Car pooter thread?

[guydewdney]

With the advent of smaller and smaller pc's and the general interest in mp3s, dab , dvd and small cheap lcd screens (on ebay for 80 quid buyitnow) im becoming interested in doing a carputer...

where do i start?

I'd like:-

16:9 motorised touchscreen headunit

CD and DVD support.

DAB radio

Route finding / GPS

I have a little PC knowledge and would like to stick to windows 2000 (as i understand it) or me or xp.

I have seen motorised screens on ebay for like 150 quid - but not touchscreen (touchscreen ones are like 1,000 ) can i just stick a usb overlay on it?

the key word here is budget...

 

[Shude]

Route finding / GPS

someone mentioned this to me yesterday:

http://www.directions.ltd.uk/

apparently it's not bad.

 

[craigyb]

www.mp3car.com is the best place to start....

I may be sellling my full installation soon as I defect to Audi...

Intel P4 PC in very small case
In Dash touchscreen
GPS receiver
Bluetooth
USB Hub
Keyboard
Slot slimline DVD/CRW
Lots of software....

 

[craigyb]

DAB in PC's and cars is still not useable, a colleague of mine is writing a front end which will include DAB and Navigator 4 as mentioned above, as well as mp3, divx, CD and DVD.

Craig

 

[guydewdney]

why is dab not useable then?

 

[craigyb]

Well DAB is useable as a standalone application on its own in windows with an external aerial. I think that there are about 5 or 6 PC DAB options available in USB/PCI cards etc.

What I'm saying is, no one has built a car PC frontend for any of them.

My friend is using a PSION wavefinder and a DAB-BAR/winamp combination talk to the wavefinder. Now they are rubbish unless you have a really good signal.

Most people seem to use the D-link FM radio, but again that can suffer very badly in many cars. Also it can cause your PC to crash as the drivers are rubbish.

Radiator supports plenty of FM radio modules and I have used that to control a Hauppauge WinTV/FM PCI card, but only Frodoplayer supports Radiator.

MediaCar and MediaEngine natively support the D-link.

Several new frontends are beginning to appear, but at the moment they are just doing mp3 and video.

The list most people require are....

Radio FM and XM (support for various FM cards) maybe DAB
MP3
DivX
DVD
CD
Sat Nav (varies on which one as each person prefers their's)
TV (support for various TV cards)
Mobile phone control (bluetooth of course)
Any other Apps

Frodoplayer seems to be the only one that will integrate all of the above, but DAB doesn't seem to be on his list as they don't have DAB in the states, just XM & FM.

 

[frodobaggins]

Frodoplayer seems to be the only one that will integrate all of the above, but DAB doesn't seem to be on his list as they don't have DAB in the states, just XM & FM.

Fly me over and we'll talk.
Or get someone to write a module I can integrate.
BTW, catch me there not here. I was just cruising the web
to see what links google brought up

Frodo