OK so this originally started out being a car-puter. But after realizing my true needs, it was apparent that a carputer would be overkill. However, I had already purchased most everything for it so I had to find something to use them for. Thats when t struck me that a super rugged portable computer would be quite handy for me. Here is a list of the parts I already bought for the carputer.

• Min-ITX Motherboard 1.8ghz
• Mini power supply 12v input
• 1gb ram
• 40gb laptop hard drive
• hardd rive adapter
• Wireless card

My first mission was to find something to house all of this in and here is what I found.

So I went out and bought it.

It is a 2 pistol gun case from Academy Sports. The mini-itx fits in the bottom perfectly, and there is room to plug in usb devices/ monitor cable/ audio cables without cutting any holes. Also the lid is about an inch thick with the foam. The first thing that I did was to cut a hole in it for the touchscreen monitor and it looks great!

And here it is with the motherboard sitting in its place.

Since the mouse is integrated with the monitor all i lack is a keyboard to ge this project rolling. A quick search revealed this, A mini usb keyboard that is only 11.7 inches wide and 6 inches deep. Its perfect!

I actually ended up rotating the motherboard because it fits better this way and the ventilation will be better as well. You can see what I had to do with all of the slack from all of the cables. Everything is mounted with super sticky Velcro and lots of it.

Once the first layer of foam is removed from the lid you can see the relocated speaker and the mounted gps unit. I found some cable organizers that have very sticky pads on them and work great I just need more of them.. The Velcro works extremely well for mounting everything. It lets everything move a little and dampens vibrations also it allows everything to be removed if need be.

OK. I got the keyboard in and it is almost insane how well it fits. If the keyboard was 1/8th of an inch wider or more narrow, it wouldn’t fit. I had to take the bottom off of they keyboard so that it would lay down flat and not hit the screen when the lid is closed. Next I added two supports to hold up the keyboard and help strengthen the case. I used the existing screws and holes for the handle to mount it on the front side and some Velcro to mount the backside of the supports. The Velcro allows the supports to move and give which is perfect since the case isn’t super rigid. Also the Velcro eliminates the need to add more holes into the case. Now I just need to fill the holes on the top and bottom of the keyboard.

I used some more of the foam that came with the case to fill the gaps on the top and bottom of the keyboard, To keep the foam from being pushed down to far i added strips of aluminum with sticky foam tape behind it to hold up the foam inserts. Also I added two usb ports and the power plug above the keyboard. The wire you see holding up the lid is temporary, I still haven’t found a way to keep the lid from opening to far without adding any holes to the case.

I left a hole on the bottom left hand side of the keyboard and the top left side of the keyboard for airflow. There is a fan you can see in one of the previous pictures that blows air out above the left hand side of the keyboard. This allows air to circulate through the cpu, ram and other heatsinks before leaving the case. In this picture I am running a Folding at Home (F@H) test to check the stability of this system. If it doesn’t overheat after a day of running this then it is stable enough for me. The white wire is an Ethernet wire since i haven’t bought a usb wifi card for it yet. I already have the bluetooth dongle installed and that allows me to use a bluetooth keyboard or mouse instead of the built in ones, also I can access the internet through my cellphone via bluetooth. The usb GPS module is removed because I do not know if it will get enough signal from its position inside the lid. I will update that as soon as I am able to test it more.

 Next Steps: Figure out GPS situation, Install usb wifi adapter, Find something to cover the foam with to keep dirt out, Make cigarette adapter for in-car use.

I first saw this idea online and knew I had to do it myself.

There are quite a lot of things to do with an old NES controller but none are perhaps as useful as an optical mouse. The first step was to buy an old NES mouse off of ebay. I got this one for $3.

Once open, the controller is very simple on the inside.

At a local computer store that specializes in older computers parts I picked up a 3m joystick mouse. It has left, right and scroll-lock buttons but no scroll wheel.

After disassembling the mouse here is what I am left with in comparison to the NES controller.

I cut off the original circuitry that was behind the d-pad. Then I scraped off the coating over the copper trace on the pcb board. On the mouse I cut off its 3 buttons and soldered the wires directly to the traces. So now the controls are Down = left click, Up = right click, and Left = scroll lock. I also added some foam to make the whole thing feel solid.

And here is the mouse in action, you can see that left and right click are still left and right (or up and down on the controller). It works great actually.

This is the only hole I had to cut in the case, it is for the optical sensor. I just copied the hole that was in the old 3m mouse.

About twenty seconds after testing my new 150watt,12v car power inverter, I knew something had to change. The built in fan was entirely too loud and I instantly came up with several ways of changing that.

• Put a resistor on the fan power to slow it down and make it quieter.
• Put a variable resistor so I could adjust the power level for better cooling.
• Get rid of the fan and see what happens.
• Add an external heat sink to take the heat load out of the case.

I finally decided on the latter of the choices as it is the quietest and safest combination. I figured that the fan was there for a reason and just getting rid of it would turn out to be a disaster. So my first step was to try and find a small heat sink that I could use to cool the inverter. Here is the location of the screw holding the inverter together.

Next I had to pry back four tabs that held the two sides together. I suggest using a knife for this task. And here is the case disassembled with the LED status light still glued to the lid. Also you can see the aluminum “heat sink” inside the case that the external heat sink will transfer from.

I found a heat sink lying around my room but it was still far to big so I hacked it down to size with my grinder.

Next I cut the leads holding on the fan, making sure to insulate them from each other afterwards.

My Dremmel tool is out of commission at the moment, so I had to use my grinder to murder the plastic case to allow the heat sink to pass through. Here is the final result.

After gluing the heat sink in and putting thermal paste heavily on both it and the small heat sink inside the case, I reattached both sides back together and pushed the heat sink hard in to make contact with the metal inside the case. The glue I used to hold in the heat sink was not dry yet so now it will be seated in the proper position.

Now that I have reached my destination (4hrs of driving) I can say that the heat sink is not near large enough to passively cool the inverter by itself. I am planning to re-insert the fan back into the casing, but adding a small resistor to knock it down from 12v to about 9 or even 7. Also I will add a small switch (PB or Toggle, I don’t know which yet) to allow the noisy fan to be turned off if it is powering small loads. My laptop charger says it only draws 65watts, and it is a 150watt inverter, so I had planned for it to not be under much of a load. I guess I was wrong.

One thing I learned that is good is that when the inverter overheats the beeper that I almost cutout will beep about once every five seconds. This informs the nearest passenger to either remove it or duck. When I get back to my workshop I’ll fix the known problems, hopefully not finding any more one the way home, and post some pictures later.

After reinstalling the fan I discovered that the heat sink I added now hits the top of the fan. This prevents the case from closing back together. My plan to fix that is to grind a notch off of that side of the heat sink.

I added an 100ohm resistor to the fan in order to shut it up some. It worked quite well and I decided not to put a switch since it is now quiet.

I also decided to help the now slower fan out by cutting down on air resistance. I carefully bent some of the capacitors out of the way, and rearranged how the LED wire bent into place. Then I cut out some of the plastic on either side of the case where the vents are and added some soft foam next to the fan to prevent a circulation inside the case. I have noticed a tremendous improvement in airflow and am quite happy with my hack.

It has not been several months since I finished this project and the inverter is working great.