I'm retiring my Dodge van and replacing it with a Ford extended with a V-10!
(I'm gona get my share of gasoline before the SUV cellphone soccermoms get
it all) In the new van, I want a computer with the following:
-Full standard computing applications
-GPS and navigation
-mp3, cd, DVD
-Video in for cameras
-Wifi and find hot-spots on the road

That's easy, but it would be nice to:
-Telemetry from the van and engine - MPH, gas milage, other instruments
-Control the engine and trans by reprograming the chip like some stand-alone
units

Any experience? There is a ton of carcomputer info out there but I haven't
seen it all in one place and nothing about engine chip control.

I'm thinking about the layout and don't see too much trouble but am looking
for somebody that already made all the mistakes or has the answers.

I don't know about reprogramming the chips persay, but if you get a
CAN(controller area network) card of some sort and know the requisite
commands you can control anything in the vehicle on the CAN bus.
Nearly everything on the bus will have an override command. With a
Ford, I can't help you much. I know most of the Chrysler stuff, and
some GM. I suppose there is a chance that there is some overlap, but I
wouldn't count on it.

The telemetry you are looking for would be cake if you can get on the
bus and know what you are looking for.

Bad news: CAN cards are not cheap. The ones I work with start at $1k
and go up from there. There probably are some "home user" level of CAN
interface, but I don't know about them. Everything I do is development
level and we need all of the control that the expensive packages yield
us.

National Instruments sells PCI/ISA backplane cards. Vector

Bah, wrong button.

National Instruments (www.ni.com) sells PCI/ISA cards. They have been
promising a PCMCIA version for awhile. I have used the PCI/ISA cards
Vector (
http://www.vector-informatik.com/eng...canboardxl.php
) is another vendor. They have a PCMCIA card that we use primarily.