Category: Guides

Changing BMW Vehicle Order Using NCS Expert

When retrofitting options that were not factory installed, it is sometimes necessary to program the car to enable them. The car stores a list of options that were installed at the factory in one or more of it’s ECUs. This is known as the Vehicle Order (VO) and options such as electric auto folding wing mirrors/side mirrors are part of...

Samsung Monitor Power PCB Capacitor Repair

If you have a Samsung LCD monitor that has started taking ages to turn on, flickers, has a flashing blue power button with a black screen (i.e. not the “no input” message), makes a high pitched whining noise or even fails to turn on at all, the problem is likely to lie with the power circuit board (IP-45130A, pictured below)...

A DIY Temporary Browser

Here’s something I stumbled across that could be useful if you find yourself without a browser for whatever reason… 1. Open notepad and paste in the following line of code <iframe src=”http://www.bing.co.uk/” width=”100%” height=”100%” /> Change the web address to whatever site you’d like, I tried a few search engines –  at the time of writing, Google doesn’t seem to...

Android ScreenCast

View and interact with your Android Phone on your PC! I stumbled across this nifty utility: Android ScreenCast It allows you to view and record your screen and explore your Android device on your computer. Rooted devices can also accept input controls (keyboard and mouse). The tool is java based so is cross platform.   Installation The instructions on the...

Active Directory: Microsoft Folder Snap-In Error

This error may occur when using a Group Policy that restricts access to the MMC (Microsoft Management Console) and allows access to only explicitly defined snap-ins. In this case, it is when allowing only “Active Directory Users and Computers” for a particular user group. This is essential if you are looking to delegate control of users within an OU to...

Asus EEE PC: Remote On/Off

I originally bought my EEE 701 PC intending to use it as an upgrade/replacement for my current Car PC as it is much smaller, consumes less power, and uses a solid state drive (SSD) for data storage (meaning no moving parts while booting the OS and frontend etc). There were a couple of problems I needed to overcome though –...

Car PC: Part 4 – The Installation

With the hardware set up and all the software systems configured, it was now time to install the whole thing into the car itself. The whole process took a while to do and was split into three main chunks: Wiring The first job was to lay down all the wiring. This included power cable, speaker wire and extension leads for...

Car PC: Part 3 – Software

Part three of the Car PC saga :D Now that the PC itself was up and running and the screen and mount were completed, it was time to work on the insides of the beast, so to speak: the software – the thing that makes everything work! The Backend The PC itself was based on an extremely cut down version...

Car PC: Part 2 – Fabrication

Introduction Following on from Part 1, this section is going to detail what I did regarding the most important thing in the project: the screen. The screen is the one thing that you and everyone else who uses the PC looks at all the time so it needs to be visible – but at the same not distracting to the...

Car PC: Part 1 – The Hardware

Intro After my exams had come to an end, I decided I needed a mini project to keep myself occupied for at least a few weeks, so I decided as any normal, sane and non-geeky person would, to put a PC in my car. I spent countless hours researching various components and determining what the best route to go down...

Honda VTEC Engagement and KMH to MPH Converters

On a lot of Japanese Imports the speedometer has been converted from kilometers per hour to miles per hour for ease of use on British roads. This is done by essentially altering the signal that is sent to the speedometer by a factor of ~0.6 (there are 0.6 miles in a kilometer). The alteration is performed by a little black...

Electronic Delay Latch

The Background A while ago, I built a PC and used an All-in-Wonder Radeon 9700 Pro graphics card. For those who aren’t too familiar with them, read here. They were one of the first cards to require an external power connector to provide extra juice that couldn’t be drawn from the AGP bus. Coupled with this card, I used an...