We completely replaced the audio system in our Toyota MR2 project car, pulling out the 10-year-old Sony CD player (which was on its last leg) and the six factory speakers.

To keep the upgrade as simple and trouble-free as possible, we ordered all of our new components from Crutchfield. For those of you that don’t know the benefits of buying through Crutchfield, here are a few…

• Free expert advice to help select the right components and phone assistance to get them installed correctly.
• Free custom speaker wiring kits with speaker purchase. This makes installing your new speakers as simple as plug-and-play — no wire splicing necessary.
• Free custom wiring harness with the purchase of a new stereo head unit. Again, plug-and-play, no splicing.
• They also include detailed printed instructions for your specific car.

I think the services Crutchfield offers are amazing, especially for the casual do-it-yourselfers like us.

Since we are using the Mac mini for all audio duties in our install, we decided to go headless and did not purchase another stereo unit. The Mac mini audio would be fed directly into an amp that would drive all the speakers in our system. We decided on a single Polk Audio MOMO C400.4 4-channel 300 watt car amplifier that was more then capable of driving our new speaker setup.

Our MR2 came stock with a six speaker system: two 4″ speakers behind the driver and passenger seats, two 5″ mid-range speakers in the doors, and two 1″ tweeters also in the doors. We matched up our Polk amp with a Polk Audio MMC5250 component system which included two 5-1/4″ midrange speakers with removable 1″ tweeters for installation in the doors. The other 4″ speakers were replaced with two Audiobahn 2040N 4″ 2-way speakers. Both speaker sets included crossovers which were hooked to our 4-channel amp. Additionally, we added a powered Bazooka subwoofer for some extra bass.

Very little modification was necessary to get all of the components installed. We were able to mount the 5-1/4″ speakers directly on the included mounting rings and into the current speaker openings and the 1″ tweeters miraculously fit right into the stock tweeter location. The 4″ speakers required the most work, but we only needed to drill a couple mounting holes. We fashioned a simple mounting bracket for the amplifier out of a piece of 1″ stainless steel that we picked up at Home Depot and mounted the amp behind the passenger seat, right up against the firewall. The Bazooka subwoofer was mounted behind the driver seat.

We are currently running the entire system off of the standard MR2 battery but are planning on swapping it out with a Optima yellow top deep cycle battery for better performance.

Next up on our plate is the install of the LCD and CPU, stay tuned!

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For those of you that may be wondering our level of installation expertise, I’d rate it at intermediate. We have installed a handful of car stereos and iPods between the team, but are in no way professional installers. We have done quite a bit of research before beginning our install (you never can be too prepared.) We found complete wiring and repair guides available online direct from Toyota, which were very helpful with our install.

We have already completely removed the existing upgraded stereo and are replacing it with a dedicated 4-channel amp, new speakers, and a powered sub-woofer. We will be detailing the complete audio system in our next installment – stay tuned!

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Click here for full instructions.

Thanks to the Mac mini’s standard VGA connector, there are quite a few LCD options that will work with it. The most popular touch-screens for in-car use seem to be the 7″ Xenarc 700TSV and 7″ Lilliput 619GL-70NP. The Xenarc is a bit more expensive, but has a brighter screen that is easier to see in the daylight. Both displays have been effectively used in numerous in-car installs, and either would work quite well. We chose to go with the 7″ Xenarc 700TSV, a touch-screen version that includes 1 VGA input, 2 RCA video inputs and 1 RCA audio input. The only connection that we really need is the VGA connector, but the additional inputs would allow us to add something like a Sony Playstation 2 down the line. If you don’t need the extra inputs you can opt for the 7″ Xenarc 700TS, and it will save you about $20. If you plan to control your system with a USB or Bluetooth controller instead of the touch-screen, then you can opt for the 7″ Xenarc 700Y or 700YV and save a few more bucks. We ordered our 700TSV from mp3car.com for $379. The display shipped out the same day, and we received it three days later.

The 700TSV comes complete with a small adjustable monitor stand, AC adaptor, cigarette lighter car adapter, touch screen driver/software CD, connection cable, wireless remote, and instruction manual. The AC adapter allows you to power the display via a 110v household outlet, and the cigarette lighter adapter works in the car – it’s nice that both are included. The 700TSV display works right out of the box without any additional software for viewing. Simply attach the DVI to VGA connector that is included with the Mac mini and plug in the VGA connection cable and power cable for the 700TSV. The display automatically detects the Mac mini’s resolution and auto scales it to fit the screen. The 700TSV requires a refresh rate of approximately 60 Hertz. Our Mac mini booted with a resolution of 800 x 600 @ 60Hz. To get the touch-screen working you need to hook up the USB connector to the Mac mini and install the driver. Our install CD came with an older version of the touch-screen driver (V.3.2.1) so we simply downloaded the latest Mac OS X driver from the Xenarc website. After a reboot the touch screen is fully functional.

After our initial amazement with our mini-screened Mac mini, we began to experiment… The touch-screen is very tough to use at any resolution above 800 x 600 because the OS X UI controls are so small and difficult to accurately touch. We can see where the touch-screen will come in very handy with an application that is specifically designed for touch-screen use. For now we are using a normal mouse for input. The other thing that bothered us was that the 800 x 600 resolution was scaled and distorted into the display’s native 800 x 480 resolution. Don’t get me wrong, the 700TSV does a great job scaling and anti-aliasing between resolutions, but the output is distorted to the point where a circle actually looks like an oval on the screen. It is also a well know fact that LCD displays have the best image quality at their native resolution, so we decided to try to get it working at 800 x 480.

If you look at these two Safari screen shots, you can see how the distortion effects the graphics display. Notice how the iPod’s click wheel looks oval in the top 800 x 600 resolution. You do lose a little bit of the image area with the smaller 800 x 480 resolution, but the images are not distorted.

The first thing we found is that OS X doesn’t natively support this resolution, so we needed a work around. We initially tried a couple shareware programs: SwitchRes, and cscreen. We didn’t have much luck with them – we actually screwed up the Mac mini to a point where we couldn’t get anything to display on the 700TSV. An important thing we learned – If you somehow switch your Mac mini to a resolution the LCD cant display, simply power off the CPU and reboot into safe mode by holding down the SHIFT key while the machine boots. This apparently forces the resolution to a lowest common denominator setting that works on most monitors. You can then go to the Display Preferences and then pick a resolution that is supported by your display.

We finally came upon DisplayConfigX which showed some promise. We were able to configure DisplayConfigX to use 800 x 480 @ 60Hz, and the resolution was actually being listed in the Displays Preferences. The problem now was that when we select the 800 x 480 resolution, the 700TSV would set itself to 640 x 480 and the image would be scaled. Another strange anomoly of DisplayConfigX was when we selected 800 x 600 @60Hz refresh, the screen sets itself to 800×480 with the bottom half chopped off instead of being squished. The good news here is that we can see the native resolution in OS X, and it actually looks real nice and crisp. A little more research and tinkering were needed.

We posted to a couple forums hoping to find the solution without much luck. Next we contacted Xenarc and were told to play around with the settings found here. We tried to get the settings working in DisplayConfigX but still no luck. We ended up emailing the author of DisplayConfigX who was very helpful. He worked with us through a couple of settings, and we finally found a combination that worked! (See below.) Apparently, there is a bug in the current version of OS X that does not let you adjust the “vertical front porch” setting which is necessary to get the desired resolution. We were able to get it working by using a setting that was “close enough” and then manually adjusted the vertical positioning on the display. One important thing to note: to successfully configure DisplayConfigX you need to be using a paid registered copy (the software is only $12, so spend the bucks and support this program – it’s worth it). There is still one minor issue – after rebooting the 800 x 480 resolution doesn’t stick, and it reverts to 800 x 600 and you have to manually change it. A bit of a nuisance but not a show stopper. We plan to write an AppleScript that we can launch on startup to change the resolution for us. Overall we are very happy with the 700TSV and can’t wait to continue building our system!

Here are the final DisplayConfigX settings. Note that the 800 x 480 resolution must be set up as a “Timing”

Horizontal
Active = 800
Front Porch = 32
Sync = 56
Back Porch = 136

Vertical
Active = 480
Front Porch = 15
Sync = 3
Back Porch = 122

Refresh Rate = 60.011

In our next installment, we will cover input device options – stay tuned!

UPDATE: We’ve finished the AppleScript to easily change the Mac mini’s resolution to 800 x 480 upon startup. The download and instructions can be found here.

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Our system starts with the beefier 1.42GHz Mac mini model. We initially contemplated purchasing the lower-end 1.25GHz model, but decide to spend the extra bucks. The 1.25GHz model is a capable system for in car use, but “more power” is always good. A standard off the shelf configuration was not an option for us since we wanted the flexibility of using AirPort (WiFi) and Bluetooth to communicate and control the unit, so we ordered a custom configuration. We plan to use the WiFI for syncing with our home base and war driving. Bluetooth will be utilized for cellular internet access and GPS navigation. We pumped up the RAM in our box to 512MB, which is frankly, what Apple should start with. A mere 256MB of RAM is not too friendly on a Mac running multiple OS X applications.

There are quite a few options out there for using a standard car LCD as display for the Mac mini (dash mount, visor mount, DIN mounted, etc.) and then there are touch screens versions. We are investigation the various displays options, but are confident that we can find a solution that will easily and inexpensively integrate into our system. We will let you know our decision in a later report.

We are leaning towards a touch screen display which will (hopefully) negate the need for a physical keyboard. I think some sort of easy-to-use physical hardware controller, like a Griffin PowerMate or Bluetooth controller, will also be necessary. I can’t imagine controlling the system with just a touch screen while driving.

The software is another point of contention. While Mac OS X can easily handle all the media formats we can throw at it, using Apples built-in iApps may prove difficult from low resolution LCD Display. We will to continue investigating our options on this and report back soon.

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