THE FUBA PAGE

MOBILE DISPLAY PROCESSOR UNIT

(FORMALLY KNOWN AS HOLLY)

Background

My name is D2, and this is my story.
This page documents the design and implementation of a vehicle based Display Processor / Computer system. The basic components of this system consist of a trunk mounted purpose built computer and a cockpit mounted LCD display, both of which are integrated with the vehicle's built-in AV system (okay, it's mostly A, but there is a little bit of V even without FUBA).

The initial beginning's of FUBA

As an electronics design engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area I have always been starting hobby design projects to let me apply my professional design experience to projects that meant something to me personally. These projects are usually related to home AV or computer interests, but since living in the Bayrea means commuting by car, much of my project work has been stuffing as much car stereo equipment into my car as possible.

The Volkswagen GTI VR6

Soon after I got the car I had the following installed;

Sony XR-C900 Cassette Head Unit with Unilink
Sony XDP-U50D Unilink Controlled Digital Signal Processor
US Acoustics USA4050 4-Ch Amplifier
Boston Acoustic Pro Series 5.5 System Front Speakers
Boston Acoustic Rally RX67 Rear Speakers
Watermark Trunk Mounted Powered Subwoofer System
CDX-71 Unilink Controlled CD Changer
CDX-T65 Unilink Controlled CD Changer
XT-40V Unilink Controlled NTSC TV Tuner

NOTE: The initial install did not include a Video Display so the TV Tuner could only be used when I occasionally brought onboard an LCD Display.

Later that year

My professional career had me working in Tokyo for about 3 months on a Communications Systems Implementation Project. While there I spent much of my free time exploring the wonders of the Tokyo District of Akihabara. If you get excited by electronics and computers, then you WILL be blown away by Akihabara. I'm not even going to go into it, the whole area is so over excessive with selling electronics that it still blows my brain breakers just thinking about it 4 years later.
Any ways, while I was there I bought a Sony XTL-770W 7" WideScreen Dashboard mount TV/Navigation Display. This unit has a Control Unit which contains a Japanese frequency TV Tuner with diversity antenna connections, a Navigation unit RGB input connection, a Unilink control I/O, and video processing circuitry for Picture/Picture or PIP display. In the US, Sony sells the XTL-750W, a similar unit but with less capability. The XTL-770W was sold only in Japan and thus the On-Screen Display is in Kanta-Kana, with a little translation help from a friend and a lot of experimentation I was able to understand the configuration menus.

The Sony XTL-770W With the addition of the WideScreen Display I was able to use the TV Tuner and radio station/song title display output of the XTU-40V plus the TV Tuner in the XTL-770W to split screen two TV shows at once! Yes it actually works, but the NTSC Tuner in the XTL-770W being made for Japanese frequencies gives slightly off frequency reception of only the U.S. UHF channels. As I mentioned, the XTL-770W was designed to be a Display for a Japanese Navigation Unit like the Sony NVX series of VICS Navigation Units which are not usable outside of Japan. These Navi Units connect to the Display Units through a multi-pin connector which interconnects the NTSC RGB, audio, system control, and IR control. It was because of this unused connector that started out on the next phase of the project.

Project HOLLY

Holly was conceived of as a Mobile Computer that would run GPS, E-mail, vehicle diagnostics, and general mobile data storage & manipulation. I already had a lot invested in the Car Stereo System, and while I was familiar with MP3, it was not the guiding force behind Holly. The concept was to design the system as unobtrusive as possible with just the Display and a small IR Keyboard as the User Interface. Many factors go into the design of a Mobil PC Platform; form factor, interface needs, power, expandability, the cool factor. The PC that I chose was the Adastra VNS-786 a Single Board Computer with a 266MHz Tillamook Pentium Processor with MMX, 256 Mbytes SDRAM, Chips & Technology 69000 Graphics Controller with Zoomed Video Input Port, 2 x Ultra DMA EIDE Host Adapters, PC104-Plus Bus, 4 x RS-232 & 485/422 Serial Ports, 2 x USB Ports, 100Base-T Ethernet, and SoundBlaster Pro™ Audio. This SBC gives me just about everything I need in one small package and it runs on just 5V. I like it! While in Japan I also found a small Keyboard with Trackball that connects to the PC via an IR port. This Keyboard just the right size to be stashed just about anywhere around the car when data entry to the PC is not required, plus because of the Japanese layout it has extra keys that I can remap for custom uses. The GPS software that I had selected (ETAK Sky Map Pro) came with am IR Remote for screen scrolling & control. I built a test setup for Holly to determine the required Video Interface between the PC and the Display & what the GPS Mapping Software would look like on the Display. The C&T 69000 Controller is capable of producing Interlaced Video for NTSC Displays, and because of the XTL-770W being a WideScreen Display I was considering forcing the PC to output 864H x 243V x 60Hz Interlaced in order to display square pixels of a 864x486 Desktop. THAT was going to WAY to much experimentation to achieve right away so my test setup included a VGA to RGB NTSC Converter, the Televisor T3 that would basically take the PC's 640x480 VGA signal and interlace it for the Display. My test setup consisted of the SBC with GPS Interface, a 12V to 5V DC/DC Power Supply and the IR remote. I went on a series of test drives.

A pause in the Project

Project Holly became stalled. I was not satisfied with the GPS moving map display because of the way the program was able to display it's various Information Panels on the limited size & resolution of the NTSC RGB Display. I was really interested in a GPS Navi Unit for the car but knew that I would not be satisfied with what I would be able to put together from PC Software. I still wanted Holly to continue as at least a Mobile PC Project but I decided that the GPS Navi portion of the project would have to be a commercial product designed for a WideScreen Interlaced Video Display. There are several on the market, the more recent ones being WideScreen and with DVD software map storage. One day I found an Alpine NVE-N851A on e-bay and I bit the bullet. Interfacing the NVE-X to the XTL-770W only required splicing the interface cables from the two units together and inverting the IR Control Signal with a transistor. Okay, I actually had the car torn apart (AGAIN) for several days getting all the wiring routed and hidden. It's getting pretty cramped in there with all the other equipment.

Holly as a Navi only Unit

Stay tuned for the further adventures of PROJECT FUBA!