The Well-Linuxed Car

[Tony Alfrey]

On Sunday 30 November 2003 07:45 pm, Kurt Wall wrote:
> Consuming 3.2K bytes, Alma J Wetzker blathered:
> > You will need to be carefull buying OTS parts.  The expected
> > operating temperatures inside the cab will be out of spec for most
> > comercial devices, thought mil spec should work.  You may also
> > consider if any of these sensors need to be mounted outside the
> > cab, making survivability an issue (as well as keeping the lens
> > clean).
> >
> > Sorry to try being practical, but a car is a harsh, HARSH
> > environment for electronic gizmo's and gadgets.
>
> No need to apologize. This is the sort of information for which I was
> looking. I can take the temperatures into account. Part of the
> challenge will be precisely the issues you raised.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Kurt

And one other thing you might consider:  electronics put into cars, such 
as switchmode power supply front-ends that "talk" to the car battery 
are specified to handle very nasty overvoltages and voltage reversals 
(which one might not normally expect from hooking stuff up to a simple 
12 V battery).  I'll look around to see if I can find you an 
appropriate reference.  I'll look on the National Semiconductor site 
'cause they make lots of switchmode controller chips that must be 
spec'd for this sort of environment.

-- 
Tony Alfrey
tonyalfrey at earthlink.net
"I'd rather be sailing"