA can be had for free as long as you are Garmin compatible.

Garmin mapping software: MapSource; nRoute

With this and what Cody has written up above, Bob's ur Uncle! Good Luck!

Thanks Jan, this should help anyone else who is looking to do the same.

 

[gahi]

I like nRoute, works pretty good. I need a netbook though instead of my 17" laptop. But for an investment of the BU-353 puck, and all the software and maps for free its a pretty easy setup.

screen shot daytime mode

screen shot night mode.

 

[george_tlc]

Not a bad setup. My preference is to use a bluetooth GPS unit that has its own internal battery that charges via a USB 5V vehicle adapter.

I run a bluetooth GPS that has internal memory for logging standalone. The benefit is that you get a tracklog for later download (via USB) even with the laptop not running. You can take the bluetooth unit on walks/hikes (several hour battery life). Basically you have a 24/7 running GPS that draws only 10's of milliamps from the vehicle and is continuously logging.

On a recent trip into the oz bush I had it run for the 2 weeks we were out and it had not yet filled its internal memory on the 1800km trip.

I use this unit (around $50):

HOLUX - The Pro Name in GPS

It has some nice software that runs on the PC for downloading AND also geotagging photos that you have taken. You can then see thumbs of the photos via google maps type interface (when back to internet land).

The supplied software allows downloading of the tracklog and you can export it in various formats. I typically run oziexplorer on the laptop and also google earth with cached imagery (wish google would increase the 2gig cache limit). Lots of places in oz are at aerial quality so great for really seeing tracks that aren't yet on the topo maps.

Recently I've started using an android tablet (with built in GPS) and the same oziexplorer maps via the android version of oziexplorer or the free androzic application (androzic - Unofficial oziexplorer client for Android - Google Project Hosting)

GPS related tech has improved greatly from my first magellan single channel unit (nav1000) bought back in 1989 for close to $2k!!

cheers,
george.

 

[Mikesta]

Subscribed

 

[cody c]

George, I almost bought the Holux, but hesitated as wit wasn't as well known as the global sat.

It turns out that the Holux should work with gps gateway as well, but I already ordered the BU-353.

I wanted to get the bluetooth unit originally, as I could leave it in the cruiser and not have to connect it to the laptop each and every time I put it in or removed it, however I wasn't sure if I might have issues with the Acer reading it, though I think it probably would have worked.

At least with the small receiver left on the dash their isn't a lot of attractive items for would be thieves.

 

[george_tlc]

Cody,
gpsgate works perfectly with the bluetooth of the holux.

I've never had issues with bluetooth not wanting to pair when I bring the laptop within range of the vehicle, works perfectly as it should.

It's actually funny, since some times at camp I'll run the laptop out of the vehicle and if it gets within bluetooth range it will connect to the holux (via gpsgate) and get position fixes.

I've been running various bluetooth gps units with either my laptop or pda since around 2004 and have never had to 'fight' to get them to pair/connect, so that's not something to worry about.

Anyhow, the m-1200e is a great unit and it's very neat to be able to just unplug it from vehicle power and then stick it in your pocket to go on a hike etc and have the tracklog info continue to update. Having it along means you can just push the 'waypoint' button whenever you take a photo for late geotagging the pictures.

cheers,
george.

 

[John McVicker]

Subscribed.

John

 

[gahi]

george, what tablet are you running? The Holux does sound awesome. Thats what I want gps for more than anything is track logs and mark poi. When you do the wpoi manually, does it just assign it a number?

 

[cody c]

If anyone else wants to try this, make sure you source a laptop with bluetooth before you order the Holux antenna, and gpsgate works well with garmins Nroute, not so well with mapsource.

I did have to finaggle a bit with gpsgate to match the serial port which it sends the signal to, to the serial port Nroute is set at to look for an input signal, but you just need to check the settings on Nroute, and then run the setup wizard on gpsgate.

Bird is the word.

 

[george_tlc]

george, what tablet are you running? The Holux does sound awesome. Thats what I want gps for more than anything is track logs and mark poi. When you do the wpoi manually, does it just assign it a number?

I'm running a Superpad 2/Flytouch 3 with android 2.2 and it does pretty ok. It was more an experiment to see how well I liked it for bush navigation versus a laptop versus my WinCE pda.

It's ok, but it lacks a fully internal GPS, since it requires an external GPS antenna. So, I'm still shopping (i.e. waiting for technology to catch up with what I want and for the $ I want to spend). What I want is fully integrated gps, capacitive touch (not resistive) and maybe smaller - something in the 5 or 6" range would be ideal for my use.

The holux has a dedicated button that you can press and it just increments a counter internally and stores the waypoint with time/date etc info. I does work nicely and performs exactly as I want from such a device. I can run it with a laptop or I can just let it log my trips and then download them later. Being able to later download the tracklog and export it to google earth or oziexplorer or ... is a very nice feature.

For oz, where many tracks are not on the topo maps, either because they are too new or because the national mapping mob has some agenda to 'remove' information from maps, having my own tracklogs is great since I can import them into google earth or oziexplorer as an overlay that I can then use to 'fill in' jthe various tracks/roads that ARE marked.

Here's a screen capture from google earth with some of the tracklog from this year's trip to oz merged with a previous 2000 trip of some of the same area.

It was great on this trip to oz to have cached several 2gig 'grabs' of google earth while I was connected to the internet. This meant that while in the bush we could use goops running with google earth to get a bird's eye view of our trip and to be able to see if there were any 'interesting' locations off the tracks that we should further investigate. Basically like have a huge portfolio of aerial photography with us. As we moved from one 'area' to another, we would just copy the appropriate 2gig cache file to google earth's working directory.

It would be great if google would increase the cache size of google earth to something reasonable on a laptop, say 50 or 100 gig. That would allow coverage of a decent amount of terrain with have to go through all the cache copying gyrations.

cheers,
george.

 

[IBCRUSN]

Awesome thread guys. Bookmarked so I can look into it more when I get home.

George,
It may be a little more $$ but the Acer A100 has a stand alone GPS, same as my A500 tablet. It worked well on a recent trip to Greece and matches up to my Garmin when used in Irag & Afghanistan. It may be an option for a sub 10" Android tablet.

 

[george_tlc]

George,
It may be a little more $$ but the Acer A100 has a stand alone GPS, same as my A500 tablet. It worked well on a recent trip to Greece and matches up to my Garmin when used in Irag & Afghanistan. It may be an option for a sub 10" Android tablet.

Looks like it has most of the features I want - internal gps and the microsd slot. I can't imagine a tablet that doesn't allow the user to add their own additional flash storage.

Thanks for the info, I'll add it as a candidate in my perfect tablet search

cheers,
george.

 

[bobbyp]

Nice idea.
On my boat I use a similar system for a backup gps - a keyfob bluetooth gps and computer, but I chose a Panasonic Toughbook - because it's tough , and because of the not-glossy sunlight readable screen.
How it the Acer's screen in the sunlight?
I think a Toughbook would be awesome for this, especially since the inside of the cruiser doesn't get completely direct sun. You can generally pick up a touchscreen CF-30 on e-bay for 500-$700.